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"Madril," Boromir said quietly, "do you believe in a darkness that thinks?"

From the east, a single long note echoed across the water. Not a horn. Something older. Something that remembered the light before the first sunrise.

And the last watch began.

And the Anduin ran black.

The younger man hesitated. "I believe in orcs, and in the treachery of Haradrim. I believe in walls and spear-points."

"Let them come," he said. "There are still brave men in this broken land."

"For Gondor!"

He had stood here for three days without sleeping. Not from courage alone, but from a growing dread that tasted like copper on his tongue.

"You should rest, Captain," said a voice from the stair. Madril, his second, climbed up with a torch that fought a losing battle against the fog. "The men speak of a figure on the far shore. A hooded shape that does not move."

Above them, the stars winked out one by one, as if snuffed by a cold and patient finger. "Madril," Boromir said quietly, "do you believe in

"I have seen it," Boromir replied. His hand tightened on the hilt of his sword. The blade, forged in Gondor’s brighter years, still held an edge that could part silk and orc-flesh alike. But edges mattered little against what he felt pressing against the veil of the world.

The night answered with a thousand pairs of eyes.

Then the shape laughed. Softly. Once.