The forge was quiet that night.
No hammer rose, no anvil rang,
only the whisper of coals breathing
beneath the iron’s dreaming skin.
Mahtan sat unmoving,
hands blackened, arms strong still—
but his eyes, wide and gone,
were drowning in fire that came not from flame.
He saw him—Fëanáro,
shattered upon the blackened rocks of the North,
his body torn by fire-wrought whips,
the Balrogs’ hatred wrapped around his flesh.
But even as ruin claimed him,
his lips broke open, and through ember and ash
he cried Mahtan—as once he had,
with breathless urgency, in the heat of secret love.
The cry tore through the veils of time,
and Mahtan felt it like molten silver
poured straight into the hollows of his chest.
No blade had struck him—
yet he folded forward as if pierced,
his hands trembling over cold steel.
He saw the smoke rise, not from his forge, but from the body
of the one he once loved to the edge of madness.
Once, they were flame made flesh,
burning for no reason but desire,
in stolen nights and trembling hands.
Even now, Mahtan remembered
the feel of his skin,
like gold softened under heat,
his mouth tasting of stars and wine,
his voice a song only he could hear.
He had given him so much—
craft, wisdom, the secrets of shaping fire.
But what he gave most,
none ever saw,
none dared name.
And now Mahtan sat alone,
the forge cold around him,
his bones beginning to forget life.
He faded slowly,
like a blade left in rain—
not rusting, but surrendering
to the memory of sharpness.
His daughter called,
but he heard only the crackle
of a fire long extinguished
and the whisper of a name.
When he died,
the Valar turned their eyes away,
for they could not answer
a grief that made even stone weep.
But Mandos knew.
He held him briefly,
then released him to the world of breath,
where fire burns and dies for good.
Born now with lungs of clay,
Mahtan walked the earth again,
under sky too wide and heart too heavy,
feeling the pull of something distant—
not memory, but magnet.
Across waters vast and cruel,
a mirror flame walked,
unaware his soul reached back:
Fëanor, too, was reborn.
No crown, no forge, no sons—
only a voice in dreams
that haunted him with the scent of iron
and the warmth of a touch
he’d never known,
yet mourned.
And he wandered, seeking the shape of loss.
Eight thousand miles.
A sea that sang of sorrow.
But the fire would not forget.
One day, in a city neither called home,
their eyes met—
not as lords nor legends,
but as men who burned once
and would burn again.
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