The road through Enedwaith had grown too visible.
Deorla kept to the edges where she could—skirting ridgelines, walking dry creekbeds, ducking beneath the tall grass when riders passed—but there were too many travelers for her liking. Traders from the north, messengers on lean horses, even scattered Rohirrim scouts flying no banner. Every hour brought hoofbeats or voices. Every face was another set of eyes she didn’t trust.
The land, too, gave little shelter. Sparse trees, shallow hills, and grasslands too open to hide a shadow.
She waited at a rise one afternoon and watched a caravan pass, guarded by four riders and a sullen merchant with a drawn sword. A boy glanced up toward the bluff where she stood. Their eyes met.
That was enough.
She turned east—toward the Bonevales.
They called it a cursed valley, but she preferred the curses of the dead to the questions of the living. No one followed that road unless they were desperate, damned, or mad.
The Bonevales were hushed with the breath of old death. The trees grew crooked here, blackbarked and leaning as if straining to flee. Stones jutted from the ground in unnatural patterns, and crude totems hung with faded feathers and animal skulls lined the paths.
But it was not the land that unsettled her—it was the presence. Not a watching, but a waiting.
On the second night, as Deorla made her fireless camp beneath the ribs of a shattered ruin, she found the first sign: a burnt symbol scrawled in coal across a stone slab. The rune was familiar—she had seen it on scrolls in Barad-dûr, worn around the neck of a Black Númenórean who once reported to her. A sigil of binding and hunger.
The next day, a mist rose around midday and refused to leave. Her path narrowed, then widened into a clearing surrounded by old standing stones—each taller than a man and carved with runes both Dunlending and older, fouler script beneath.
She stepped carefully. Her eyes scanned the stones.
That’s when she heard the voice.
Low. Measured. Heavy with memory.
“You carry his scent still… fire and ruin.”
From behind the central stone emerged a figure—not ghost, not quite man. He wore tattered robes of black and moss, his skin pale and stretched tight over bone. His eyes were sunken, rimmed in grey ash, yet burning faintly red beneath the shadow of his hood.
He bowed his head in mock respect.
“The Herald returns.”
Deorla did not draw her blade.
Not yet.
“Name yourself,” she said.
“I was once called Vathrûk,” the thing said. “In the Dark Tower, I served the Mouth.You, Shadowflame, stood closer to the Will than any of us. You gave orders. You spilled blood. You shaped the war before the war was named.”
His voice grew softer.
“And when the Eye fell… I remained here, and I fell here, as did others. Our Lord’s vision was not just conquest—it was transcendence.”
Deorla’s jaw tightened. “You’re a remnant.”
“We are the echo,” Vathrûk replied. “And in places such as this—where stone remembers and blood never dries—we linger. Bound by oath and death, and by the promise that the fire will rise again.”
He stepped forward, hand outstretched—not in threat, but offering.
“Come below. Let us speak as we once did. You need not walk alone.”
“No,” she said. “The fire doesn’t rise again. It just burns what’s left.”
Her blade was out before he moved.
What followed was not a duel, but an execution. The remnants of power Vathrûk had hoarded failed him. Her blade pierced him through the chest, then throat, then skull, each strike accompanied by a whispered curse in the Black Tongue—words she had learned before she had ever spoken her own name aloud.
When he fell, he did not bleed. He crumbled.
Ash on the wind.
She left the clearing without looking back.
In the morning, the mist had lifted, and the Bonevales fell behind her like a bad memory.
Galtrev brooded in twilight, its crooked streets humming with suspicion and half-whispered legends. The name Shadowflame had moved through the town like smoke on a dry wind, curling into every hall, every campfire, every wary stare.
Deorla knew it the moment she stepped inside the derelict tannery that someone was watching her.
But she let them wait. Let them measure their courage.
The one who finally came stepped with the discipline of a soldier—but not one of the Free Peoples that she saw training nearby by the fire-place, they seemed like Gondorians, so she stayed out of their sight.
His frame was lean, wrapped in worn black leather stamped with old runes. His eyes were cold, not afraid, and his presence brought with it the heavy silence of memory.
He knelt.
“I am Frestang. I served Vathrûk, who served the Mouth, who served the Eye.”
Deorla did not speak. She merely watched.
“Word came two days past. A raven, marked in ash. The Bonevales are silent. Vathrûk is dust.”
He looked up—not with grief, but awe.
“You killed him. You ended what none of us dared to challenge.”
Deorla stepped forward. “He was a relic. Obsessed with echoing power that no longer serves.”
Frestang nodded. “And that is why the flame must lead again.”
She said nothing at first. A long silence stretched between them, broken only by the wind moaning across the high roofs of Galtrev.
Then he continued, voice low and certain.
“There are still those of us—veterans of the Eastern legions, survivors of Lithlad, commanders from the broken east-forts—who did not kneel to Gondor. We hide. We wait. But we are many. And in Galtrev, we are strong. The clans have grown restless. They need direction. Not sermons. Not kings. There are three clans currently in power here, Ox clan which supports still the old rullings of the eye, the falcon clan that is leading people seperate way, way of free people, and dragon clan who's like the medium between two.”
He lowered his head again, this time with something more solemn than obedience.
“We knew the Eye could not last forever. But you… you were flesh. Fire. Command. You still burn. Let that fire be ours.”
Deorla stared at him.
So it had come to this....
MAPS IF ANYONE IS INTERESTED TO JOIN/FOLLOW THIS STORY FOR ANY RP PURPOSES
