The bridge had fallen long ago.
Only half of it remained, jutting out over a gulf that swallowed the light of Litharil's lantern before it reached the bottom. Across the abyss, the opposite span hung broken in the darkness, as though some giant hand had torn the stone apart.
She stood at the edge for a long while.
Not searching for a way across.
Only looking.
Cold air drifted steadily upward from the depths below. It carried no scent of earth or water.
Only age.
She had crossed this bridge once.
Not this broken thing before her, but the whole of it.
In another Age.
She remembered Dwarven guards standing watch in polished mail, their helms bright beneath crystal lamps. They had saluted those passing without suspicion, speaking in voices that echoed warmly through the halls.
One of them had offered her a cup of dark ale.
She had politely declined.
The Dwarf had laughed, declaring that no Elf would ever understand proper drink.
She had smiled despite herself.
She could no longer remember his face.
Only his laughter.
Litharil closed her eyes.
That troubled her more than she wished to admit.
There had been so many names.
So many voices.
Centuries had worn them smooth like river stones.
She remembered kingdoms more clearly than the people who had lived within them.
The thought settled heavily upon her.
She had once feared Orcs.
She had once feared Dragons.
She had once feared the Shadow itself.
Yet it was time that proved the cruelest enemy.
Time asked for no victory.
It simply waited.
A faint scrape echoed somewhere across the gulf.
Litharil's eyes opened at once.
She lowered herself into a crouch, lantern hooded with one hand.
Another sound.
Boots.
Not the hurried clatter of Goblins.
Not the heavy stride of Trolls.
Measured.
Cautious.
Someone else was walking these forgotten halls.
She remained motionless.
The sound came again, followed by the distant glow of a single torch far across the broken bridge.
For only a heartbeat she wondered.
A survivor.
Another wanderer.
Perhaps even one of Durin's folk searching for what could never truly be reclaimed.
Then the torchlight shifted.
Green eyes reflected the flame.
Too many of them.
The torch was no torch at all.
It was a lure.
A corpse still wrapped in rotting cloth, held aloft by strands of web.
The spiders had learned.
Litharil watched in silence as several of the great creatures emerged, testing the air where prey might once have crossed.
Patient.
Clever.
Hungry.
She did not draw her sword, for there was nothing to gain.
The bridge was gone.
The dead could not be rescued.
She stepped backward into the darkness as quietly as she had come.
The spiders never knew she had been watching them.
Long after the broken bridge had vanished behind winding corridors, Litharil glanced once over her shoulder.
"I remember," she whispered into the silence.
Whether she spoke to the Dwarves... Or to Khazad-dûm itself...
She no longer knew.
Then she turned away, and continued deeper beneath the mountain.
