OOC - Author's Notes:
Status: Ongoing - This story will have 7 entries. It it currently 5/7.
The story is part of a multi-part chronicle, which can be read here. References and links to other author's works are included with their permission.
Stories in this post include (click to jump directly to them, or scroll below):
- "A Father's Burden"
- "The Silent Archive"
- "The Ashen Record"
- "In The Presence Of Quiet Tyrants"
- "The Wound That Does Not Bleed" (New addition)
- "The Mirror of Ages" (being written)
- TBD
Image credit: Alan Lee and Paul Lasaine
"A Father’s Burden"
In the silence of his chamber, under the golden light of the mellyrn trees, Ceneshar, Keeper of Veiled Lore, High Chronicler of the Golden Wood, Loreward of the Silent Archive (in truth, a minor noble of the Lord Celeborn’s great Court), stood at the heart of the ancient realm, his mind distant and troubled.
There was little that could disturb the tranquillity of the Caras Galadhon, but even here, amid its ageless beauty, he had sensed something uneasy, something stirring at the edges of the world.
His mind was far from the peace of the woods. It was still fresh, the moment the Lady Galadriel had come to him. Come to him! As if she had stepped from the very fabric of the world itself, her presence filled the room with an ancient and terrible grace. Her words, soft but heavy as the weight of mountains, had struck him, leaving marks upon his soul that would not fade.
‘Ceneshar’, she had said, her voice reverberating through his thoughts, not merely spoken but felt. ‘There is a shadow moving east...'
He had bowed low, as all did. But she bade him rise, and when she looked upon him, he saw no kindness in her eyes. Only knowing. Endless and terrible.
That was all at first. And then, the vision.
It struck like ice poured through the marrow of his bones. A black shape, faceless, bird-masked, moving through the forgotten lands of the west, places he had dismissed, lands steeped in the follies of Men. But behind it came blood, silence, fear. Paths in the wilds where the light of day had dimmed, where people trembled at the whispers of a cloaked figure passing their homes. Marshes fouled with the mangled bodies of beasts not seen for ages... avanc, as some said. Slaughtered not for food or defence, but for some darker purpose.
Then a fishing village, Lhan Garan, where old fishermen spoke warmly of a quiet companion, a stranger who helped mend their nets and spoke little. They never saw the blade beneath the glove, nor the hollow behind the mask. They slept beside a revenant unknowing….
And further south, along the road into Enedwaith, brigands lay broken in the dust, throats torn, weapons untouched. Nothing taken. Nothing left. Not even the echo of a name.
"I have seen it through the threads of time, and though it walks in the guise of shadow, it has left traces that cannot be ignored. Its presence is not a fleeting thing, but one that stirs the very bones of the earth. Its passing leaves a coldness in its wake. Whispers grow among those who travel the roads of Cardolan and Enedwaith.”
Ceneshar had tried to speak, to ask who, what, this shadow was. But Galadriel’s eyes held him in silence.
"The shadow moves east, Ceneshar," Galadriel’s voice grew softer, yet more insistent. "It is not yet full, but it is returning, drawn by forces ancient and terrible. The earth bends beneath it, though it remains unseen by many. There is fear in the wind, and in the eyes of those who walk the roads. It is a force, like none that has walked this way since the times of the war of the ring itself. This is just the beginning”, Galadriel had said. “The shadow is returning, and it will not rest until it has claimed what it seeks.”
He had felt something then. Not merely fear. Not even awe. No, he had felt shame.
That this thing had passed through the world, leaving such marks was bad enough, but that the Lady herself had drawn connection of it to him. HIM. His realisation that this shadow must not be unknown to him. It must be close to him. Closer than he dared realise… close to him through a connection with his blood…
“Your daughter has walked beside it.”
That had broken him.
Naridalis—his daughter. His pride, his project, his failure. She had run from him long ago, tired of his discipline, his correction, his plans. He had thought her foolish, chasing meaning in the mud and song of the western roads. Letting herself be tarnished by the lives of Men and Dwarves. A squandered legacy.
But now Galadriel spoke of her as if she were woven into something greater, and darker. Not a rebel, but a thread in a loom of shadows.
And Ceneshar hated her for it.
He hated the gall of it, that the Lady herself would come to him, to speak of his daughter not in scorn, but in prophecy. That this shadow had looked upon Naridalis. That perhaps it had walked with her not as a stranger, but as kin.
He did not know what it meant. Not fully. Galadriel had spoken no names, offered no absolution. Only this: the shadow had passed east. The land itself would feel it. Trees would not sing. Rivers would run cold. Creatures would flee before it. Not for what it did, but for what it was. A memory returning.
And somewhere along that path, was his daughter. Drawn back to Lothlórien by his own summons. And what, now, was she bringing with her? She had passed through this shadow, that much was clear. But had she been tainted by it?
The Lady had left him then. No farewell. Only the echo of her presence and the fading of golden light, for her form shimmered like mist upon the morning air. Yet, her words lingered far longer, hanging in the air, an echo that pressed down on his heart.
And in that silence, Ceneshar stood alone, the weight of her vision pressing heavy upon him. An omen that no elf of the Golden Wood could ignore.
Ceneshar had listened, his mind struggling to comprehend the weight of it. He had thought he knew the ways of the world, of power and influence. He had expected his daughter to return to him, to Lothlórien, as any wayward child should. But now… now he saw that her departure was not a matter of choice or simple rebellion.
It had been the beginning of something darker.
The darkness, yes. And this shadow, this thing that Galadriel spoke of, was tied to Naridalis. And through her, it reached him. His heart twisted with a mix of fear and bitter resentment. She had rejected him, rejected the light of Lothlórien, rejected everything he had built for her—and now he saw she was tied to something far worse than mere rebellion.
Her departure was not just a sign of disobedience. It was a signal that she had embraced something else, a path, a fate, entwined with that shadow. The very thought sent a cold rage through him. He had never been a man to tolerate weakness, and now, this… this failure, this link between his daughter and such a terrible force, was beyond even his cruel reach.
The anger surged again, bitter and sharp. Why had she left? He thought, his mind racing. Had she been part of this all along? Had she known?
For the first time in ages, Ceneshar felt lost. All his years of control, all his careful plotting and discipline, had led to this moment of chaos. The vision had stripped him bare, revealing his own helplessness, his failure to truly understand his daughter.
Yet even as the anger swelled within him, a flicker of something else stirred; fear. Fear for Lothlórien, for the future, for what might befall them all. He had been told, The shadow moves east. Galadriel had not said when, or how, or what would come next, but Ceneshar could feel the truth of it. His daughter’s fate, the fate of Lothlórien itself, were now entwined with something far darker than he had ever imagined.
The shadow was returning. And there was nothing, it seemed, that could stop it.
His eyes turned to the eastern horizon, where the land met the mist, his heart heavy with the weight of what was to come. And yet, amidst it all, the rage still burned within him, for it was not only the shadow that terrified him, it was the knowledge that Naridalis, his own flesh, had become part of it.
His hands shook, rage or fear, he did not know.
He had once called himself her guide. Her father. He had shaped her, sculpted her in the image he believed righteous. But what if he had carved too sharply? What if she had splintered? And what, now, had returned from that break?
Something had awoken or remembered… It had managed to touch Naridalis. It might yet claim her fully. And perhaps, just perhaps, there was a part of her that would welcome this.
He clenched his hands behind his back, trembling with the weight of it.
He was old, now. Old even by elven reckoning. And for all his wisdom, all his poise, he had no answer for what was coming.
Only this: the shadow had stirred. And through his daughter, through his summons, it would now come knocking at the very doors of Lothlórien.
Image credit: Alan Lee and Paul Lasaine
“The Silent Archive”
The halls beneath Caras Galadhon were seldom trod these days. Ceneshar’s footfalls echoed in the stillness as he passed beneath the carved branches of silvered mallorn-wood. Dust hung motionless in the air. Here, beneath the golden city, the past was shelved and bound, scrolls, ledgers, fragments of song, and the long, brittle pages of those who had left no other mark but ink. Once, these passages had been filled with quiet voices, lore-keepers murmuring in Sindarin, scribes bent over amber-lit scrolls, but no more. Now, time itself was the only archivist that remained, gentle and remorseless.
He paused before a sealed case, its glass veiled by time and disuse. A faded sigil on the clasp: Elenath undómë, the Stars in Twilight. A private seal. One he himself had once authorised. His brow furrowed. He could not remember when.
With a soft word, the lock came away. The scent of old parchment drifted up, earthy, brittle, touched faintly with salt and the ghost of lavender. He drew out the bundle.
Green thread. Not gold, nor silver, but green—wild, stubborn, growing things. His throat tightened. He remembered it now. Naridalis had handed it to him with ink-stained fingers and a look of studied seriousness, the kind she had learned from mimicking her elders, but beneath it, that fire always burning. She must have been barely into her first century.
“So you don’t forget what I see,” she’d said, as if the thought of her father forgetting anything was absurd.
He opened the journal. The journal was hers, not a diary, but a collection of copied verses, sketches of trees and ruins, and fragments of letters never sent. Notes on wandering stars. The first page bore a tracing of her own hand, her child’s hand, long before he had let her carry a bow or stand in council.
The first pages were simple: pressed leaves, annotated with a child’s precise hand; sketches of birds she had given names to, and verses copied from ancient lays, though often she changed the endings. Where others ended in sorrow, she made them hopeful, or else unfinished.
A tracing of her hand appeared early on, ringed with tiny runes.
‘This is the shape of me. I will grow beyond it.’
He frowned. His instinct was to scoff; it was the indulgent nonsense of youth, half-poetry, half defiance. Yet something in the words pricked at him. He had not seen it then. He had nodded politely, offered praise without interest. He had never truly read these pages.
Leafing onward, he found fragments written later, notes from beyond the woods, copied from tongues he had never taught her. Westron. Khuzdul glyphs, barely legible. A phrase in the Black Speech, scrawled then scratched out. More pages bore the same green thread, tied in loops or used to stitch torn parchment. It had been her way of marking ideas that were not yet finished.
A familiar anger began to stir. Foolishness. Recklessness. Arrogance.
The girl had not known what she toyed with. The world beyond the golden boughs was not hers to fix. He had told her that. Time and again.
He turned another page. A note, penned in haste:
"The land beyond the Golden Wood is broken, and yet I love it. The trees there do not sing—but they endure. That is enough. That is something worth learning."
He let the journal fall to his lap.
His lips curled, not in a smile, but something more complicated. His anger flickered, hollowed out by something quieter. Something he was loath to name.
She had been restless from the first. He saw that now, as if each page were a mirror cast backward into a past he had refused to examine. Her yearning had been bright and sharp, like light on glass. He had mistaken it for childish rebellion. He had called it youthful folly, indulged it without believing it dangerous.
He had not seen the roots of it.
And why? Because he had not wanted to. Because he had been too proud, too certain in the strength of his own beliefs.
His hand tightened on the journal. He could not call her back. Could not rewrite the words she had left him, words he had not read until it was far too late.
He turned the last page.
There, beneath a poem unfinished, was a line he had never seen. The ink was old but legible, its handwriting shakier than the rest:
“If you come looking for me, do not come as my keeper. Come as one who has learned how to let go.”
He closed the book slowly, the green thread coiling like a vine between his fingers.
Stubborn. Always. That was their bond. That was the fire that ran in both their veins, and perhaps what would always set them apart.
For the first time in centuries, Ceneshar bowed his head, not in defeat, but in grief that no longer sought a target. He no longer knew if he was mourning her absence… or his own blindness.
Tomorrow, perhaps, he would go to the Galadriel.
Tonight though... he would not sleep.
Image credit: Alan Lee and Paul Lasaine
“The Ashen Record”
The soft golden hush of Lothlórien above had no dominion here. Beneath the roots of the trees, in stone corridors forgotten even by many lore-keepers, Ceneshar moved like a shade among the shelves. Dust choked the air. His lone lamp cast long shadows that twitched across carvings older than kingdoms. He had long lost track of time.
The vault was sealed not by lock, but by word and silence. Even to speak of the lower record chambers in the Silent Archive required permission from Celeborn's court, permission Ceneshar, even as Loreward of the Archive itself, had never sought. But he was of the old blood, and the stone itself remembered this. That, and the name he whispered to the threshold, had opened the way.
He passed rows of scrolls wrapped in blackened silk, tomes bound in ironwood and serpent-leather. Here lay the buried doubts of the Eldar; secrets unearthed during the long wars and buried again, lest they corrupt. And there, wrapped in seals of grey wax and marked with a rune he had only seen once before in an obscure margin, it waited.
The Ashen Record.
He cracked the seal.
The pages within were not mere parchment, but thin sheets of bark, etched with silvery ink that pulsed faintly under the lamplight. The Quenya was antique and cold, distant even to his mind. It spoke not of worship, nor allegiance, but study…. a dispassionate, methodical analysis of Morgoth's craft: the breaking of minds, the shaping of wills, the forging of enduring hatred.
“Not for power,” the Record began, “but for armament of the spirit.”
Its author was unnamed. Yet Ceneshar began to recognise patterns, phrases from other forgotten fragments, ideas that echoed the earliest disputations of Valinor. Some of these writings predated the rise of Sauron himself.
One tale arrested him.
A captive, an Avari woman taken in the First Age, had been bound not with chains, but with song. Her captors sang day and night in shifts, a discordant melody composed to unravel the self. Her own name was never spoken, only replaced, over days, then weeks, then years, until she could no longer recall who she had been. In time, she was made to sing the melody herself, believing it was her will that shaped it. The Record noted, coldly, that she eventually died with a smile, whispering praises to a darkness she had once feared.
Ceneshar’s hand trembled as he read. He felt the bile of horror rise in him, yet alongside it, something else: awe.
The precision. The patience. The understanding of song not as art or praise, but as a weapon, a leash.
He turned the page.
Diagrams followed, of thought-binding. Ciphers that mimicked the voice of command. The theory of shadows, not as absence of light, but as a presence in itself.
He felt none of the corruption in reading this that he had always warned others of. Only... possibility.
The last page bore a single question, written in a smaller, sharper hand:
‘What will you trade to protect what you love?’
He stared at it for a long time.
Then, slowly, reverently, Ceneshar rewrapped the Record. He did not return it to the shelf.
He walked back into the light of Lothlórien, clutching the Record beneath his robe. Above, the mallorn leaves glowed gold in the sunlight. But Ceneshar's gaze was turned inward now, towards a road newly opened, a road he had sworn never to tread.
And yet, the forest said nothing.
Image credit: Alan Lee and Paul Lasaine
“In The Presence Of Quiet Tyrants”
The council chamber beneath the great mallorn throne was hushed, as always. Light poured in dappled and soft through woven golden branches. The air itself seemed curated, still, harmonious, watched.
Ceneshar stood at the edge of the assembly, his hands clasped behind his back. He said little. Celeborn presided from his curved seat of carved silverwood, his voice ever calm, tempered, immovable. Galadriel did not attend. She no longer did, unless the stars themselves bent to request it.
Word had come from the northern marches, smoke without fire, a wolf-pack driven mad and torn to pieces by something unseen, scouts who returned speaking in circles. Whispers of disturbances on the East Road. The seers spoke of ripples, old evil stirring, paths untravelled now stirred by dark winds.
"Not war," said Celeborn, ever measured. "But unrest. A troubled tide in the thoughts of the world."
Ceneshar remained still, yet beneath the folds of his robe, his jaw tensed.
The council moved on, methodically, predictably. Discussions of river trade, of sentry rotations, of tree-sickness near the Nimrodel. Celeborn guided each voice in turn, never raising his own. Always that perfect centre. Always the diplomat. Always the one with the last word.
Ceneshar's gaze drifted, not to the speakers, but to Celeborn's pale hands, resting like woven vines on the arm of his throne.
Hands that direct. Not build. Not break. Only guide... shape... as Morgoth once shaped... but with a gentler song.
The thought was heretical. Even poisonous.
Yet it formed, complete, unbidden. A seed from the Ashen Record, perhaps, or from older grievances that had taken root long ago.
When Celeborn dismissed the council, Ceneshar did not remain to speak. He offered only a slight bow and drifted out into the glades, where the golden hue of Lothlórien turned slowly to the regular colours of spring.
He walked far that day; unusual for him in these times. Past the telain of the western sentries. Past the stream-fed groves where no bird sang. The wind was dry and soft, but there was tension beneath it. Lothlórien was listening. He could feel it.
He came upon the stag not far from the border lands. It was dying, its flank scored by wounds that did not bleed, blackened and split. Its eyes were rolled white, its antlers buried halfway in the dirt where it had fallen to its knees.
Ceneshar knelt beside it and laid a hand to its brow. The creature shivered and stilled, its spirit departing in silence.
But the marks it bore...
They were no hunter’s work. Nor any beast’s. The burns were precise, like brandings, yet placed in patterns he recognised. He had seen them before. In diagrams beneath the earth. In the margins of the Ashen Record.
He rose, his breath catching.
Is this it, then? he wondered. Is the shadow no longer confined to the East? Has it grown roots here, among the golden leaves? Has Sauron’s fall counted for nothing. Darkness still lingers in the world.
He looked back toward Caras Galadhon. The towers gleamed, serene and proud. Ignorant of this changing world. The forest whispered nothing back.
And still, he would not go to Galadriel.
Even now, with dread creeping into his marrow, he resisted. He remembered her silence when his wife fell. The way she had taken counsel with the Dúnedain and sent aid to a fellowship of Men. Always the balance, always the long plan. Never the grief. Never the cost.
And Celeborn, ever her echo. A warden in truth. A king in all but name. And he... Ceneshar... ever the guest at the feast of power. Ever ancient, but never at the centre.
He returned to the city, not in haste but in silence. He spoke to no one. That night, beneath the hush of lantern-light in his private chamber, he spread ink and parchment across his desk and began to write, not to Galadriel, but about her. About what had been lost. About the mirror she kept veiled beneath the golden boughs.
And when the quill faltered in his hand, he looked out through the lattice of his talan and whispered, not to be heard, but because the words had weight and wanted release:
“Would she show me... if I asked?”
He had dismissed it before. A child’s seeking-glass. A relic of vanity and dream. But if he would not trust the stars, and the books had gone dry, then there was only one way to look, to look into the stream of possibilities, and see what the world would not say aloud to him.
He did not sleep that night. Nor the night after.
And the wound in the stag’s side haunted him, not for what it meant, but for where it pointed.
Towards the East.
And towards a shadow that might already have passed through his heart.
Image credit: Alan Lee and Paul Lasaine
“The Wound That Does Not Bleed”
The lamplight in Ceneshar’s chamber did not flicker, though he had not moved in hours. The pages of the Ashen Record lay open before him, unread now, though still heavy with consequence. He had studied them long into the night and past it. They lay etched upon his mind, more enduring than the ancient bark upon which they had been written.
His hands were folded. His gaze was not upon the book, nor upon the gentle fall of golden leaves just beyond his window, but turned inward, deep, troubled.
He had not slept.
Not for the first time, he wondered whether the price of silence was worth the safety it had bought. The centuries of restraint, the measured words, the cautious alliances, it had kept him alive, kept him near the court, but also far from power.
Celeborn and Galadriel, so resplendent in their wisdom, so beloved, had moved the course of Lothlórien like hands shaping river clay.
He had stood beside them, yes. But always a half step back.
It had not always been so.
Ceneshar rose from his seat and crossed to a tall, narrow shelf. Upon it rested a small orb of glass, cupped in gold, filled with a fine dust from the far north of Dorthonion. He touched it lightly, and the image of a pine tree bloomed in its heart, pulsing with remembered moonlight. He turned away before it could root old pain too deeply.
He thought of Naridalis.
It had come upon him like a chill on the wind, an intuition first, then a knowing. His daughter was changed. She was not lost, not yet, but touched by something... darker than she realised. Galadriel had said nothing outright, but her warning had been clear enough.
Ceneshar had bristled at the reminder.
Galadriel, so quick to offer counsel, so slow to share truth.
She had turned her mirror to the fates of Men, had given aid to the Fellowship of the Ring, had permitted strangers and peril alike into the heart of their realm. And in the end, it had worked. Middle-earth was saved. The shadow of Sauron broken.
But not without cost.
And not without betrayal. He had never forgotten the bargain struck with mortal kings, alliances that had claimed the life of his beloved wife. No, he did not speak of it, not even now. But he had not forgiven.
Yet he could not deny the mirror's power.
He paced. Slowly, step by step. The idea formed not as temptation, but as strategy. If he were to know Naridalis’ fate... if he were to truly understand what caused her to intersect this shadow, and what she might yet become because of it... the Mirror of Galadriel could show him.
He had never asked to look within it.
He had always considered it vanity.
But now, he considered it necessity.
To seek it, though, would mean humbling himself. To ask Galadriel would be to re-enter the weave of her will, a place he had long avoided. He distrusted the quiet guidance of her gaze, the weight of her knowing.
But this was about his daughter.
His hand brushed the Ashen Record again, not to open it, but to feel the shape of it through its wrappings. A question stirred in his thoughts: Was it the knowledge he had found in the Record that had opened this path to him... or had it simply removed his fear of asking?
He turned toward the eastern balconies, where the silver shadows lay long beneath the morning sun.
He would not beg.
But he would ask.
And if Galadriel refused him, well, he had other roads now. Roads he had once vowed never to tread.
The wound did not bleed. But it ached all the same.
