The cold emptiness of the void pressed against Celebrimbor's spirit, an unrelenting reminder of the failure that bound him to this half-existence. He drifted, a wraith without rest, lost between the fading light of his home and the endless dark that stretched before him.
For how long he remained there, he couldn't say. Time no longer held meaning. Perhaps this was the fate he deserved—banished to nothingness, his craft undone, his vengeance incomplete.
But then, something stirred.
It began as a faint pull, a ripple cutting through the void like a knife. Celebrimbor's essence trembled as an unseen force began to latch onto him. It was not Sauron—no, this presence was unfamiliar, raw and chaotic, yet impossibly strong. Before he could resist, it dragged him forward, tearing him from the void with a violence that even death had not wrought.
Light exploded around him, blinding and disorienting. The world he emerged into was unlike anything he had ever seen—vast metal towers stretched toward the heavens, glowing lights danced along streets teeming with life, and the air hummed with the energy of a world that should not have been.
And then, he felt it—a tether, something new yet agonizingly familiar.
He was no longer free, even in this spectral form. His essence was bound, pulled toward a fragile spark of life that flickered just ahead. The cries of a newborn filled the room, and Celebrimbor's presence was drawn irresistibly to it. His incorporeal form hovered over the child, a tiny thing with a shock of black hair and piercing grey eyes that stared into nothingness but seemed to see everything.
"By the Valar," he whispered, the realization sinking in. The force that had pulled him from the void had tied him to this infant.
As he observed the child, Celebrimbor felt something stirring deep within his spectral being—a mixture of horror and awe. This mortal, this fragile creature, was a vessel for his presence. A bond forged by forces beyond even his understanding.
The baby's cries subsided, its tiny chest rising and falling in a steady rhythm. Celebrimbor extended his hand, spectral and translucent, hovering above the child's head. A faint warmth emanated from the boy—a spark of potential unlike anything he had encountered in Middle-earth.
"What are you?" Celebrimbor murmured, more to himself than to the child.
The wraith did not yet understand the depth of their connection, nor the path that lay ahead. But one thing was certain: his fate was now bound to this boy. Whether this was a gift, a curse, or something far worse, only time would tell.
And so began the tale of the wraith and the newborn, two souls tied together by fate and thrust into a world neither could comprehend.