The only entry untorn from a small diary.

The image will not CANNOT leave me. Hardoleth… my mentor, my captain, my compass in the chaos of war… lying there, cold to the touch, stripped of the life that once burned brighter than any battlefield fire. I saw him not in the heat of battle, sword in hand, commanding with that relentless force that bent men to his will—but inert, defeated, crumpled in a bed, mocked by the very stillness that should have been beneath his notice. Rage....no just anger...real anger boils through me, black and unrelenting, that the one I would have followed into the field of mordor was taken in such a pitiful, cowardly manner. All my training, all my discipline, all my pride as a captain cannot soothe the ache in my chest or the fury that claws at my mind. I am left with nothing but the weight of command without guidance, the hollow echo of a voice that once cut through the fog of uncertainty, the absence of the hand that steadied me when I faltered.  

He was a scruffy old dog, yet unyielding, a hard man who carved victory from blood and sweat, and I worshipped that fire. And now he is gone. The men will look to me and the other captains now, expecting strength, clarity, leadership

but how can I offer what I do not possess? I am adrift, haunted by the memory of his final breaths, the silence that followed, the suffocating truth that no act of loyalty, no measure of devotion, could save him from death’s reach. I should have been there in the field with him, should have felt the surge of battle that made him alive, should have died beside him, and yet I was powerless, shackled by circumstance, and now I am cursed to live with the witness of his dishonor—not his, just mine to endure until something kills me.  

I feel like the ground opened beneath my feet. His absence is a wound that gnaws at me in every quiet moment, every night when the Hall falls still, when the men and women of the dawn sleep and I cannot. I see his face in every shadow, hear his voice in every clash of swords that memory conjures. And in that endless, burning rage, I swear—swear to his name, to the dead, to middle earth itself—that his lessons, his honor, his fury will not die with him. I will carry them, even if the cost is my sanity, even if the men whisper that I have gone mad. For Hardoleth shaped me, and I am nothing without his teachings.  

And yet I must walk forward, through the ash and blood of my own despair, through the fires of command and the hollow mockery of a battlefield without him. I do not know if I will ever be whole again, if the fire he lit in me will ever burn as it did, or if I am destined to be a shadow of the captain he made me. But still I must walk. For the men, for the oaths, for the memory of a man who was more than a mentor, more than a captain, more than a friend. Hardoleth is gone, yet his shadow lingers—and I am trapped beneath it, bearing the weight of all he gave, all he demanded, all he was. I am Rothlung Blacktowers, and I will not fail him. Not while I draw breath. by blood or bone, ill mend his throne.