The Hall of Runes
Year 1387-1400 of the Trees | Year 13294-13414 in the Years of the Sun
Time passed as it does for the Firstborn—graceful and vast, flowing like the deep waters of Ulmo's halls. But even as life continued in peace, a quiet transformation took root beneath the palace of Eärondë, where memory, dream, and song began to take form in stone.
Alcaron, lord and king of Eärondë and once the twin who walked ever beside Fëanor in the learning-halls of Aulë, had turned inward.
He remained a devoted husband, a present father—but increasingly, his mind wandered beyond what was visible. His dreams were no longer idle flickers of night; they had become visits—echoes of the Music, pieces of language older than the Quendi themselves, inscribed into the very bones of the world.
He began carving. At first, small etchings—on scraps of driftwood, on bronze discs, on the undersides of old tools. But the runes pulsed with a rhythm that demanded more.
So he descended.
Beneath the foundation of the palace, beneath the roots of the silver-and-pearl trees Yavanna had gifted, Alcaron carved out a great vault. Not cold like a tomb, but warm with the quiet breath of stone. He called it Rómenna Nóresse in private—The Eastern Thought-Hall—but to all others, it became simply the Hall of Runes.
It was vast and dim, lit not by torches but by gentle pulses of light that shimmered from the etched walls themselves. Gold and silver veins—natural to the rock—were carefully traced with ancient signs, so that the very structure seemed to glow from within, as though the bones of the world remembered the Light of the Beginning.
In the heart of the hall stood a round chamber with a domed ceiling, inscribed in spirals that reached upward. The ceiling bore a great circle—the Ainulindalë—rendered not in words, but in pattern: swirls of sound etched into shape, lines that sang if you stood beneath them in silence.
The walls of the hall were divided by themes:
The Valar Wall bore the symbols he had gleaned from his dreams—crude but resonant signs of each of the Powers: Ulmo's deep spiral, Yavanna's seed-sigil, Aulë's hammer-and-spiral intertwined. Even Varda's radiant star, always placed highest.The Eldar Wall held memory-runes—crafted by Alcaron from spoken language turned into glyph: names of lost friends, of stories told in lullabies, of moments once sung but now stilled.The Music Wall remained unfinished, but pulsed most with energy. Here, Alcaron worked only in the deepest hours of night, carving arcs and crescents that curved like melodies, trusting the dream to guide his hand.
Even the floor itself bore silent wards—not to keep things out, but to ground the space, like anchors in the earth.
But Alcaron did not hoard his wonder.
In the gardens of Eärondë, near the school Nimloth had founded, he built a second hall—open to the sky and the people. This one was smaller and shaped like a ring, with rune-pillars set around a central pool where water flowed from a fountain shaped like a songbird.
Here, the people came not to study magic, but to marvel—to sit beneath the carved stone, to trace the signs with curious fingers, to feel their meaning without fully knowing. Children danced beneath the rune-laced pillars; elders whispered old stories they remembered from their youth.
It became a place of peace, contemplation, and beauty.
Alcaron was not only a builder of halls, but a father still. Though his studies pulled him often into solitude, he brought his children into the Hall of Runes one by one—not to lecture, but to listen.
Elenwëa, ever gentle, responded not with tools but with song.
"Runes are not only power," her father told her one night, as they knelt before the Valar Wall. "They are memory. The shape of what has passed. You can sing them, if you know their pulse."
She did. In her hands, the runes became not weapons but healing. She placed rune-stones near wounded animals, humming until their pain lessened. Later, when a hunter returned with a grave wound from a fall, it was Elenwëa who pressed her hands over his ribs and sang the spiral-rune of Este's breath—and the bleeding stilled.
Her voice wove harmony into silence. The hall itself responded, softly glowing where she walked.
Almirion, bold and curious, saw the runes not as mystery but as craft.
He asked questions constantly—what would happen if this rune were forged in steel? Could two runes be layered? Would they break or bend?
Alcaron watched him closely, sometimes anxious.
"Runes must not be bound to greed," he warned. "They are not slaves. They respond to balance."
But he allowed the boy to try.
In his one hundredth and thirty-fifth year, Almirion emerged from the forge bearing his first great work: a sword not meant for war, but for protection. It pulsed faintly with heat—not enough to burn, but enough to warm the hand in winter. Its edge was dull until drawn in defense; only then did it sharpen, whispering with a tone like a low flute.
"I didn't want it to kill," Almirion said. "Only to guard."
His father said nothing at first, only rested his hand on the boy's shoulder and nodded.
"This is what fire should do," Alcaron said. "Hold the dark at bay. Not feed it."
As years grew into centuries, Alcaron's dreams changed.
They became clearer—sometimes too clear. He began to hear the Music again, not in song, but in shape. His fingers twitched in sleep, as if still carving. He would wake with visions—runes not yet written, and patterns that echoed the first days of the world.
He told Nimloth once, in the dark, "I saw Eä being born last night. Not the flames or the stars—but the silence before the sound."
She said nothing, only held him. She feared, sometimes, that he wandered too far from the waking world. But she knew the work was not madness. It was recovery. A listening.
Alcaron began to sense a great change—not immediate, not yet cast in shadow—but something approaching in the far future. A tension in the Music. A ripple in the still waters.
"The world is tuning itself," he murmured one morning to Elenwëa, as they watched the sunrise together. "Like an instrument… waiting for the next note."
She looked at him and whispered, "Then let it be a good one."
He smiled, and together they listened, the dawn lighting the runes on the walls like starlight returned.
The dreams had begun to change.
What once had come like wind-stirred whispers through the trees now roared with slow thunder, too deep to fully hear, yet too loud to ignore. Alcaron's runes hummed at night, their carved lines warm beneath his hands. They vibrated, subtly but constantly, like strings plucked by a distant hand.
It was not just sound—it was feeling. The sense of something on the horizon, vast and unseen. A new note in the Music.
One night, Alcaron left the bed he shared with Nimloth and walked alone through the sleeping city. The moon cast pale silver across the sea, and all was quiet in Eärondë. Yet his heart beat with unease.
He descended into the Hall of Runes—his sanctuary—and placed his hands upon the Music Wall, which still bore unfinished carvings of the Ainulindalë. He closed his eyes.
"I do not know what this means," he whispered to the stone, "and I cannot shape it alone."
And in that moment, the dream came again—but this time, he did not wake.
Alcaron stood in darkness.
Not the dark of blindness or fear—but the quiet dark, vast and sacred, like the space between heartbeats.
Before him rose great black gates, wrought of basalt and shadow. They opened without sound, revealing the path into the Halls of Mandos. He had walked here once before, long ago, when he was young and learning from Námo himself, the Doomsman of the Valar.
Now, once again, the Keeper of the Dead awaited him.
Námo stood tall and cloaked in robes of silvered grey, with a face both grave and luminous. His gaze was calm, old beyond comprehension, yet not unkind.
"You are not summoned," Námo said, voice like the tide turning. "And yet… you are here."
Alcaron bowed his head. "I came seeking understanding."
"That is dangerous," Námo replied. "Understanding is not the same as peace."
"I will take understanding, even if it leaves me restless."
A pause. Then, for the first time in centuries, Námo smiled—an expression both gentle and unnerving.
"Then come. You may enter once more."
The Halls of Mandos were not what many believed. They were not prisons nor tombs. They were echoes. Each chamber sang a different note in the Great Song, tuned to the fëar that lingered within them.
Alcaron walked in silence beside the Vala, his footsteps leaving no mark upon the stone. The chambers were immense and endless, stretching into shadows. In some, faint lights drifted—souls in quiet rest. In others, music hummed, the voices of the dead weaving melodies of their lives.
They passed one great gallery where forms like stars drifted within translucent veils—souls not yet re-embodied, waiting for their moment to return. Each fëa shimmered with the memory of its former life, and the hope of new shaping.
Alcaron stopped.
"There are so many," he whispered. "I do not understand… Valinor has known no great war, no plague. These are not all Eldar of the Blessed Realm."
"No," Námo said softly. "They are not."
Alcaron turned to him, frowning. "But… they cannot be the Children of Cuiviénen. They never came West. How—?"
"Do you believe the Summons is only heard by those who obeyed it?" Námo asked.
Silence.
"The body may not have crossed the sea," the Vala continued, "but the spirit—the fëa—is not bound by coastlines. The fate of the Quendi lies with Eru, and in time, even the Moriquendi and the Lómëquendi are received here. Some are healed, some are reembodied, and some choose rest. But they are all known."
Alcaron's breath caught in his chest. He looked again upon the sea of starlit souls drifting in quiet peace.
"They are us," he said quietly. "Though we have never met them. Though we left them behind."
"Yes," Námo said. "They are of your kindred. Forgotten only by those who chose to forget."
Alcaron stepped forward, peering more closely at a figure wrapped in violet light. It felt… familiar, though he knew it not.
"Have they been reborn?" he asked. "Have they walked the green hills of Valinor?"
"Some. Others will. A few do not wish to return."
He turned to the Vala, questions rising in his heart like waves.
"Why show me this?"
"You asked what it meant—what you dreamed. You see a change approaching, Alcaron. And you are right to see it."
Námo raised his hand and the walls themselves rippled like water.
"The world is not breaking," he said, "but it is becoming. It always is. The Music does not end. What you hear in your sleep is not prophecy—it is resonance. You are close to its tone."
Alcaron's voice was hoarse. "And what is that tone?"
Námo looked at him long, and something ancient shimmered in his eyes.
"The tone is what it has always been: becoming. A circle turning. Memory, rebirth, the reshaping of harmony."
And then he smiled again—wider this time, a rare thing.
"The world is as it always is, Alcaron. And what is that? It is unfinished."
Alcaron woke in the Hall of Runes, his hand still pressed to the unfinished Music Wall.
But now, something new stirred in his bones.
He did not rush to carve. He sat. He listened.
From the sea came a single cry of a night-bird.
From the forge above, he heard the ring of his son shaping new tools.
From the gardens, the laughter of Elenwëa and Nimloth teaching young ones the names of flowers.
And beneath it all, in the deep silence of the earth, the runes pulsed gently—not with power, but with memory.
Alcaron smiled.
The world is becoming, he thought. And I am still learning to hear.