The wind blew sharp and dry across the plains of Enedwaith, raking the tall grass like a thousand whispering hands. Deorla made camp in the shallow basin of a rocky hollow, flanked by scraggly bushes and windswept dirt. Night fell without ceremony, the stars cold and clear overhead. She kept no fire—there was no need. She had slept in worse places, and in far darker lands.
But the dreams came quickly that night.
She stood again beneath the black sky of Gorgoroth, the ash-stained winds of Mordor curling around her like an old cloak. The ground burned beneath her bare feet, as it had when she was a child—a wretched, nameless thing born of shackles and shadow. The air reeked of blood and iron. She could hear the marching drums, the shrieks of the whip, the thunder of forges that never slept.
She was eight the first time she killed. A boy no older than she had tried to steal a crust of bread from the overseer’s table. They handed her the blade and ordered her to do it. And she did. The knife barely fit her hand, but it found his throat all the same. The blood had been hot. The cheers colder.
Now she was in the Black Tower, kneeling before a throne that was never empty yet never held a body. Sauron’s voice spoke from all corners, immense and burning, and she bowed deeper than bone allowed. He had watched her for years. The girl who didn’t flinch, didn’t question, didn’t break. And when the War grew near, he raised her—not as a servant, but a blade.
He named her.
Herald of the Unseen War—not for glory, but for silence. For all the work done in the shadows: the assassination of rival captains, the manipulation of men too prideful to notice who guided their hand, the whispers in enemy camps that shattered morale before battle ever began. She didn’t fight in the front lines; she set the stage. Sauron had many weapons—but she was the whisper that turned into a scream. The war before the war.
And when the whisper became fire, another name was given:
Shadowflame.
Not merely for the way she fought—blades swift and silent, flames kindled only in aftermath—but for what she became: the will of the Dark Lord, cloaked in mystery, igniting fear in places where even the Nazgûl cast no gaze. She wore no mask, but no soldier dared describe her. Those who survived her presence often spoke only of smoke and blood. Of burning eyes in the dark. Of death that walked like a shadow but struck like fire.
She remembered the kneeling. The ritual. The words spoken in the Black Speech, as the Dark Lord’s voice filled the obsidian hall:
You're my flame unseen. My herald in the silence. My shadow at the gate. Let none stand before you.
She had believed him.
She had believed in the Eye, even when it did not see her.
Then the Eye fell.
The dream twisted—her past bleeding into the now. The Dunland deserters she’d slain days ago stood upright again, their forms flickering like flame-shadow around a campfire. Their wounds still bled, but their mouths moved.
“You carry no banner now, Herald,” one hissed.
“No Eye watches you, Shadowflame,” said another. “But still you burn. Who do you burn for now?”
Their laughter rose, distant and hollow. The stones split beneath her feet, and she fell into blackness.
The pit returned. The one beneath the Tower—where the unwanted were forged, and only one in ten survived the proving. She remembered every test. Every body. Every lesson in cruelty. The hands that taught her to kill also taught her to smile as she did it.
Deorla awoke gasping, fingers clutching her dagger before her eyes were even open. The hollow was still. Stars lingered overhead like quiet judges.
She sat there for a long while, not wiping the sweat from her face.
She still burned, the flame had never left her. Not entirely.
And in the dark places of the world, the name Shadowflame and Herald of the Unseen war still stirred old fears.
