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The news reached Andúnië at noon, three days later.
A merchant rode in from Armenelos under the glaring summer sun, his horse lathered in sweat and stumbling from exhaustion. He had not stopped once since departing the capital, pushing both himself and his mount beyond their limits in a day-long journey without rest.
“There has been a coup,” someone murmured by the docks.
“Tar-Palantir’s heir no longer holds the sceptre,” another added. “Her cousin now sits on the throne.”
The whispers swept through the port, passed from mouth to mouth, until they reached Anárion aboard his ship, where he was counting crates and tallying cargo. One of his tavern companions, a man named Soronto, came searching for him.
“Did you hear?” he called from the quay.
Anárion climbed the starboard railing, one hand gripping the sail ropes, and looked down at his friend. “Hear what?”
“The King’s Men have taken Armenelos,” Soronto said. “One of their own now holds the sceptre.”
Anárion’s brows drew together, his lips pressing into a taut line.
He turned, glancing over his shoulder towards the far horizon. Somewhere beyond what his eyes could see lay the Undying Lands, and Valinor, the seat of the Valar. Were they watching?
And if they were, had they already foreseen this power shift in Númenor?
Did they know how the tale would eventually end?
The cruelty of the King’s Men and their lust for power were well known across the western lands.
He had heard the stories from his grandfather as a child.
Tales of Ar-Gimilzôr and his tyranny: of men taken in the middle of the night, accused of being loyal to the Valar rather than the sceptre; of screams smothered in secret chambers, and bodies later found unclaimed along riverbanks or cast by the roadside.
The fear that came with such tyranny was deliberately let loose upon the island, with the blessing of its King.
For a time, Tar-Palantir had been the remedy. A short reprieve. The careful promise to return to the old ways, and to offer the island a new beginning.
But it had not lasted.
The first coup had led to Tar-Palantir’s exile, held under guard within his own city, while his daughter took up the sceptre as regent.
Anárion was old enough to remember his father’s unwavering devotion to the sceptre in those early years after they had moved to Armenelos, not long after his mother’s death.
In the years that followed, Elendil never learned how to balance fatherhood with duty. The strain tore their family apart. Isildur grew distant. Eärien withdrew into herself. And Anárion fled at the first chance he had.
Back by the docks, Anárion swung down from the railing. “Grim news, Soronto,” he said, gathering his things as he prepared to go ashore, “I should speak with my grandfather.”
Soronto hesitated. He stood there fidgeting like a man bargaining with himself over words he did not want to speak. “There is more,” he conceded at last in a low, hushed tone.
Anárion stopped short and straightened.
“The new King has declared the Faithful enemies of the land.”
Soronto turned away, unwilling to meet his eyes.
In the silence that followed, one thing became abundantly clear. Whatever pitiful tolerance the people of Andúnië had known under Ar-Gimilzôr, granted only to keep the favour of the Lord of Andúnië, the new King would offer no such restraint.
Now, the danger loomed over all of them.
Anárion’s anger was swift and unwelcome. Its sharp edge turned towards his father. The thought of Elendil standing among the King’s Men, lending his weathered hands to the persecution of the Faithful, his heart hardened by years of resentment towards the old ways, struck Anárion like a physical blow.
He kicked the deck in frustration.
Soronto looked up, his face falling, as if he wished to be anywhere but here, being the bearer of bad news.
“Your father…” he began, but faltered as Anárion’s head snapped up and his eyes narrowed.
“They’ve named him an enemy to the Sceptre. There is a warrant out for his arrest. All roads westward are being watched.”
Amandil’s house was more still than usual. Advisors moved in and out through the open doors, speaking in low, urgent voices. From the looks on their faces as Anárion entered, he knew the news had already reached his grandfather.
He encountered Ulbar, Amandil’s oldest and most trusted counsellor, in a narrow corridor on his way to the private chambers.
“Anárion,” Ulbar greeted him with a faint smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “Were you not to sail today for Eldalondë?”
That had been the plan, and the reason he’d been aboard his ship when Soronto found him. He had intended to sail south to visit his mother’s family, whose farmlands stretched near the haven and who were renowned for their horses.
“I was,” Anárion replied, fixing his eyes on the door at the end of the corridor. “Is he in?”
Ulbar inclined his head. “He is expecting you.”
When Anárion knocked and stepped inside, he found Amandil seated behind a wide table, bent over a scroll. More were spread before him, some unfurled, some rolled, all of them marked with the crests of Númenor’s noble houses. The lords were already seeking his counsel, sensing the ground shifting beneath them.
Amandil didn’t look up at first, but lifted a hand in brief acknowledgement and gestured for Anárion to sit.
He obeyed, and for a moment, neither of them spoke.
At last, Amandil set the parchment aside and looked at his grandson, studying the young man’s presence and the burden he carried on his rounded shoulders.
“So,” Amandil said, “I take it you have heard that your father has been named a fugitive.”
Anárion nodded. “There is a warrant for his arrest.”
“Correct.”
Amandil reached into a small stack of papers and pulled out a decree, stamped in red wax with the seal of the new King, Ar-Pharazôn. He placed it between them.
Anárion observed his grandfather.
The composed mask Amandil wore before others had slipped a fraction. His eyes were dark. His mouth was drawn tight. And the faint downward curl of his lips betrayed a bitterness long held in check.
Once, Pharazôn, then called Calion, had stood at Amandil’s side, eager for his wisdom. But ambition and war had changed him. The boy Amandil once knew was gone.
“You are angry,” Anárion said softly.
Amandil met his gaze and gave a wry, tight smile. “So it would seem.”
“You’d hoped he might still be the man you once guided.”
Amandil leaned back in his chair, folding his hands, studying his grandson with a look that held both pride and traces of sorrow and regret.
“I held on to a fool’s hope.”
Just then, a counsellor entered, arms full of scrolls.
As she laid them down, Anárion’s eyes caught on one of the seals: a sceptre and a sword, circled by a sun. He straightened.
“That one is from the House of Kings.”
Amandil nodded, picking it up. He broke the seal and read. His face remained unreadable, but the way his jaw tightened, slightly and subtly, and his shoulders rounded said enough.
“What does the King demand?” Anárion asked.
For a moment, Amandil said nothing. He set the scroll aside and pressed his fingers to the bridge of his nose, exhaling slowly. Whatever the message held, it had once again placed him on the narrow ledge between his oath to the sceptre and his duty to the Faithful.
“Pharazôn believes your father will seek sanctuary in Andúnië,” Amandil said at last. “He expects me to arrest him when he arrives and deliver him to the King’s Guard to stand trial for treason.”
“And if you refuse?”
Amandil closed his eyes briefly. He had seen enough of the King’s Men to know how such refusals were answered: first with pressure, then with force, until there was no ground left to stand on.
“Then the soldiers will come,” he said, voice tight. “And the city will be made an example.”
“Do you believe Father will come here?” Anárion asked.
The question carried more weight than the words alone.
Decades had passed since Elendil left Andúnië without once looking back. His children had followed behind him. Now, the idea of his return, long delayed, seemed poised to bring ruin in its wake.
The situation struck Anárion with bitter irony, drawing a short, mirthless laugh.
Amandil’s reply was curt. Diplomatic. “I do not know," he said, after a pause. "Your father’s mind has been closed to me since the day he left. He will do what he believes is right. And I will do what I must to protect our people”
Anárion froze.
“You do not mean—” He hesitated, then forced the words out. “You do not mean to hand him over to the King’s Men.”
In that moment, his long-held anger towards his father wavered.
The rage Anárion had carried since learning of Isildur’s death, delivered in a letter from his sister, had never truly faded. It still burned beneath the surface, hardened by a year of silence, by grief that had nowhere to go, by a father who would not face him. He had learned to live with it, to let it sit in his chest.
But now that rage began to shift, loosening its grip, giving way to something older: fear.
For all his indignation, Anárion could not wish such a fate on Elendil. Treason in Númenor did not end with a swift death. It ended in a slow, withering decay inside forgotten cells, until their memory was erased from all records. Time did the rest. No one deserved such a fate, least of all his father.
“You will not give him to them,” Anárion said again, firmer now.
Amandil shook his head, leaning back. At last, the weariness broke through his composure.
“I will not,” he said. “Which is why you must find him before he reaches the city gates. Bring him home by a road they do not watch.”
Three weeks passed.
Each day, Anárion rode the outskirts of the city with a small company of men and women, keeping watch over the roads and the fields beyond, hoping for some sign of Elendil. But he never came.
Instead, grim tidings reached Andúnië from every corner of the island. The persecution of those deemed loyal to the Valar grew harsher by the day. Men and women were seized in broad daylight, never to be seen again. Arrests mounted, especially in Rómenna, and in the north, entire villages were burned. From the south, the displaced fled westward in fear, seeking whatever shelter they could find inside the boundaries of Andustar.
Many of the nobility, sensing the shift in power and dreading the new King’s wrath, abandoned Númenor altogether, their ships turning east towards Middle-earth.
Anárion’s unease deepened.
Nearly a month went by since word first reached them that Elendil had escaped arrest in Armenelos. Since then, there had been no sign of him. The King’s Men hunted him with the same relentless urgency that the Faithful searched the city's borders to no avail.
It was Idril, Anárion’s wife of two years, who finally set things in motion.
One evening, as he prepared his horse for another patrol, she came quietly to the stables, slipping her arms around him and resting her forehead between his shoulders. He leaned back into her touch, letting the warmth of her presence ease some of the weight he carried.
He was tired, having ridden far during the day, without success, while his grandfather's words echoed in his mind.
If Elendil were seen crossing into Andúnië, the King's Men would know soon after. Their spies were everywhere now. And Amandil would be forced to choose between protecting the city and handing over his only son.
Either path would end in ruin for their family.
“What troubles you, meleth nín?” Idril asked softly, pressing a gentle kiss behind his ear.
Anárion closed his eyes and drew a long breath.
“I do not know what’s become of my father,” he said at last.
His horse shifted beneath his hand, as though unsettled by the quiet implication of his words.
Idril knew the pain that lived between Anárion and his father.
She had held him through the storm that followed Isildur’s death: the tears, the anger, and later, the fury, when grief curdled into blame. She hadn’t flinched or turned away when he spoke harshly of Elendil, nor when he cried out at the stars, wishing fate had chosen differently to spare his brother.
Instead, she had guided him back from the desolation that had threatened to consume him, reminding him that death was not the end, that beyond the circles of the world, there was healing. She knew it well herself. Her father had been lost to the sea, and her mother went not long after. Her faith, carried like a lamp through the dark, had sustained them both.
“Perhaps he has been delayed,” she offered.
But Anárion heard the doubt beneath her words and turned to face her.
In her eyes, he found her strength, and something in him eased.
When he married her, before his grandparents and a small gathering of the Faithful, he’d hoped his whole family might one day come to know her. Isildur had known of her, at least. The brothers had written when they could, though their letters had grown sparse in later years, before stopping altogether.
“You do not believe that,” he said.
Idril shook her head. “I do not. The roads have grown dangerous. It is more likely that he was waylaid.”
A shadow crossed Anárion’s face, and she added quickly, “Not by the King’s Men. If they had caught him, they would have made it known. They would have paraded him through the streets as an example to us all.”
By then, the rest of the company had begun to arrive, greeting them with quiet nods before tending to their own mounts. Idril reached out and smoothed a crease from his tunic, a simple, familiar gesture, rooted in a love that knew no bounds.
“Perhaps it is time to look beyond the city’s borders,” she said.
He hesitated. Riding farther afield meant risk, for his company and for the cause. There could be clashes with the King’s Men. Worse still, encounters with lawless bands who had pledged themselves to them. Blood would be spilt either way.
And then the resentment rose again.
To risk lives for a man who had walked away from them. Who had left without a reckoning. Who had met Anárion’s grief by turning away in the wake of Isildur’s death—
“I will not endanger them for him,” he muttered, refusing to meet her eyes.
Idril’s voice was calm, unwavering.
“Anárion, my love, if you do not act, your grandfather will be forced to. And you know what choice he’ll make.”
She gently lifted his chin until their eyes met.
“I do not think either of you could bear that burden.”
He bowed his head, his breath leaving him in a long sigh.
She was right.
Whatever anger lived in him, it was nothing compared to what was now at stake. Númenor was changing, and the Faithful could not afford to turn against each other. Not now.
Anárion placed a hand on his horse’s brow, then turned back to Idril and offered a small, grateful smile, followed by a quick kiss. The way forward was clear now, though it would not be easy. She had shown it to him, as she always did. His beloved North Star.
He stepped away and called out to his company.
“We ride beyond the borders tonight,” he said, meeting each of their eyes.
“There is danger ahead: arrest, or worse. I would not fault anyone who chooses to remain behind.”
One of the women drew her cloak tighter around her shoulders and smiled.
“Enough talk. Let us go and bring your father home.”
The company kept off the great road that linked Númenor’s promontories and cities, knowing it was crowded with travellers and not all of them could be trusted.
Instead, they turned south, taking a lesser path that wound along the slopes of Oromet, passing beneath the high tower and threading through the forests of Andustar, until at last they reached Eldalondë.
There, they rested for a short while. Anárion sought his mother’s family, clinging to hope that some word of his father might have reached them. But none had seen him, nor heard any news of his passing.
Still, his uncle would not send them away empty-handed. They left with warm bread, fresh from the oven, and fish smoked for a day, caught from the bay.
Another day’s ride brought them through the fair lands of Nísimaldar, where fragrant mallorn trees rose pale and tall amid golden fields.
On the fourth day since departing Andúnië, they reached the banks of the River Nunduinë. There, they paid silver for passage aboard a small merchant vessel bound for Rómenna, and crossed the river unseen among other traffic.
Along the far bank, they rode on, avoiding paved roads, until they reached a small settlement near Lake Nísinen. Most of the company remained hidden beyond its borders, while Anárion entered with three companions.
Their arrival drew wary looks from villagers who were long used to the trouble that outsiders brought in their wake. Anárion and his companions introduced themselves as scholars travelling eastward.
The first village offered nothing of value, nor did the second. But in the third, as Anárion stepped out of the tavern beneath a sky strewn with stars, his eyes fell on a horse tethered at the nearby stable: a black thoroughbred, broad in the chest and unmistakably familiar in bearing.
He gasped. The resemblance was too exact to be a coincidence.
“I need a distraction,” he whispered to Eärendur.
Without hesitation, Eärendur turned back towards the tavern. Moments later, raised voices cut through the night’s calm, and a brief commotion drew the villagers’ attention.
Anárion slipped away, alone beneath the stars.
He approached the stable and murmured. “Brego?”
The horse lifted his head at once, snorting and stamping the ground.
A brief, unguarded smile crossed Anárion’s face. After ten days of fruitless searching, this was the first true sign he’d found: his father’s beloved horse.
He stepped inside and freed the stallion from his restraints. Brego followed without hesitation. Together, they hurried past the tavern, beyond the edge of the village where the rest of the company waited.
The horse led them further south along the lakeshore towards Hyarnustar, through rolling fields and vineyards laid out in tidy rows. The land grew wilder, green slopes giving way to broken ground and stone, the air thinning as they climbed into the rugged reaches of the southwest.
After another day’s travel along a narrow, well-worn track, they arrived at last at the foot of a mountain. There, the path divided. One route climbed steeply over barren rock towards snow-capped peaks; the other veered towards a gaping black cavern in the mountainside.
They stopped to rest.
One of the companions moved into the brush that edged the lower path and, moments later, called out to the rest. They had found a satchel tossed carelessly among the undergrowth. Nearby, a grey travelling cloak lay discarded, torn and stiff with dried blood.
Anárion knelt, opening the satchel. Inside were letters, maps, a star chart, and finally, a small journal filled with his father’s handwriting.
“He was here,” Anárion said, and the words hung heavy in the still air.
Every gaze turned towards the cave.
Eärendur stepped forward. “We cannot know what waits within,” he said. “Your father may have taken another path. These things could have been left to mislead any pursuers.”
They drew back among the rocks at the mountain’s base, remaining hidden from the paths above and below.
Yávien, who had known Anárion since childhood and held his father in deep regard, spoke next.
“It may be wiser to wait,” she said. “If we watch until nightfall, we may see something move, and learn what we are facing.”
No one dared to speak out loud the darker thought that lingered on their minds: that Elendil had taken refuge inside, and whatever haunted the cave had claimed him already.
The mountain stood silent, and the cave did not answer.
Until dusk.
As the sun dipped towards the western horizon, washing the sky in bruised purple and gold, a cool breeze stirred through the mountains.
Then they saw them: figures at the cave mouth. At first, little more than shifting shapes, silhouettes barely distinguishable from stone. Then, half a dozen forms stepped into the light: men and women cloaked in black, their faces gaunt, marked with ominous red sigils. They carried short swords, daggers, and maces.
From a distance, they might have passed for outlaws, the kind that plagued the southern coast. But there was something sinister in their bearing, something colder and more deliberate.
Anárion’s eyes narrowed, fixed on the markings. Recognition struck suddenly.
He had seen those symbols before, traced in the margins of old books in his grandfather’s library. Skulls entwined with runes from a long-dead tongue.
“Devotees of Morgoth,” he whispered.
A quiet gasp rippled through the company.
The devotees of Morgoth were the subject of rumour and warning. Little was recorded of them beyond dark stories whispered to children to keep them from wandering too far.
Said to dwell in dark caverns deep beneath the earth, they emerged before each solar eclipse, when the veil between Arda and the Void was at its thinnest. They took the living as offerings, anyone, of any age or station. A token of devotion to the Dark Lord. A plea for mercy before the last battle that they believed would end the world.
And of their cruelty, there was no doubt.
Yávien unrolled a star chart. She bent over it, her focus unbroken until she gripped his arm abruptly, eyes widening in alarm. "There will be an eclipse tomorrow."
Anárion closed his eyes. What he feared was now certain. Brego had not led them here by chance. His father’s trail had not ended; it had led to this place. And now, they stood at its mouth.
Eärendur lifted the bloodied cloak.
“If your father is in there,” he said grimly, “we must reach him before the eclipse. After that, it will be too late.”
The others straightened, measuring the danger before them. Their company numbered eight, well-armed and trained. They had seen six devotees emerge to gather provisions nearby. But how many more lurked in the dark, they could not say.
The caverns might run deep. They did not know where the devotees held Elendil, or if he was still alive.
Surprise was their only sure advantage.
“We do not have the strength to take them without bloodshed,” Yávien said.
Cemendur, youngest among them, the son of a sea captain, answered without hesitation. “Then let there be blood. We would only be hastening their reunion with their master.”
Anarion turned sharply. “We do not kill without need.”
“Enough,” Cemendur snapped back, voice taut with buried rage. “Your family counsels restraint, while others pay the price. Peace has not saved the Faithful. Titles have not saved us. Those who lust for power continue to rob us of our dignity.”
Eärendur stepped forward, ready to discipline the young mariner, but Anárion raised a hand.
“Sparing life is not a weakness,” he said. But the words rang hollow, even in his own ears.
Mercy, his grandfather had taught, was the purest resistance to the Shadow. And yet what did it gain them? Exile. Chains. Unmarked graves.
Yávien drew him aside.
“If we spare them,” she said, fingers brushing the crest stitched on his tunic, the mark of the Lords of Andúnië, “they’ll know who we are. The King’s Men will follow. Our city will burn.”
Anárion felt the weight of two paths closing in: the idealistic lessons of his youth, shaped in an age of innocence, and the harsher demands of the world as it now stood.
And where has the old way led us? An ugly thought crept into his mind, unwelcome.
A dead brother.
A hunted father.
A city standing on the edge of its ruin.
He closed his eyes, and an old memory stirred. His mother’s gentle, precise voice echoed in his ears, and images of a breezy, sunlit garden flashed in his mind.
When he opened his eyes, he looked to Yávien.
“My mother used to say that the way of the Faithful is committing to pay the price, even when the cost cannot be known, and trusting that in the end, it would be worth it.”
She offered a faint, knowing smile.
“Then you already know what must be done.”
Anárion waited until the last trace of daylight faded from the mountainside before giving the signal to move. By then, the cave-dwellers had retreated into the depths with whatever they had gathered. Their horses remained hidden among the boulders, tethered and quiet under Brego’s watchful guard.
They approached the cave on foot.
Inside, the silence was near complete, broken only by the slow drip of water and the dull scrape of boots on uneven ground. Mud clung to their soles as they moved forward, stepping over loose rock and shallow rivulets that gleamed faintly in the torchlight.
Blades were drawn. Bows were kept at the ready. They advanced in a close formation honed through practice and trust, each watching not only the path ahead but also the shifting shadows to either side.
The air was cool, musty, laced with the scent of wet earth and minerals. The cavern walls were damp. Somewhere below, there was water flowing. An underground river, deep enough to have shaped these halls over centuries…and perhaps deep enough to swallow a man whole.
They pressed on, finding no sign of Elendil nor of the devotees.
The tunnels narrowed, then widened again, winding downward in slow turns, until the air itself seemed to change. Anárion felt it then, a prickle at the back of his neck, the unmistakable sensation of being watched.
He opened his mouth to speak—
An arrow hissed through the dark, past his face, close enough to feel the rush of air. It struck the wall behind him and clattered to the ground.
“Take cover!” he shouted.
The company scattered, diving behind natural rock outcroppings as arrows rained from the shadows, glancing off stone and skittering across the cavern floor.
A harsh cry rose from the dark. Wordless. Raw.
The devotees descended upon them.
Steel met steel under flickering torchlight. They struck with reckless fury, aiming to kill. Anárion held his ground, drawing on the discipline he had been taught and the faith he still carried.
He sidestepped a heavy blow, caught the haft of a mace with his sword, and when the attacker overreached, drove his blade home. The body crumpled without sound.
For a heartbeat, the cave seemed to hold its breath.
Then, the clash resumed.
His companions moved with grim fortitude, fighting as one. Though the devotees outnumbered them, their attacks were wild, uneven, driven more by zeal than skill. One by one, they fell, until the cavern floor ran wet with blood.
Deeper in, the central tunnel split.
By then, most of the devotees lay dead or dying, the torchlight catching on blood-soaked stone. As Yávien struck down the woman before her, the devotee collapsed and crawled forward, grasping at Anárion’s ankle.
He knelt, trying to free her fingers as she coughed, air rattling in her chest.
“The sea…,” she rasped, eyes fierce even as death crept in. “...shall rise…Not in wrath. In mourning.”
Anárion froze.
“The West…will turn. The Light…withdrawn.” Another wet cough. “They will call…and no answer shall come.”
Her hand twitched in the mud.
“The Gift…scorned. The Lie…crowned King.”
A pause. Then, a shudder.
“He bids...return,” she whispered. “Bound…but listening.”
Her eyes locked onto his.
Where Anárion expected madness, delirium, he only found conviction. The certainty with which she spoke unsettled him more than her words.
He’d read about such blind, absolute devotion before, and in it, he heard an echo of the same, unflinching loyalty his father had once shown to the sceptre.
Even as Morgoth remained bound beyond the veil, Anárion felt the presence of a shadow taking form all the same.
Isildur had gone east and never returned. Many who followed Queen Míriel to Middle-earth had vanished as well. Those few who came back whispered of an ancient darkness stirring in the distant lands, slow but relentless, spreading without notice or warning.
And now, it no longer seemed unthinkable that the same darkness had found its way to Númenor’s shores, veiled, unarmed, already rooting itself deep in the hearts and minds of her people.
The dying woman’s lips twitched into a thin, crooked smile.
“Where the land is bent…when pride is ripe…the Door opens.”
Her body sagged.
“Númenor…falls.” A final rasp. “And the Dark Lord…begins—”
Yávien ended her suffering with a clean stroke.
“Prophecies rarely come in the form they are foretold,” she said softly. “Do not listen to her. We must find your father.”
Anárion rose slowly, exhaling a breath he hadn’t realised he’d been holding. Whatever words had been spoken in the dark tonight, they would not find answers here.
He turned towards the branching passageways ahead and gave the order to move.
They ventured deeper into the cave, passing hidden caches of weapons; blades unmistakably forged in the smithies of Armenelos, once meant for the royal army. Their craftsmanship was too fine, too recent, to have been looted. These had been given, offered, perhaps, as proof of an alliance forged in shadow.
Anárion grimaced at the thought.
Among the crates lay provisions as well, supplies once gathered by hands now cold in death. He motioned for the others to take what they could: steel for defence, rations for the road ahead.
“Anárion,” Yávien said from where she crouched beside one of the crates. She held up a scroll bearing Pharazôn’s wax seal, its edges crumpled and darkened by dampness.
He took it from her and held it up under the torchlight, squinting as he read. Each line sent a cold prickle down his spine.
“What is it?” Eärendur asked from where he knelt, packing food rations into his satchel.
“A bounty,” Anárion said, his tone low and dulled. For the first time since they had set out from Andúnië, he looked uncertain. Plagued by a sinking feeling that the worst of his fears was hardening into the truth.
“A bounty?”
Anárion glanced at his friend. “For my father. The King promised these zealots immunity; the freedom to practice their devotion to Morgoth if they delivered proof of his death.”
He raised the scroll and pointed to the date.
“They must have begun hunting him not long after he fled Armenlos.” His stomach churned.
A deafening silence fell on the company. They had entered the cave on a hunch, guided by the star-chart and a timeline that had, until now, worked in their favour. There were still a few hours before the eclipse, enough time, they had thought, to save Elendil.
The bounty changed everything. Now, the company did not know whether they were already too late or what awaited them in the cave’s depths.
Eärendur recovered before Anárion did.
“Gather what you can,” he said, eyes fixed on the darkness ahead. “Then we keep moving.”
The path veered hard to the left, sloping into the lower reaches of the mountain. There, it opened into a vast cavern. Water dripped steadily from the stone ceiling, where long, pale formations hung like frozen spears. Thick columns of rock rose from the ground, and beneath it all ran the faint echo of an underground river, flowing endlessly through the dark.
At the foot of the slope, they saw the glow of a low-burning fire. Slumped beside it, a motionless figure lay with his hands bound behind his back.
Anárion broke into a sprint.
“Father!” he cried, his voice cracking as he fell to his knees.
He drew the dagger from his boot, slicing through the rope that bit red welts into Elendil’s wrists. As he rolled him gently onto his side, Elendil let out a weak, ragged groan.
Anarion took stock of his father’s injuries. The wounds were severe, but not fatal. At least, not yet. One of his eyes was swollen shut. Dried blood clung to his lips. His pale skin was dotted with dark bruises and the same ritual markings they’d seen on the devotees.
Just a few feet away, there stood a shallow pit brimming with offerings. Fruit, fish, game freshly skinned, and a vial of thick, dark liquid. Blood. Whether it was human or not, Anárion didn’t care to know.
Yávien and Eärendur helped lift Elendil into a seated position, while Almarian, both a skilled swords master and a healer, dropped to her knees beside them.
“He needs water,” she said immediately, her eyes scanning his injuries.
Someone passed forward a waterskin. Anárion pressed it to his father’s lips. Elendil drank too quickly and choked.
“Easy, Father. Slowly,” Anárion murmured, rubbing his back with a steady hand.
In that moment, everything he had clung to, the bitterness, the anger, years of silence, all fell away like dust.
The sea had taken his mother. His brother was gone, too. He would not lose his father, not like this.
Elendil took another sip, slower this time. When he looked up, his one good eye found Anárion’s. He raised a trembling hand, cupping his son’s cheeks, fingers tracing the familiar lines of his face, his nose, brows, jaw, as if committing them anew to memory.
“Anor?” he whispered, his throat raw and hoarse. “My…my little sun?”
Those words unravelled years of hurt and resentment in an instant.
Anárion pulled him into an embrace, holding him tight while Elendil wept against his chest, his body wracked with sobs.
“Forgive me,” Elendil gasped between breaths. “I failed…I could not…protect…our family. Could not…save Isil—”
Anárion held him tighter, closing his eyes against the sting of tears. All his life, the man he had known to be unflinching and unassailable was now small and vulnerable, reduced to sobbing like a child in his arms.
“You did your best,” he muttered. “Sometimes, that has to be enough.”
Eärendur placed a hand on Anárion’s shoulder.
“We should move,” he said gently. “The more ground we can cover before dawn, the safer we will be. The eclipse will buy us more time.”
Anárion nodded, pulling back enough to let Almarian finish her assessment.
“They broke his leg,” she said, examining Elendil’s blood-soaked left shin. “Deliberately. Smashed likely with a mace.”
Her prognosis was grim: Two of his fingers had been crushed in the same way. Knife wounds on his sides, one of them deep enough to cause lasting damage without treatment, and shallow ritual cuts on his chest and inner arms.
He was also doused in mallorn oil, the kind used for fire rites.
Whatever flicker of pity and regret Anárion might have felt for the devotees vanished in an instant.
“Can he ride?” he asked.
“Not alone,” Almarian replied. “You will need to ride with him. If he loses consciousness, he could fall and worsen the damage.”
They began the slow climb back, Elendil leaning heavily on Anárion and Eärendur.
On their way back to the entrance, they passed the fallen. Nearly three dozen bodies lay in heaps. Anárion stopped in his tracks, then turned to his company.
“Burn them,” he said, his expression cold and unfeeling.
Cemendur hesitated. “Are you sure?”
Among the Faithful, burning the dead without performing their final rites was considered a desecration. Among the King’s Men, it was a signature.
Anárion did not answer.
He did not need to; no one, not even Cemendur, dared to defy the order.
Outside, in the cool night, they laid Elendil at the base of a tree as Almarian worked salves and oils gently into his wounds. Nearby, Eärendur brought the horses out from their hiding place among the boulders. Brego snorted softly, nudging Elendil’s shoulder with affection.
Within the hour, the bodies had been laid in ordered pyres near the cave mouth and set alight.
Anárion stood apart from the rest, watching the flames rise into the night.
There was symmetry in the rows of the dead, those who had claimed faith in the darkness. The King’s Men had not only spared them but also conspired with them, offering the zealots a guiding hand and steel, while disregarding the violence they wrought.
Something shifted within him.
Peace had not spared their people. Restraint had not protected them. Mercy became a weapon turned against them.
Now, at last, the path ahead was made clear.
Anárion turned.
“Where is his cloak?”
Eärendur retrieved the torn, bloodstained fabric they had found earlier, abandoned in the nearby brush. He handed over the satchel, too.
Anárion knelt before Elendil.
“I need Mother’s ring.”
Elendil, more lucid now than he had been in the cave, instinctively recoiled, drawing his hand back.
“No,” he pleaded, the word tearing from him. “Anor…please.”
“When the King’s Men learn of the devotees we slew tonight,” Anárion said, his words low but uneven, “they must believe you died with them. Or else, they will never stop hunting you, and Andúnië will pay for it. This is the only way.”
Elendil shook his head, tears welling again.
“This is all I have left of her.”
Anárion hesitated, the weight of what he was asking pressing down on him. Part of him hoped, prayed, that his mother would understand the desperation driving him now.
He looked to Eärendur, who at once crouched beside them and wrapped an arm around Elendil’s shoulder.
“My lord,” he said gently, “Forgive us. We would not take something so precious from you if it were not necessary.”
Anárion took the ring as carefully as he could, meeting only token resistance from his father. He hated the resignation in Elendil’s eyes as the last thing he had of his wife slipped from his grasp.
“Forgive me, Ilwë,” Elendil whispered, “forgive me, my love.”
In the end, they burned it all: the bodies, the cloak, the satchel, and the ring.
By the time the smoke rose high into the night and watchers loyal to the King’s Men caught sight of it, the company was already gone. Riding westward over untrodden paths, bearing with them a man the island believed lost, and a son who had learned, at last, that mercy without strength was no mercy at all.
They rode through the night without stopping, crossing the borders of Andustar before the eclipse reached its height. By midday, they had taken refuge in a grove of mallorn trees, their silver trunks glowing faintly beneath the daylight. The horses grazed in peace among the tall grasses, while not far off, the river wound its way to the Bay of Eldanna, its surface glimmering.
Anárion, Yávien, and Eärendur huddled over a rough map, plotting the remainder of their journey.
One of their companions had already parted from the group, tasked with spreading whispers of Elendil’s death.
The news would reach Armenelos soon enough.
It had been Yávien’s plan. She’d known the King’s Men would not be able to resist such a tale. They would seize it, twist it, and parade it as truth. That would buy Andúnië a sliver of time, a short reprieve while the King turned his gaze elsewhere.
Almarien and Cemendur tended to Elendil, who remained weak from his injuries, while the others kept watch, their eyes scanning the forest’s edge for signs of danger.
“We must ride back with haste and confer with your grandfather,” Eärendur stated as they sat around a low-burning fire.
Beside him, Yávien sharpened her blade. She caught the silence that followed. Anárion said nothing at first, only stared into the embers, his jaw tight.
“We are not going back to Andúnië,” she said, her tone casual, as if stating something inevitable.
Eärendur frowned, turning to Anárion.
“Why not?” he asked. “Once word spreads of your father’s death, surely the King’s Men will recall their spies. Their eyes will turn elsewhere.”
Elendil answered before Anárion could. He sat with his back against the smooth trunk of a mallorn tree, eyes distant, fingers still cradling the bare spot where his ring had once been. Pain roughened his words.
“It would be unwise to return too soon,” he said, studying his open hands. “The most dangerous moment to deceive an enemy is when they expect to be lied to. The King’s Men will not accept my death so easily.”
He shifted, wincing, as a jolt of pain shot through him, drawing a sharp gasp that caught Anárion’s attention.
Yávien slid her blade back into its sheath. “Andúnië must mourn him,” she said. “The priests must speak the final rites. Only then will the King be satisfied, and his gaze will turn elsewhere.”
Anárion rose, brushing leaves from his trousers. He did not look at his father; he could not bear to see the stripped, beaten look in his eyes again.
“We will go to Eldalondë,” he said. “My mother’s family have land there. They would offer shelter and ask no questions. We will remain there until it is safe to return.”
Cemendur, who had not said a word since they had left the mountains, finally spoke.
“And what of the fight?” he asked, eyes hard on Anárion. “The King’s Men will not stop hunting the Faithful just because they believe Lord Elendil is dead. What of those people? Who will protect them if we hide like cowards?”
Anárion rounded on him, the words coming in sharp.
“Look around you,” he snapped. “There are eight of us. We survived the cave because those we faced were zealots, not soldiers. If the King sends his captains, or his thugs, we will die. And before they finish us, they will make us talk until we give up everyone we know.”
The fire popped and hissed in the silence that followed.
Cemendur opened his mouth as if to answer, then thought better of it. He lowered his gaze and said nothing.
Anárion looked around the circle. Faces weathered by grief and fear, by loss and endurance. They were not cowards. They were survivors. And in the storm gathering on the horizon, survival alone would no longer be enough.
“There is a war coming,” he said at last. “We cannot win by charging headfirst into death. Victory will belong to those who know when to strike, and when to wait.”
His gaze finally found Elendil, who met it with a look of pride and underneath it, an abundance of love.
“We need numbers. We need loyalty. And we need eyes and ears inside Armenelos before we move against the King. So, yes—” Anárion turned back to the others, a renewed sense of hope settling in his chest, “for now, we lie low. We gather strength. And when the time comes, we will take back our island.”
Eldalondë gave them sanctuary, and with it, the chance to finally exhale.
Anárion’s uncle, Eldacar, welcomed the company without question and led them to a modest house near the bay, its white walls draped in blooming vines, and the ever-present sound of water in the background. The air carried the scent of lavender and salt, and inside, it was warm and lived-in, full of memories tucked beneath every creaking floorboard.
Eldacar and his sister, Ilwë, Anárion’s mother, had grown up in this house.
“Stay as long as you need,” Eldacar said, squeezing Elendil’s shoulder with reverence. They shared a look of unspoken sorrow, shaped by their loss.
In the days that followed, the company began to drift, each of them setting off on their own path.
Eärendur left for Andúnië, bearing letters from Anárion to Amandil and Idril. His instructions were clear: let the city grieve. Let the lie take root. Let the King’s spies see what they expected to see.
Yávien rode north, to the high cliffs and moorlands, to stir the old loyalties still hidden among the Faithful.
Others went east, to Armenelos and Rómenna, searching for allies who had not yet bent before the sceptre.
Only Almarian and Cemendur remained.
Almarian took charge of Elendil’s recovery, watching over him with the sharpness of a hawk and the tenderness of someone who had lost too much already. While his wounds were slow to heal, she made no allowances for his stubbornness. Whenever Elendil winced and tried waving her off, she glared him into submission.
And when Anárion ignored her advice, refusing rest, skipping meals, she threatened him with the one name she knew would give him pause.
“I will write to Idril,” she warned one morning, arms crossed. “See if she can’t knock some sense into you from Andúnië.”
Anárion raised his hands in surrender and sat down, earning a satisfied nod from her before she turned back to mixing poultices by the hearth.
Cemendur worked the farmlands that bordered Eldacar’s estate, stretching vast and fertile, dotted with vineyards and pastures. There, among the grazing horses and low stone walls, he found peace. Every morning, he rose early, worked until his hands ached, and returned each evening with dirt under his nails and sweat on his brow. No one asked why. They understood.
He worked not for duty, but for rhythm. For control in a world that was quickly losing it.
Fear still lingered at the edges of their thoughts, of what might come, of who might follow, or of how long the King’s Men would believe their lie. But in these tasks, in tending wounds and tilling soil, they kept that fear at bay.
And for now, that was enough.
One evening, Anárion returned from the docks, his cloak damp with salt-spray and his mind heavier than it had been when he left.
He found Elendil by the hearth, sitting alone, eyes locked on the embers.
“The King knows,” Anárion said, shedding his cloak and sinking into the chair beside him with a tired sigh. “He sent a letter to Grandfather. Offered his ‘most sincere condolences’.”
Elendil snorted with quiet disdain.
“And he has forced Queen Míriel into marriage,” Anárion added, watching for his father’s reaction.
Elendil barely flinched and said nothing. His gaze remained fixed on the fire.
“He believes binding himself to her grants him legitimacy,” Anárion continued, the frustration rising in his voice. “Even his own followers murmur against it. But none of them would dare stand up. They’d rather watch him twist the law and desecrate tradition, while they do nothing.”
Elendil exhaled slowly and rubbed a hand over his face.
“Pharazôn’s silver tongue has turned many,” he muttered, “your sister among them. I never saw it coming, and when I did…I still left her behind.”
Anárion’s lips pursed into a thin, hard line. He hadn’t heard from Eärien since she wrote to him about Isildur’s passing.
“She hoped I’d return after Isil died,” he remarked. “Thought grief would bring me home. But I didn’t go. I blamed you for his death, and I didn’t want to forgive you.”
Elendil’s hands twisted in his lap, opening, closing, unsure of what to do with themselves. There wasn’t much left to say; nothing could fill the emptiness Isil had left behind.
“I was wrong,” Anárion said, after a pause.
Elendil turned, surprise flickering across his face.
“No,” he said softly. “You weren’t. I should have stopped him from ever boarding the ship. When the chaos came, I rushed to the Queen. I was thinking of duty, while your brother was left to fend for himself. I thought…I thought I was serving the realm. But I failed the ones who mattered most.”
Anárion gave a wistful smile.
“Isil would’ve gone, one way or another. He wanted purpose. He believed if he saw the world beyond our shores, he might come to love Númenor again.”
But the words offered little comfort. The shadow that fell on Elendil’s face remained, and his eyes welled with tears not yet shed.
“He is gone,” he whispered.
Anárion nodded. “And we are still here.”
A pause, then—
“There’s work to be done,” he continued. “A shadow is falling over Númenor. Surely you have felt it.”
His father nodded.
“If we do not rise above it, it will drown us. Losing faith now is to lose the island forever.”
Elendil didn’t speak for a long time as they sat in the stillness. When he eventually did, he chose his words with care, without judgment or anger.
“You killed them. The zealots.”
Anárion met his eyes. “They would have killed us first.”
“Killing does not suit you,” Elendil murmured. “You should have left me to my fate.”
“To what end?” Anárion snapped, louder than he had meant to. “So you could die for nothing? So the King could silence one more voice of reason while you held on to an ideal that no longer exists?”
Elendil looked away.
Anárion stood abruptly. “Open your eyes, Father. The Númenor you believed in, the one Mother dreamed of for us, is vanishing. Doing nothing will not save this island.”
“This is not a burden you should have to bear,” Elendil mumbled.
Anárion’s laugh was bitter. He felt the exhaustion settling in the hollows of his bones. A part of him wanted to seize his father by his tunic and shake him hard enough that he finally understood what they had lost, and everything else they stood to lose still. He wanted Elendil to understand the suffering of their people, the indignity, the endless inertia that had brought them nothing but pain.
The King’s Men understood force; they recognised fear. And Anárion, standing there with the sting of fresh scars and too many graves behind him, felt that truth like fire in his blood.
“We do not have the luxury of choosing what burden to bear,” he muttered. “Not when our survival is at stake.”
Silence stretched between them again.
Outside, the evening deepened, and the scent of roasted meat drifted in on the breeze. For a while, the only sound heard was the crackle of the fire.
Then Elendil cleared his throat.
“What would you have me do?” he asked. “If you would share the burden…I will help you bear it.”
Anárion blinked, unsure he’d heard right. But his father didn’t correct himself.
“You mean it?” he asked, cautious hope flickering in his chest.
Elendil nodded, his expression solemn. “I couldn’t save your brother; I lost your sister. I will not lose you, too.”
Anárion exhaled. Relief flooded through him, warm, grounding. For the first time in weeks, his smile reached his eyes.
“Then stand with us,” he said, pulling his chair closer and taking his father’s hand, the one still wrapped in bandages. “The Faithful need a voice. A leader. The King’s spies are watching grandfather too closely, but you…Once Pharazôn believes you are gone, we can use that to our advantage. We can strike from the shadows.”
Elendil’s eyes dropped to his bare ring finger.
For a moment, he lingered there, where the symbol of all his love, his devotion, once rested.
But when he looked up again, something in him had changed.
The despair had not vanished. Elendil still missed his wife as fiercely as he had on the day she died. But the grief had at last settled into its proper place, and what remained was something harder, steadier. What remained was his faith.
“All right,” he said at last, drawing himself upright.
He met Anárion’s eyes, not as a father burdened by regret, but as a leader who had finally accepted the path before him.
“I will stand with the Faithful,” he said, quietly. “And guide them, so that we might yet save what remains of our home.”
Two months later
Spring came to Eldalondë cloaked in mist, and a gentle breeze carried inland from the sea. The mallorn trees glowed brighter than usual that year, their golden leaves unfurling like whispers over the bay.
It was a season of renewal, but only on the surface.
Word of Elendil’s death spread like wildfire. Songs were sung. Rites were performed. His name was carved into stone beside his wife’s in the temple halls of Andúnië. The King’s Men had sent no further spies to the west. The mourning was seen, the lie was believed.
But deep beneath the waters of Númenor, things were moving.
Elendil began to write again. Names returned to him from memory, one by one. Old oaths were renewed, and alliances long thought broken were reforged by ink and faith. Each letter was carried by hand, placed only in the trust of those who remembered the old way, who still knelt before the stars facing West.
Anárion trained by day, building his strength in arm and blade, and in resolve. He found his purpose again. At night, he walked the cliffs above the bay, mapping in his mind the road that would one day lead him home.
Cemendur rallied the younger folk who lived on Eldacar’s lands, teaching them to wield a sword. There existed an unspoken understanding that one day, the strife and the chaos that plagued the eastern cities would come to their border, and Númenor’s survival would be at stake.
Yávien returned after a month, bringing with her three names. Old allies, who were scattered and waiting. She spoke little of what she had seen in the north, but the haunted look in her eyes told Anárion enough.
In the east, the King’s Men grew bolder. Their cruelty was no longer masked, and the Faithful there began to disappear in alarming numbers.
One evening, Anárion sat with his father again on the bluff above the water, as they often did in the quiet hours. The stars were out, clear and bright, and the sound of waves rose gently from the shore below.
“You were right,” Elendil said at last, his voice carrying just above the wind. “We cannot win this war by staying silent.”
Anárion did not answer at once. He watched moonlight spill across the sea, its silver path stretching westward, towards a land none of them would ever see.
“No, he said. “But we can choose where the silence ends.”
A long pause followed. Then Elendil asked, “Where will we begin?”
Anárion drew in a breath. The salt air stung, but it felt clean. It felt pure.
“With the truth,” he said, looking out over the sea, then back to his father. “And with those who still believe in it.”
FIN