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Maedhros does not—quite—scream, the first time that he sees the ghost of his dead brother. This is less because he bites the scream back and more because he has no air in his lungs: Morgoth’s tortures are currently cutting into his chest. He rolls his head; sees the silvered outline of little Telvo, hunched over his own middle like a gutted elfling.
That Maedhros now knows what that looks like is—
Is—
Unforgivable.
And now, for his little brother, for his littlest brother, to be here…
Even Morgoth cannot harness the dead, he reminds himself. And I cannot trust my vision in this dark realm. I must not trust my vision, if Morgoth can now manipulate it so well.
Later, hanging off Thangorodrim, Maedhros still sees the flutter of cool quicksilver in the corner of his vision, annoyingly bright, frustratingly persistent. He does not scream at it for almost a year. For longer. But then, rain-soaked and bitter and furious, he cannot control himself.
He does not remember what all he says to the ghost of Amrod, but he never sees him again.
If only the rest of the lingering demons Morgoth left him with could be so easily scared away.
…
They walk east, towards the rising sun, unencumbered by either aches or pains. They cross two rivers, and then pass through another stretch of forest too thick to easily cross swiftly. And then they are walking through open plains and fresh farmland laid to waste. Morgoth’s influence, proclaims one of the twins, leaving Umbarto faintly amused at the lofty assurance in the sentence, then startled by the kick of pain that follows—
Let it go.
The pain fades. So does the amusement, leaving Umbarto just exhausted.
“It has been a long time since we started walking,” he says. “Can we rest for some time?”
One of the twins slants a look his way. Umbarto hasn’t figured out a way to tell them apart yet; he thinks one of them has silver beads in his hair and the other bronze, but the dim light of the forest hasn’t helped in differentiating, and the twins have thick hair that obscures the beads.
“Yes,” he decides finally, and looks away from Umbarto to study the skies. “It’s just past mid-morning. We can rest for… until noon.”
Umbarto suspects it’s been longer than that. The trees hid the sunlight well enough that they could have been walking for far longer than just one night, but surely if they had, their legs would hurt more? He isn’t certain. But then, he isn’t certain about anything any longer, actually, so he just—lets it go.
He’s gotten very good at that by now.
…
Curufin does not see ghosts.
He is his father’s heir, as close as any of them have come to the glory of Feanor’s brilliance, and he is as close to his father’s temperament as one can get. As close to his instability—
—but they don’t talk about that.
The end is the same: Curufin does not see ghosts, and if he does not see them because he cannot or because he chooses not to, it matters little. The silver outline of Amrod blurs into mist after a few days.
It’s a relief, Curufin tells himself, and refuses to think anything else.
…
“What are your names?” asks Umbarto. He digs through his tunic until he gets a cloth soaked in sweet syrup, the way his mother had always prepared whenever he’d go on a day walk. Sucking on it doesn’t alleviate the chill in his bones. But nothing has ever helped that. He glances up, just in time to see the twins exchanging wary looks, and says, dryly, “If I wanted to hurt you, I wouldn’t have waited for so long. And anyways, there are two of you, and only one of me!”
“But you’re bigger,” says the one with bronze beads.
“Not by much,” Umbarto points out.
“He’s right,” says the one with silver beads. He’s sharper than his twin, Umbarto thinks; more decisive, and more abrasive. “If we keep going like this, we’ll be together for a while. He’ll need to call us something. And—do you remember what Adar always told us? About walking with others?”
“To watch where we’re going so we don’t trip and break our faces?”
“No,” he says, exasperated. “That the journey of friendship begins with seven steps.”
Both of them swing around to look at Umbarto, eerily coordinated.
“Are you our friend?” asks the one with silver beads. “Adar says that friendship is walking beside someone for seven steps, and we’ve walked far more than that with you, but we don’t want to ass—amm—”
“Assume,” says the other one.
Umbarto frowns. Thinks it over. His parents have told him not to go with strangers. But Umbarto doesn’t have anyone else. Nobody else even sees—
—the pain flares—
—“Yes,” he cries out. “Yes, I am your friend!”
“What’s your name?”
He swallows. “Umbarto.”
“Umbarto? That’s… a strange name.”
“Not much stranger than two people who won’t tell me their names,” Umbarto grumbles back. “Did your father not teach you manners when he told you the definition of friendship?”
“I’m Elurín,” says the one with silver beads in his hair, eyes shining defiantly. “And this is Eluréd. We are—princes. You owe us your loyalty.”
“What luck,” says Umbarto flatly, forcing himself to his feet. “I am a prince myself.”
“You— what?”
“Get up,” he says. “We need to keep going. Whoever was after you—we need to keep ourselves ahead of them. If the Dark One’s forces catch us…”
He doesn’t know why he’s so afraid. Why it’s so important that he keep his head down and his body small and his memory—
But it is important, and Umbarto has always been a dedicated leader. A dutiful brother. A devoted son.
Even if he cannot remember why.
There is a reason why that memory is gone.
“It wasn’t the Dark One,” says Eluréd, beads glinting flintily in the cool sunlight of the plains. “They were elves. Elurín closed his eyes. He didn’t see. But I did.” He lifts his chin, trembling. “They were elves. Untouched by the Dark One. Elves that—that killed Ada, and tried to—to—”
“—they would have killed us, too,” says Elurín, quieter than he’s been the entire time that Umbarto has known him. “But they couldn’t bear to cut our throats, though they said it would have been the just thing to do.”
“They left us out in the snow instead.”
Umbarto swallows. “I’m sorry,” he offers. “But we aren’t safe here. Please. You—you don’t know what can be done to you. How dangerous the world can be. Even death cannot—”
He breaks off. Swallows, through a throat too swollen from remembered smoke and grief.
“Umbarto?” Eluréd steps closer to him. Brushes a hand over his shoulder, light as wind. “You don’t look—good.”
Umbarto laughs raspily. “East,” he says. “We have to keep going. If those bad elves catch us…”
“Let’s go, then,” says Elurín, testy as a biting viper, eyes twice as sharp. “But if you’re leading us to another trap, we won’t show you any mercy. You said it: there’s two of us, and only one of you.”
“I wish you no harm,” says Umbarto wearily, and brushes off his trousers and tunic. “Let’s go.”
…
Caranthir will not speak to him outside of his tent, but within the cool, dark privacy of his bedchamber—such as it is—he sits, and quietly converses with Amrod. What does it matter that his mind has surely cracked in half, vision swirling down the drain, ears dead and deafened—what does it matter that he has grieved for his brother so deeply that his brother has come to him, unbidden, silver as a ghost?
His only grief is that Amrod leaves at the Dagor Bragollach.
No: his deeper grief is that he never sees another’s ghost like he sees Amrod’s, not even as he howls over his wife’s corpse like a wounded beast, even as he watches his children burn alive beneath Morgoth’s cruelties.
…
Through the mountains. Over cold rivers and dark forests. Umbarto walks grimly, east and then south, and he knows time to be running low even as he refuses to explain where they’re going to either of the twins.
Call it what it is, he tells himself coldly, as he stands watch over the sleeping boys.
Umbarto always takes third watch—the worst watch, his brothers would have once grumbled—but he doesn’t mind. The stars are bright, but quickly fading. It reminds him of how quickly the stars would disappear as one traveled from Alqualonde to Tirion.
But from Alqualonde to Beleriand…
The stars hadn’t faded. They’d simply glittered down on them, cold and merciless and unblinking: Varda’s judgment, Varda’s unhallowing. Umbarto had looked up at them on those boats and he had not screamed, but he had wanted to. He had wanted to scream with something like desperation clawing up his throat, many-fingered, sharp-nailed.
Call it what it is, Umbarto tells himself again, and muffles the reflexive urge to snarl in his elbow. You know what this is: cowardice. Nothing more complicated than that. Cowardice and bitterness.
Which reminds him—
…
“You are not welcome here,” says Maglor, and doesn’t look away from his reflection in the mirror.
“You’re my brother,” whispers the soot-burned ghost of his youngest brother. “My king. Where should I go?”
“You are dead,” says Maglor steadily. His hands do not tremble as he fixes the braids sent askew by the weight of his father’s crown. “And the dead have no dominion over the living, and the living no dominion over the dead. I know not where you should go: only that it should be far from here.”
In the corner of his vision, the ghost’s hands clench into tight, star-pale fists. “Coward,” hisses the ghost. “You aren’t fit for that crown! Coward, I name you, Makalaure Kanafinwe Feanárion! This is nothing more complicated than that! Coward and fool and bitter old traitor—”
Maglor leaves the tent as the ghost keeps shouting. In the council tent, the other five of his brothers are gathered, and they all look blanched and ill at Maglor’s entrance. Perhaps it is because the ghost looks so like their brother, blistered and burned and scarred as little Telvo must have been by the time he died. Perhaps they can see him too.
Or, more likely, they are just as sick of eating tainted deer-meat as Maglor is in these accursed lands.
Maglor pitches his voice to be heard over the ghost’s invectives, and smiles like a whetted knife.
…
—but these are memories that hurt, and Umbarto lets them go like chaff before the wind.
…
“No,” whispers Amras.
Amrod looks at him levelly. He hurts. It hurts. Everything hurts. But his twin is here, now, and Amras cannot look away. Cannot breathe, either, but that’s—fine.
“Why are you here?” he asks. “Please—Telvo—if they’ve fenced off our souls— is our father with you? Is he—can you—”
“No,” says Amrod. His voice has changed from the smoke: gone deeper, grinding as if coming through splintered glass and steel. “I could have gone west. Mandos called for me. I chose not to follow.”
“But—why?”
“Because I do not belong there.” He lifts one scar-stricken arm, shows the full extent of the marring, and Amras is hard-pressed not to shudder. “Not any longer.”
“Our—and what of—our father?”
“Gone,” says Amrod calmly. “To where I will not follow.”
“But—”
“—but nothing,” he says flatly. “He is gone, and I am gone, and yet I still remain. You killed me, Pityo. With your devotion to our father, with your trust in his convictions, with your faith in his sanity, you set fire to the boat that burned me alive.”
Amras stares at him. “I did not mean to,” he whispers.
“You said we could choose! And then you killed me for that choice!”
“I did not want to!”
“You killed me!”
“If I could change it, don’t you think I would!” shouts Amras. “Don’t you think I would give up everything I have, everything, if I could—if you could be here, if Atar could be here? I would kill myself, I would kill everyone, but—but I can’t, there’s nothing to be done, I’m just a—just a fool. And you’re dead.”
Amrod straightens. He’s bulkier now than Amras: months of strict rations have taken their toll on Amras’ body, but Amrod had died well before those concerns. It shouldn’t be so striking, Amras thinks bitterly.
“No,” says Amrod softly, and everything goes very cold and very silent inside of Amras, howling as a collapsing avalanche. “I do not think you would do that, Amras. You were always a fanatic.”
“Now you’re just being cruel,” whispers Amras.
Amrod smiles. “Am I not allowed to be cruel now?”
“You are—”
“You would give up everything for our father, yes,” says Amrod. “But not me.”
“I spoke against him. I said—”
“I am aware. But you still followed him, did you not? Followed him and pledged him your loyalty. Sharpened your sword at his bidding, and slaughtered at his bidding, and swore the oath anew at his bidding. What use have I for words when they mean nothing to you?”
On the boats, on the churning sea, Amras had clutched Amrod close. He had said, I know you are afraid, but I’ll keep you safe.
I cannot do this, Amrod had whispered back. I am not meant for this.
Father would not have let you stay. And we would have been separated. Telvo—
Between our father and our mother, I know which one I would choose.
Amras had not flinched, but his heart had gone cold. Between our father and our mother, he’d said, I know which one chose to abandon us.
Do you? Amrod had asked, and looked over Amras’ shoulder, to where their father yet stood at the helm of the red-stained swan-ship. Because I do not.
“You chose our mother,” says Amras dully.
“You will win no glory here,” says Amrod. “There will only be grief and more grief.”
“And you are here to tell me to stop?”
“I’m here to get you to look, to see, because this will end in something awful—”
“I have no need of another conscience,” says Amras coldly, and Amrod’s voice cuts off. “I have no need of your care either. Go west, brother. You are dead. Do as the dead must. We all have our parts to play.”
“This is not a song,” says Amrod. “This is not a story. You are not a role to play. You are a prince. A prince of—”
“—if this ends in fire and floods,” says Amras, “then it will end as such because I chose that.”
“I can’t let you make that choice,” says his twin brother, the brother of his heart, with silver tears in his wide, wide eyes.
Amras does not weep. There are no tears left in him.
“You are dead,” he says gently. “There is nothing that you can do to stop me.”
…
Umbarto has been ignoring the signs of the chase for long enough that he cannot ignore it any longer. They do not have much further to go, but to meet it they will have to travel harder than they have been.
“I was not always as you see me,” says Umbarto quietly.
Eluréd, who’s on watch, startles. “Umbarto?”
“I was a prince, once,” he says. “My father was the king. I loved him. I loved my mother, as well, but not—not quite well enough for it to matter. When it mattered, I always chose him over her.”
“Parents are difficult,” says Eluréd sagely.
Umbarto snorts. “Yes. It’s a long story. And a sad one. I don’t like to remember it, because it—it hurts. I did what I could to survive—for my soul to survive. But it takes blood, or it takes will, and I’ve always been the weakest of my brothers in strength of will.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Because I’m doing a bad job of explaining.” Umbarto sits up. Smiles. “It starts like this…”
…
Celegorm knows the old rituals best of them all, and so he is not surprised when Amras comes to him. He does not know to what his brother wants a banishment performed, but he has a suspicion that blossoms into reality when the silver ghost’s features coalesce into one that he knows too well.
But he is too deep into the ritual now, and to stop will mean killing himself in the backlash of a half-done chant.
And little Amrod is dead already.
Celegorm finishes the ritual, and does not mourn as his brother’s ghost is whirled away by an invisible cyclone.
…
He might have felt differently about that if he’d known where the cyclone would deposit Amrod.
…
Blood, or will, Umbarto told them. And I’ve always been the weakest of my brothers.
The cyclone takes him from the cool lakeshore of Ered Mithrim and deposits him in the one other place where his blood yet flows: in the depths of Angband, through Maedhros’ veins.
Morgoth does not see him.
But Sauron—Sauron, who would one day be called a necromancer, who was still learning to harness the dead, who is teaching himself how to torture the fea of his prisoners—he sees the silver ghost, bloody, burning, boiling with fury.
The pain of a soul-wound is exquisitely different from the pain of burning alive.
The pain of knowing that he’s been condemned to this by his own brothers—
And he cannot die. For the first time, he considers fleeing to the west, following Mandos’ call, but—
But.
There are things he will not do. Even dead. Even tortured.
Even abandoned and rejected and unforgiven, there are things that Amrod will not accept.
He closes his mind instead. Blocks off the parts of him that had once been a prince. That had been Amrod, and Telvo, and Ambarto, too, until there is only little Umbarto, his mother’s favored child, cheerful as a spoiled toddler. And even as Sauron turns to see him, trusting that he has pinned Amrod Feanorion to this imprisonment, Umbarto—who remembers no other names—fades into smoke and dust.
He spends many years with Maedhros. He spends many more years in the cool safety of Thargelion, with Caranthir. But in the Dagor Bragollach, Caranthir goes to be with Amras, who Umbarto cannot be near, for reasons he cannot remember but knows to be important.
The darkness of Doriath had been frightening at first. Eventually, Umbarto got used to it. He knows that he always wanted to move east, see something, go so far that the trumpets of Mandos’ call could eventually be drowned, but he’d never gotten the will. Never gotten over his fear. Until—
Until these two children.
“A prince of the Noldor,” says Elurín, when the flood of words finally peters out.
Umbarto nods. “Tomorrow, we shall reach Cuiviénen,” he says. “We will see where—where we come from, the beginning of the beginning. And there, you shall have one of three choices.”
Eluréd’s eyes narrow.
“You are part human,” explains Umbarto. “And so you can go where no elf has gone, where not even the Valar know the land. Or you can go west, and follow Mandos’ call. Or you can stay here.”
“Which would you choose?” asks Elurín.
“What I choose need not be your choice.”
Eluréd lifts his chin. “Why are you doing this? Your brothers were the ones that tried to kill us.”
“That succeeded,” corrects Elurín quietly. “That’s what you’re telling us, isn’t it? We’re dead.”
Umbarto nods again, wordless.
“So. Your brothers kill us, and you would—what? Defy them?”
“What else have I been doing?” asks Umbarto. “I’ve been fighting them for a long time. I defied my father and died for it—accident or not, I died. I defied my twin and he banished me. I have nothing left but my desire not to follow them.”
“You sound different,” says Eluréd. “You sound—rougher. Your voice.”
“The smoke,” he says. “From the boats I burned for. And the fire. I—if I remember—I become older. Telvo, and Amrod; not Umbarto. The fire hurts. I did not realize how much until I let myself become young, and it stopped hurting.”
“Why are you doing this?” asks Eluréd again.
Umbarto does not smile. “Because my brothers took away many of your choices,” he says. “And I would like to offer you one more, at least: one more than you would have had otherwise. You have within you the blood of Beren, and thereby the gift of Men. Cuiviénen was where elves were first born, but Hildórien was where men were first born, and both are near to one another. Ilúvatar’s hand rests heavy upon these stones and waters. Death takes many choices away from you, but if I could offer you one more, when my kin has taken so much from you… I would not hesitate.”
Umbarto had disagreed with his father’s fury and his father’s madness, but not the meat of his arguments. To Cuiviénen he would have gone once more, if Feanor had let him land on the shores of Losgar, if he’d survived more than one night on this terrible land: but he had not. There is a reason he refused Mandos’ call, and that reason lies entirely with Umbarto’s refusal to surrender to the Valar and their pitiable, merciless justice.
“You would choose the path of Men,” says Elurín.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because I have sworn not to bow before another again, and I do not trust in Mandos to accord me that pride.”
“You don’t trust the Valar,” summarizes Elurín.
Umbarto laughs. “Yes. That is—both the long and short of it.”
“But you’re still afraid of something,” says Eluréd shrewdly. “Aren’t you?”
“Sauron hunts me,” says Umbarto, spreading his hands. “While in Thargelion, under my brother’s domain, he could not reach me. In Doriath, under Melian’s Girdle, he could not hope to detect me. But once Thingol passed and your father took up his throne, I have been chased for a long time, by either Sauron or Sauron’s minions. And the further east that we go, the further we are from the Valar: the stronger that Sauron becomes.”
“But this land is blessed by Ilúvatar,” says Elurín. “Didn’t you say that?”
“Sauron is strong. And the blessing was a long time ago. I do not know how much that will slow Sauron down.” He reaches out, realizing distantly that he’s flickering between the larger hands of Telufinwe and the smaller, chubbier palms of Umbarto. “But I promise you that I shall not—”
…
“Don’t go,” Amrod sobs, as his father’s soul rises, glittering, from the blazing pyre. “Please. Please. Atar—”
“I cannot stay,” Feanor says. “How can you? Does it not— pull?”
“All you must do is set your will against it. You can fight, you can—”
“—yes,” he says, frowning fiercely. “But not for long. That you have stayed this long… that means something.”
“Atar—”
“Stay, if you wish it,” he says, “but I cannot fight this pull.”
Amrod stares at him.
To think that the youngest of us has the strongest will, thinks Feanor, and reaches out, and kisses Amrod on his forehead. I love you, he does not say, and disappears.
…
“—allow either of you to come to harm,” says Umbarto.
Something explodes over his skull, missing him by a hair’s breadth, and he surges to his feet, snarling.
“RUN!” he bellows, and ducks beneath the tree in the opposite direction.
Waits. Breathes. Feels the rough bark of the tree on his spine. Growls beneath his breath. Scrubs at his eyes. One breath. Two breaths. Three breaths.
And now: a sprint.
Umbarto’s got longer legs than either Eluréd or Elurín. And they’re running straight, full-tilt, through whipping branches and over hidden roots, fast as a dark, scarlet-tinted wind. He freezes— they freeze—when Sauron flows to a dark-cloaked, menacing halt right in front of them.
“Little prince,” says Sauron, sinister-smooth. “It has been such a long time since we played together. I see that you’ve learned a few tricks from last time. And made a few friends.”
Umbarto is a child. A child. He is—nothing more than that. Will never be anything more than that, because Umbarto died a long, long time ago, the day his father named him Ambarto, named him Telufinwe, named him Amrod.
But Umbarto is also Amrod.
And though Amrod is the weakest of his brothers, though Amrod is brazen and boiling and broken, Amrod has one thing that belongs to him that no other has ever had. Even beyond the pain.
Because of the pain.
“When I move,” he says, almost soundlessly, to the twins, “run. Don’t pay attention to Sauron. I’ll take care of him. But only when I move. Do you understand?”
“Umbarto— no—”
“I swore,” says Umbarto, says Telufinwe, says Amrod. “And I hold to my oaths!”
He straightens, to his full height: more than twice that of the twins, one hand on either of their shoulders. It hurts. It burns, but that is fine: that is more than fine.
That is what he wants.
Amrod runs forward. Sauron tries to block him, because that is what he would do, given half a chance; but Amrod has no cares for survival now, after so many long centuries burning and burning and burning. He flings himself at Sauron. And though he is not alive, though he is not substantial, he collides with Sauron like a body blow, and the fires still licking at his bones, at the marrows of his bones, latch on greedily to Sauron’s cloak.
Sauron howls. Amrod does not let go. Clutches Sauron close. Lets him feel what feanár is, truly: not spirit of fire, as his father and Quenya would translate, but rather spirit-fire, made up of fea, made up of old, old rage and hatred, made of cold, silver fire that cannot be put out for love or league of swords.
“Swords made under Morgoth’s tutelage will leave scars that can never be healed,” says Amrod savagely. “And burns from my feanáro will leave marks that can never be masked.”
Sauron still manages to escape, of course; it’s not even a real question. There are still little silver flames eating away at the hem of his cloak, and fresh, awful burns over his hands and face. Livid hatred suffuses his face. He does something with his hands, knife-twist sharp, and Amrod lands on his back, flung twenty feet through the trees.
“I will take apart your fea,” he snarls, “thread by thread.”
“Brave words for a Maia that I’ve defeated for five centuries,” Amrod snarls back.
“Evaded, not defeated.”
“When you knew my name and my kin, and still could not bind me? It was defeat. Cold and plain.”
“But I have you now,” says Sauron, and smiles. “Umbarto Telufinwe. Or Ambarto Telufinwe, or Amrod Feanorion. I know all of your names now, little one, and there shall be no more escaping me after this. Not even answering Mandos’ call shall save you now.”
“Yeah, but he’s not going to Mandos!” shouts a voice that—
That should be long gone by now.
Amrod swallows a sob. “Run,” he cries. “Run, run— run—”
And then Elurín is next to him, silver beads shining like starlight, and forcing him up, and Eluréd is in front of them, hands fisted, chin lifted.
“You’re not going to have him,” says Eluréd. “He’s ours. And we’re going where nobody like you can ever hurt him again.”
Sauron’s eyes widen. “Dior’s brats. The dead—”
“We’re dead,” says Elurín. “We choose to be Men. And we choose to take our brother with us.”
“He is no brother of yours,” says Sauron gleefully. “Has he not told you who he is?”
“We know,” says Eluréd quietly. “And we know who saved us. We know who walked with us. We know who gave us a choice, all because he wanted to offer us reparations for his brothers’ actions. And we choose.”
Elurín’s hands tighten on Amrod’s, cold and colder. “Yes,” he says, and spits on Sauron’s face, and for the third time, together, both the twins say, “We choose—”
—and the world dissolves into impossible, blinding light, as the path of Men opens for two twins with a human grandfather, accompanied by their single sworn brother.
…
On a cold, smoke-filled night, Amrod had woken to fire as bright as his father’s cloak in the porthole of the cabin. He had not wept. He could have climbed out. There had been time. But instead Amrod had lain in the bed, hands cradled beneath his skull. He had thought—had wanted—had hoped— that his brothers would come after him. Feanor had only told Amrod that he wasn’t a child any longer while watching him retch over the side of the bloodstained boat, and his brothers had only marginally more patience for his seasickness.
This will teach them, he thinks, in those scarce breaths before he can think no more. I choose—I choose—
The smoke smothers him then. Amrod never suffers the pain of his burns while living: he only wakes a ghost, silver-scarred, burned and burning, spirit-fire so bright he screams and screams and screams for eternal weeks.
It is in death that Amrod burns, never in life.
…
Bloody and burning, pinned to Sauron’s table with the weight of his name and his hate, Námo’s horn bugling in his ear, taunting and tempting in equal measure: Amrod had bared his teeth. Moments before he turned back time to the only part of his fea that Sauron had not named, he had grimly considered his options. But he kept coming back to that night on the boat. To the last thing he had thought: the stuttering, gleaming thread that had stiffened his spine through the first of Sauron’s varied tortures.
I choose, he had thought, and let the cold soft bitterness of that thought strengthen him as he began ruthlessly stripping away every part of him that existed after the name Umbarto was taken from him.
…
He loses many things in the intervening centuries, but every time the spirit-fire returns, little Umbarto’s mouth fills with bitterness like smoke and charred wood, and he thinks, I choose—
He forgets many things.
He forgets everything, in fact.
Everything but that: smoke, and rage, and two echoing words like cold ice down his spine.
…
Later, they ask. Nimloth demands an accounting from Celegorm, from Maedhros, from Námo himself. There are no answers. Nerdanel demands a return for her youngest son, after she has all the rest back: for surely he was the most blameless, the most repentant, the boy who slaughtered no one in Beleriand. There are no answers.
There never will be, for they three have passed well beyond the reach of the gods.