(Side note I recommend listening to the song Home by Machine Gun Kelly, X Ambassadors, and Bebe Rexha, and released for this chapter)
The cliffs parted, and Rivendell revealed itself a valley carved in song and starlight. Waterfalls spilled silver from the heights, white bridges arched across rushing rivers, and lanterns glowed warmly in windows of carved stone and wood. For men who had ridden through smoke and ruin, it was like stepping into a dream.
At the bridge, elves awaited, tall and bright in mail that shimmered as though woven with stars. At their head stood Elrond Half-elven, Lord of Rivendell. His eyes swept the weary company, and though his face remained calm, sorrow deepened in his gaze.
"You have come far," Elrond said. "Though I do not yet know your tale, the burden upon you is plain. Rivendell welcomes you. Here you shall rest, and be healed."
No cheer rose. No song was sung. The Riders only bowed their heads, too tired, too broken. Elrond led them inward, and soon bread and wine were set before them, soft beds prepared, healing hands laid upon their wounds.
But Edwen could not rest.
When the hall grew quiet, he slipped away into the moonlit gardens. The fountains whispered, blossoms shone pale in the starlight, and the air was cool with the scent of pine and river. On a stone bench he sat, drawing from his coat a bruised apple the last thing Brandt had given him. He turned it slowly in his hand, and at last the weight of it all broke him.
The grief came raw and sudden, tearing through the dam he had built inside. He bowed his head, shoulders shaking, golden eyes spilling tears he could no longer hold back.
Footsteps stirred the grass.
Edwen looked up and froze. Arwen Undómiel, daughter of Elrond, stood before him, cloaked in silver, her dark hair touched with moonlight. She said nothing at first, only watching him with eyes that seemed to see through every wall he had built.
"You should not see me like this," he whispered.
Her voice was soft, but steady. "And why not? You are Edwen, heir of Rohan. But even heirs are men. To grieve is no shame."
His laugh was bitter, hollow. "Men may grieve, because their sorrow fades with time. Mine does not. I am not as they are."
The words tumbled out of him, ragged and unrestrained, as though a door had been forced open:
"I am elf. My years will stretch on when theirs are ended. Every Rider who follows me, every friend I lead into battle all of them will pass, and I will remain. I will carry their faces in memory when even their children's children forget them. That is my fate. To lead them, to bury them, to walk with their ghosts until the end of days."
His hand tightened around the apple until it split, juice running down his fingers like blood. His voice cracked.
"I told them, you know. My mother. My stepfather. I told them what I am. About my past life that I walked a world before this one, that I fought for my brother and lost my own life in the bargain. I told them I came here as an elf, but with a heart still full of human memories. And they listened. They held me. They told me I was still theirs."
His breath hitched, and tears welled again. "I thought saying it aloud would make it lighter. But it hasn't. It's heavier now. Because every time my stepfather smiles at me, every time my sister curls her fingers around mine, I can already see the day I'll have to let them go. And I'll still be here. Just like I'm here now, burying Brandt and the others."
He pressed the ruined apple against his brow, voice breaking. "It doesn't hurt less, Arwen. It hurts more. I've already done this once. I watched everyone I loved die in another life while I stayed behind. I swore I'd never feel that way again. But here I am. Doing it all over."
His golden eyes lifted to hers, raw and desperate. "What curse is this, that life is stretched so long while theirs are cut so short? What kind of leader am I, to carry their dreams into fire, knowing I alone will walk back out?"
Arwen's heart ached at the sight of him not the warrior, not the heir, but a soul bared to its breaking. She knelt before him, her hand gentle on his clenched fist.
"Then let it hurt," she whispered. "Do not fight it. Do not hide it. It is not weakness, Edwen. It is love. You are right you will outlast them. But that means someone will remain to remember. Someone to keep their names alive when the world has forgotten. That is no curse. That is your gift."
His voice trembled. "And what if I am not strong enough to bear it?"
Her gaze did not waver. "Then let another bear it with you. Even the eldest of elves are not meant to carry sorrow alone."
For a long moment, Edwen stared at her, broken open, stripped of every mask. And then the dam shattered completely. He wept freely, his grief pouring out like a flood for Brandt, for his fallen Riders, for the family he would one day lose, for the centuries of loneliness he feared would come.
And Arwen did not look away. She sat with him beneath Rivendell's blossoms and moonlit fountains, and for the first time, someone listened not to the heir of Rohan, not to the warrior, but to the elf who mourned because eternity meant losing everything he loved.
And in her eyes, Edwen found no pity. Only understanding.