His breath fogged the air, its slow patterns twisting in shapes that seemed to Aragorn both sinister and vaguely disturbing. How long he stared, mesmerized by the icy plumes, he had no notion. The temperature continued to fall, stiffening his limbs and casting a faint sheen of frost upon the surrounding surfaces. Even Elrohir and Daelin, still as the dead watchtower upon which they sprawled, glittered in the weird silver light.

Elrohir and Daelin. If he was slowly freezing, awake and semi-alert as he was, his insensible companions were in even greater danger. Aragorn rocked forward, attempting to ignore the weight of the black gaze upon him, and managed a slow shuffle.The path toward Daelin twisted and stretched, lengthening twice for each pace he gained. He was utterly spent when he finally reached his destination, collapsing face-first at the other’s side. He stretched a long moment across the tiles, panting and dazed, the other Ranger’s icy leg against his back both solid and …wrong.

Not, perhaps, so solid as it seemed.

What was, though? Nothing was surely real but the watchtower itself.

“Move, Aragorn,” he murmured, voice flat and strange against the grey-painted sky. “Move.”

Aragorn. Did it still apply to him? Did a shadow deserve a name?

What point to a name at all, upon Amon Sûl?

He cared for the other Ranger as best he could, without warmth or light or help, then began his long, painful way toward the Elf. Whether the journey lasted five minutes or five millennia he could not say.

He was disconcerted, on examination, to find blood painting the Elf’s face. He had already …

But no. He had only just arrived. Only just seen the icy red flow.

Yet, he remembered …

What was memory? There was only here, and now.

He cleaned the blood away, the pale flesh both frozen and pliable beneath his touch. For a moment he thought the other might rouse – the dark head turned suddenly, and the eyes flickered beneath the half-open lids – but the Elf subsided as though he had never stirred. He finished slowly, carefully, avoiding the rising cries of battle and slaughter behind him until the last possible moment.

At long last, however, there was no escape. There never had been. The shimmering scene called to him, coaxed him, commanded him. When at last he turned, it seared his eyes, throwing Men and orcs into stark, blinding relief. Fire and blood flowed. Walls crumbled. Foul creatures circled the battlements at the edges of the world. The figure of the dark King mounted up onto the stones, neither knowing nor caring upon whom he trod. The airborne creatures cried out, and their shrieks were as a piercing lance behind the shadow’s eyes.

He flung himself upon the stones, begging Elbereth to hide him from that glance.

Elbereth?

A! Elbereth Gilthoniel! silivrin penna miriel …

The words were naught but a figment, surely – the shadow did not speak or even think them, and who was Elbereth but another tale?

For a heartbeat, a breath, the sickly glow dimmed.

The great crown turned toward him, and black fear drove all else from his mind. He flung himself onto the tiles, dragging his frozen cloak over him to escape the dark King’s notice. He waited, heart hammering within his breast, cold breath frosting the stone before his face. The heavy steps approached – measured, unhurried – and the cold that he had thought all-consuming seemed suddenly a distant warmth. The great figure stood above him, and the biting tip of a sword whispered at his neck.