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Part One: What Cannot Be Undone
There is a particular cruelty in knowing the exact moment you lost something - not the gradual dimming of a candle guttered by wind, but the precise, terrible instant the flame ceased to exist. Elrond Half-elven, Lord of Imladris, keeper of Vilya the ring of air, had lived through ages enough to understand that the cruelest wounds are not dealt by blades.
He had known it when he stood at the Havens of Sirion and watched the bodies of the slain. He had known it when Celebrían sailed west and he had pressed his lips to her brow and felt, in the trembling of her hands against his chest, that she was already halfway gone. And he had known it - had felt the knowing detonate somewhere behind his sternum like a stone dropped into still water - the afternoon his daughter had come to him in his library and stood in the doorway with her hands folded before her and her chin lifted and her grey eyes already decided, and said: Ada. I have chosen.