Lotr -

Then the shape laughed. Softly. Once.

"Madril," Boromir said quietly, "do you believe in a darkness that thinks?"

The younger man hesitated. "I believe in orcs, and in the treachery of Haradrim. I believe in walls and spear-points."

"For Gondor!"

"And yet," Boromir turned from the river, and his face was the face of a man who has glimpsed a crack in the world, "something hunts us that does not hunger for meat or gold. It hungers for the sound of a horn that does not answer. For the name of a king that no one sings anymore."

The river moved in silence, darker than the space between stars. Boromir, eldest son of the White Tower, leaned upon his sword and watched the water slide past the piers of Osgiliath. Behind him, the great city groaned under the weight of shadow; before him, the east bank lay clenched in the fist of night.

From the east, a single long note echoed across the water. Not a horn. Something older. Something that remembered the light before the first sunrise. Then the shape laughed

Boromir raised his own horn — the great horn of Gondor, banded with silver, cloven once in battle and repaired by the smiths of old. He put it to his lips.

He had stood here for three days without sleeping. Not from courage alone, but from a growing dread that tasted like copper on his tongue.

And the Anduin ran black.

"Let them come," he said. "There are still brave men in this broken land."

And the last watch began.

Boromir smiled — a terrible, beautiful smile — and settled his shield upon his arm. "Madril," Boromir said quietly, "do you believe in

The night answered with a thousand pairs of eyes.