(A/N: Sorry about the repeated paragraphs I did earlier, I write on physical papers like a note book with a G2 pen and then type it in my notes on my phone because its easier for me so there's a lot of copying and pasting that's why I try to reread before I post to avoid mistakes like that but I can't believe I missed something like that. Anyways here the re-edited chapter, I hope guys like it. Oh and the time skips are gonna be huge until the awakening of the Elves. Enjoy!!)
Year of the Trees 1, Valinor Time – First Hour of Telperion's Bloom
The world slept, and so did I, buried deep within the broken spine of a volcanic mountain far to the southeast of Middle-earth's blasted center. It had been five years since the Fall of the Lamps, yet it might have been five hundred. In this new age, time had lost much of its bite, flowing like thick lava rather than rushing water. I stirred only when the quakes beneath me rumbled too loud, or when a new fault line cracked open and poured warmth into my resting chamber. Most days, or what passed for days in a world ruled by twilight, I did not move at all. I was a part of the mountain, a glowing knot of magma within the blackened shell of Arda's wounded crust.
But slowly, the silence was beginning to lift.
A strange light crept westward through the bones of the earth. Not the burning gold of Ormal, nor the pale sapphire of Illuin. This was something gentler, more refined. I sensed it first as a tingle in the air, an illumination not of heat, but of harmony. Then came the scent of open water drifting on the wind, mingled with the perfume of freshly blooming things. It was Ulmo's whisper, a distant summons, carried by the slow exhalation of Arda's breath. And it stirred me.
With a groan that split obsidian, I shifted my body. My limbs had stiffened during sleep, and flakes of cooled stone fell away in showers as I moved. The cavern around me trembled. Lava that had crusted over my shoulder cracked and spilled down my side like forgotten blood. I pushed myself upright, an act that took nearly an hour of measured effort. My body was massive beyond comprehension. My forelimbs alone were as thick as city walls, and my tail stretched longer than most rivers in this new land. My shell scraped the cavern ceiling as I rose to my full height, a mountain reawakening from slumber.
Outside, the world had changed.
The skies above Middle-earth remained cloaked in dim ash, but far in the west a silver glow now shimmered faintly. I knew it by instinct. Telperion. The first of the Two Trees had bloomed. In Aman, beyond the Sea, the Valar had begun their renewal. The Years of the Trees had truly begun. Yet here, in the forsaken wilds of Middle-earth, all remained scarred and quiet. No light reached these desolate places save what little filtered through the ever-thick gloom. And me. I was the only fire that walked here now.
I crawled out from my volcanic den, the land groaning beneath me. My footprints were each the size of a small lake, and steam hissed up wherever my feet landed. As I moved, I kept low, careful not to disturb the sleeping forces of the earth. My scales glowed faintly beneath the soot that clung to them, like molten embers beneath volcanic ash. I tried not to think of the day the Lamps fell. I had survived, but so much beauty had not.
Over the following weeks, I wandered once more. The land remained silent. No birds sang. No animals stirred. The trees were few and thin. But the waters were returning. Ulmo had sent rivers singing down from the mountains. Lakes now shimmered in the valleys, catching even the faintest gleams of Telperion's reflection. I paused often at their edges, careful not to disturb them. I would sit, half-submerged, my weight sinking into the muddy banks, and listen. The world was still healing.
Yet I was not alone.
Year of the Trees 10 – Second Hour before Midday under Telperion's Light
It began with a sound, deep, rhythmic, and wrong. I had felt it through my feet more than I heard it. Something was digging. Far to the north, near the jagged edges of Melkor's ruined domain, something massive moved. I could feel it through the earth. I stilled myself for days, laying atop a high ridge, and let the vibrations speak to me. Tunnels. Burrowing. Movement. These were not the Valar. These were not natural. Melkor's hand was at work again.
But he was not alone either.
From the west, I felt other presences now and then. Rarely. Faintly. Beings that touched the land lightly, almost lovingly. Spirits in flesh. Maiar, perhaps. Or scouts sent by Oromë or Yavanna, wandering the darkened reaches of Middle-earth. They did not come close. When they did, I would bury myself in the land, masking my warmth with deep ash and stone. I had no wish to frighten the messengers of light.
But once, one of them came too close.
It was near the northern slope of what would one day become the Mountains of Mist. I was resting beside a sulfur spring when a shimmer passed through the mist, a form of light cloaked in shadow, walking upright, tall and robed. A Maia. I knew it instinctively. It paused at the edge of the spring, perhaps drawn by the unusual heat. I dared not move. My breath alone could turn the air into a furnace. Yet the figure stepped forward slowly, as if drawn by curiosity or purpose.
I let out a low rumble, just enough to shift the stones beneath us. The figure froze. Then, after a moment, it bowed gracefully, with reverence. No fear. Only acknowledgment. I answered with a bow of my own, head lowered gently toward the earth. We did not speak. But in that silence, something passed between us. Recognition. The Maia turned and walked away, fading into the fog. I never saw that figure again.
Still, that moment stayed with me. Perhaps the Valar had not forgotten Middle-earth. Perhaps they were watching, even now.
Year of the Trees 50 – Ninth Hour of Telperion's Bloom
I spent many years in the east, near the molten lakes and slow-breathing volcanoes that had become my sanctuary. During that long twilight, I watched the land mend itself. Cracks in the earth closed like healing wounds. Rivers found new paths. Plants, once wilted by the fire and shadow of Melkor's ruin, began to grow again. Some I recognized as the works of Yavanna, distant echoes of her first breath stirring the seeds she had hidden from the dark.
By this point, I had grown familiar with my shape, my rhythm, my limits. My full length, from the tip of my beaked snout to the end of my segmented tail, could span nearly three miles if I stretched fully out across a valley. My shoulders stood higher than any mountain in sight, with my back forming plateaus and ridges. I once watched a family of birds nest between the folds of stone that lined my left flank, unaware that the land itself was alive.
And yet, for all my size, I had learned stillness.
That morning, if it could be called that beneath Telperion's silver light, I lay coiled among hills in a shallow caldera, warming my joints in the crust of a slowly churning lava pool. My eyes opened as a ripple passed through the stones beneath me. It was not the kind of ripple caused by the earth's own shifting, nor by the restless forces below. This was deliberate. Intentional. A pattern repeated over time. I rose slightly, placing my chin upon a mound of obsidian, and listened.
Footfalls. Not small ones. Not animals.
I shifted forward, silent despite my mass, and peered beyond the rim of the caldera. There, perhaps a league away, I saw them.
They moved like smoke, coiling through the trees in loose formation. Shapes ten feet tall at the shoulder, long-limbed and hunched forward, trailing heat and ash behind them. At first I thought them beasts, but then I saw the fire kindling along their backs. Not natural fire, but something crueler. They burned with an inner flame, one that fed on malice and hate.
Balrogs.
There were six of them.
They were not looking for me, at least not yet. They were tracking something else, something ahead of them in the deeper woods. I could smell it now, faintly—Maiar again, or at least one of them. The air shimmered with the echo of divinity. A battle was coming.
I hesitated. This was not my fight.
And yet something twisted inside me. A memory, a guilt, perhaps, of having stood by during the fall of the Lamps, of having witnessed the pain of the world and done too little. I could not go to Aman. I could not warn the Valar of Melkor's growing corruption. But here, in this lonely place, I might prevent a small tragedy. That, perhaps, was enough.
I rose to my full height. The caldera cracked beneath me. Magma spilled as I heaved my weight onto steady legs. My shell shed flakes of stone as fire rekindled along my spine.
The Balrogs noticed.
They turned as one, the flames along their limbs growing in intensity. Their whips uncoiled, fiery strands of ruin lashing through the trees. They hissed, not in fear, but in challenge.
I answered.
My roar split the valley, echoing off every ridge and peak for miles. Birds fled, trees shuddered, and the ground itself cracked beneath the force of my voice. The Balrogs charged.
I met them head-on.
The Balrogs surged forward like fire given form, their bodies cloaked in shadow and flame, their eyes glowing with the cruel light of corrupted stars. They moved quickly over the forested slope, their whips of flame slicing the air, setting ancient trees ablaze as they came. The flames they cast were not like mine. Mine were of earth and molten heart, volcanic and rooted in the world's core. Theirs were the echo of Melkor's hate, thinner and colder despite their brightness, a mockery of true creation.
I could not charge them as a warrior would. My size made speed impossible, but I had power enough. As they closed the distance, I planted my legs into the stone, braced myself, and opened my jaws.
A gout of molten fire erupted from my mouth, a pressurized roar of superheated magma and ash. It tore through the valley like a river of the world's wrath. The first two Balrogs were caught mid-step. Their flaming forms vanished under the onslaught. I heard a shriek, high and alien, but saw no bodies, only steam and scorched stone where they had stood.
The others scattered. One leapt to the side with inhuman grace, vanishing behind a rise of stone. Another took to the air briefly, propelled by the force of its inner flame, landing atop a low ridge to my left.
Then came their counterattack.
The air cracked with the sound of their whips. One struck my forelimb. It seared against the obsidian armor of my scales, sending a flash of pain up my leg. I turned toward the source and swung my tail. The impact was like a falling mountain. Trees were leveled, the hilltop shattered, and the Balrog was flung like a burning cinder across the valley.
But they were not so easily slain.
The one I had thrown landed hard but rose again, its flame diminished but not extinguished. Two more circled behind me. One leapt onto my back, latching between the cracks of my shell, striking with its whip and claw.
I felt its heat crawl along my spine, and for a moment I remembered the touch of Melkor himself during the fall of the Lamps. A rage took me then, not the bestial fury of Zorah, but the wrath of a guardian who had seen enough destruction. I reared up, lifting half my bulk into the air. The Balrog lost its grip, tumbling from my back. I turned and stomped down, my front limbs falling like avalanches. The crater I left behind hissed and bubbled.
Silence returned for a heartbeat.
Only three remained.
They circled, slower now, wary. My sides bled lava from where the whips had struck, but I stood firm, steam rising from the ground around me like battle smoke. I felt the earth's heat rise to meet me, feeding my strength. One of the Balrogs stepped forward and raised its hand, not in attack, but in signal. I felt it then, a pulse, not from them, but from far away. Watching. Listening.
Melkor knew.
And he had seen enough.
The Balrogs withdrew, step by step, their fire dimming. They did not run. They backed away, still facing me, whips twitching. Then, as if a wind had come and swept them into ash, they were gone.
I remained where I stood, the valley burning around me. I had won, but there was no triumph. Only exhaustion. Only silence.
Far above, Telperion still shone, silver and pure.
And I, soot-streaked and wounded, let my limbs lower slowly to the earth, and rested.
Year of the Trees 51 – First Hour under Telperion
I awoke slowly, days after the battle, my body still half-buried in the cooled basin where I had collapsed. The stone had hardened around my limbs, embracing me in a cradle of obsidian, but I felt no panic. I moved slowly, deliberately, stretching with the caution of a creature that understood its size and the land's fragility. When I rose fully, the crater that had once been a forested slope was unrecognizable. The trees were gone. The rocks were melted and reshaped. Even the rivers had bent their paths to avoid the ruin I had left behind.
I did not roar. I did not call out. I simply stood, watching the rising silver light of Telperion filter across the smoke-streaked sky.
I had survived the Balrogs. I had driven them off.
But that was not a victory.
In truth, I had drawn attention to myself, and I knew now with grim certainty that Melkor had taken notice. The moment his will brushed against mine, faint and distant, yet unmistakable, I had felt a terrible gravity in it. It was not curiosity. It was ownership. He believed that anything born of fire must be his to command. My defiance would not go unremembered.
I turned from the ruined valley and began my slow retreat eastward. Not because I was afraid, though some primal part of me still burned with instinctual dread, but because I needed time. The Valar had not yet returned to Middle-earth, and I could not stand alone against the full strength of Melkor's wrath. Not yet.
My body ached. Cracks had formed along my shoulders, and a chunk of stone plating had fallen from my right flank during the fight. It took me several weeks to regenerate the layer of magma beneath, and I spent much of that time in stillness, hidden in a shallow sea vent along the broken coast. The heat soothed me. The presence of Ulmo's currents kept the northern winds at bay.
Year of the Trees 52 – Third Hour under Telperion
Over the next few years, I moved carefully through the edge of the eastern continent. It was wilder here, less touched by the shaping hands of the Valar before their departure. Strange creatures stirred in the dark canyons. Grotesque birds with lamp-like eyes watched me from cliffs. At night, I felt the movements of lesser things, creations that were neither wholly beast nor wholly spirit, some perhaps corrupted by Melkor's early work and left unfinished. I avoided them. Not from fear, but from caution. The land was not ready to bear another clash like the one with the Balrogs. I had no desire to scar it further.
As the years passed, my wounds closed. The stone grew back slowly, thicker than before, as if my body remembered the fire it had endured. I practiced breathing smaller streams of molten energy, not as a weapon, but as a form of expression. I used it to melt paths through cliff walls, to reheat distant lava flows where life had begun to gather. Birds began to follow me again, nesting on my shoulders when I rested. Ferns grew between the cracks in my scales. I became a moving part of the land itself.
And yet I remained silent. I had seen no more of the Maiar. The Valar did not return. The Two Trees still bloomed far away in Aman, their mingled light never reaching this land directly. Middle-earth slept in twilight, awaiting something I could not name.
Year of the Trees 60 – First Hour of Telperion
The years passed like drifting clouds, slow and solemn. I moved little, not out of weakness, but out of respect. The land beneath my feet had grown quiet since the Balrogs fled and Melkor's gaze shifted westward. Middle-earth was healing. The Valar did not return, not yet. But the wind sang of their work across the sea. I felt it on occasion in the currents of the air and the rhythm of the earth, in the warmth that pulsed through the deep caverns like a heartbeat. And I, though I did not age, began to change.
In the beginning, I had only known destruction. Where I walked, the land split. Trees withered. The sky darkened with ash. But over time, something changed. In my stillness, new life began to appear. Not in spite of me, but because of me.
It began in the valley of basalt where I had lain motionless for half a decade. When I finally stood again, I turned and saw something that had not been there before. Green. A carpet of soft moss had grown across the slopes of my footprint. Bright ferns had unfurled between the cracks of the scorched rock. Even small flowering bushes had taken root in the heat-blasted hollows where my body had once rested. I was stunned.
I lowered my head and sniffed gently at the growth. There was no artifice in it, no intervention by Yavanna that I could detect. It was Arda's own rhythm responding to me, or perhaps something deeper. I remembered Yavanna's hand upon me in the early years. Her touch had cooled my fire and seeded my instincts with gentleness. Could it be that her blessing had taken root more deeply than I had realized?
From then on, I watched with greater care. Whenever I stayed in one place for more than a few years, the same cycle followed. The ground would blacken at first, scorched by my presence. But then the ash would settle. Water would collect in the low places of my footprints. Heat-loving plants would creep in. Insects came next, followed by birds. Whole ecosystems began to develop in the wake of my rest.
I had become something new.
Not merely a bringer of fire and ruin.
But a source of renewal.
Year of the Trees 300 – Midday under Telperion
By now, I understood the pattern. My internal heat was a force not just of destruction, but transformation. The minerals stirred by my movement enriched the soil. The ash left by my breath provided the foundation for strange and resilient plants. Creatures followed in my wake. Many kept their distance, wary of my colossal form, but a few grew bolder. I once spent two years watching a group of deer-like beasts learn to graze the warm moss near one of my old resting places. They grew fat and prosperous. Some even built nests atop cooled lava spires I had unknowingly shaped.
The realization filled me with an odd pride. Not arrogance. Not power. But purpose. In this world, where nothing was born without song or reason, I had found my rhythm. I was not a mistake. I was not a weapon out of place. I was the fire that fed the green.
Year of the Trees 1050 – First mingling of Telperion and Laurelin
The light had changed.
Far to the west, I now sensed the first mingling of the Two Trees. A silver twilight that deepened into gold and back again. Though it never touched me directly, the change stirred something in the air, like a new song being woven through the world's bones. The time of stillness was ending. Something new was coming.
I felt it before it happened. A ripple through the waters of every lake. A hush in the air that even birds respected. And then, one night beneath the faint stars, I felt the presence awaken.
The Children of Ilúvatar had come.
Elves.
I did not see them. Not at first. They awoke far away, by Cuiviénen, eastward of where I had settled. But I felt their joy. Their awe. Their questions. I knew they were singing. And I, though silent, sang in my own way.
I moved toward the distant light with care.