The Elves who dwelt in this place were radiant beyond compare. The Vanyar, fairest of all the Elven kindreds, shone more brightly and beautifully than any other race. They were most beloved by Manwë and Varda, and they served the two greatest Valar with songs and poetry.
Valmar possessed halls and palaces belonging to each of the Valar. Though most of the Valar did not reside there permanently, the city served as their gathering place for councils and great occasions, the judgment of Morgoth after the War of Wrath, the festivals honoring the Two Trees, and other events of supreme importance.
The Valar and Sylas did not enter Valmar proper. Instead, they proceeded directly to the hill of Ezellohar, which lay beyond the western gate of the city.
It was there that the Two Trees had grown.
Upon arriving at Ezellohar, Sylas was deeply moved.
The Two Trees towered above him, colossal beyond anything he had imagined. Compared to the White Tree of Minas Tirith and its kindred saplings, these were incomparably vast. They rose like pillars supporting the very sky, their highest branches reaching toward the horizon and shimmering against the star-sea above.
One appeared wrought of gold; the other of silver.
But that was where their beauty ended. The trunks were a sickly, mournful color, suffused with an aura of decay and death. Survival was clearly impossible. Great wounds scarred the branches, gaping holes that pierced straight through to the heartwood. The wounds were black as ink, as though something white-hot had been driven through the living wood, or as if some terrible venom had corroded the flesh of the Trees from within.
Even after all these ages, the wounds remained, dark, unhealing marks that neither time nor divine power had been able to erase.
Seeing Sylas examining the scars, Yavanna spoke, her voice carrying a quiet sorrow:
"Those were made by Morgoth's dark spear. He struck Laurelin and Telperion with grievous wounds. And his accomplice, Ungoliant, fastened her foul suckers upon them and drained the sap greedily, every drop of light and life, before injecting her venom into the roots. By the time we discovered what had happened, it was too late. I could only, before the Trees withered completely, force them to yield their last remaining strength, a single fruit and a single flower, which became the Sun and Moon. But the Trees themselves were beyond saving."
Were it not for the inherent immortality of the Two Trees and the blessed nature of Valinor's soil, even their withered husks would have crumbled to dust long ago. Instead, they stood as monuments to loss, towering, magnificent, and utterly dead.
The Vanyar had composed countless laments for them. Many spirits of Valinor still came to pay their respects in silence.
After contemplating the Two Trees for a long, reverent moment, Sylas turned to the assembled Valar.
"Let us begin."
Manwë inclined his head. "Focus only on reversing time, Sylas. Do not concern yourself with anything else, we will support you."
The other Valar nodded their agreement.
Sylas drew a deep breath. Then, his expression hardening with concentration, he unleashed his full power, directing the force of temporal reversal at the golden tree, Laurelin.
He dared not attempt both Trees simultaneously. They were too vast, too ancient, too fundamentally divine. Even with the Valar's aid, he was far from certain he could successfully reverse time on even one.
The challenge was staggering. The reversal would need to span nearly ten thousand years. And the object being reversed was no ordinary thing, the Two Trees were divine creations, sung into being by Yavanna using a song of creation-level power. Their existence was rooted in the authority of Eru Ilúvatar himself. Furthermore, they had been nurtured by the tears of Nienna, the Vala of grief and compassion, whose weeping had watered their roots and helped them grow.
The Two Trees possessed a life-essence equal to that of the Creator. Even Yavanna herself could not fully replicate it, which was why, after their destruction, she could only coax forth one last fruit and one last flower, never another Tree.
Sylas's time-reversal was miraculous, but attempting to reverse the death of the Two Trees was akin to reversing the death of a god, like an ant trying to reconstruct an elephant from memory. By all conventional reasoning, it was fundamentally impossible.
But with the combined might of the Valar behind him, Sylas believed it was worth attempting.
From within his robes, Sylas drew a silver-white wand.
Its shaft was carved from a branch of the White Tree of Minas Tirith. Its core was a single strand of Varda's hair. Even now, with Sylas's power having grown to godlike proportions, a wand still served a purpose, particularly for the most delicate applications of temporal magic, where precision mattered more than raw force. The wand provided stability and focus, channeling no more than a fraction of his full strength, but with surgical exactness.
He had no intention of abandoning the practice. In fact, he had already resolved that once the Two Trees were restored, he would craft a new and even more powerful wand from their living branches.
Sylas raised the wand and spoke the incantation.
The power of time struck Laurelin like a wave. Sylas felt the magical energy within his body surge outward in a torrent, an enormous, tidal expenditure of power. Had his reserves been anything less than virtually inexhaustible, he would have been drained dry in the opening moments.
As the reversal took hold, Laurelin's timeline began to unspool, slowly, agonizingly, year by year turning backward. But the Tree resisted. Its divine essence pushed back against the current of reversed time with a weight that grew heavier with every passing moment.
Sylas felt as though he were trying to drag an immense boulder upstream against a raging river.
Sylas strained against the current of time. It was not merely a matter of reversing the flow, he had to resist the immense inertial weight of time itself while dragging an impossibly heavy divine creation backward through the ages.
Five hundred years. A thousand. Two thousand...
Time continued to unspool, but the golden form of Laurelin remained unchanged, still withered, still scarred, still dead. The reversal was slowing, and Sylas was beginning to show signs of exhaustion, his strength draining with every passing moment.
Varda saw it at once. Without hesitation, she opened her mouth and began to sing the Song of Stars.
Her voice transformed into pure power, a silent, nourishing current that flowed into Sylas's magic, merging with his temporal energy and amplifying it, as gently and irresistibly as starlight filling a dark room. Sylas felt his power surge, the reversal of Laurelin's timeline accelerating.
Then Yavanna added her voice, the Song of Life, green and ancient and deep. Her power, too, poured into Sylas's working, amplifying the temporal current further still.
One by one, the other Valar joined.
Manwë sang the Song of the Winds, vast and majestic. Ulmo intoned the Song of the Sea, deep and relentless. Aulë raised the Song of the Forge, rhythmic and unyielding. Námo sang the Song of Judgment, solemn and absolute. Tulkas bellowed the Song of Valor, fierce and triumphant. Nienna wept the Song of Mourning, sorrowful yet strangely sustaining.
Fourteen Valar sang in chorus, each with their own melody, each voice distinct, yet all wove together into a harmony of extraordinary, almost impossible beauty. Together, they formed a new composition, a piece of music that had never existed before in all the history of Arda.
But this time, the lead voice was Sylas.
The power of time became the central melody, and the Valar, willingly, reverently, sang in accompaniment. Fourteen divine voices echoed throughout Valinor, filling the space between heaven and earth until nothing else remained. No other sound. No other color. Only the singing.
Sylas entered a transcendent state.
Carried by the chorus of the Valar, he found himself singing, a song unlike anything he had ever heard or conceived. Past, present, and future merged within the melody, the whole of Arda's timeline flowing through his voice like a river through a canyon. His song grew louder and louder, echoing across Valinor, crossing the vast ocean, reaching Middle-earth, touching every corner of the world.
A boundless River of Time materialized in his wake, manifesting in the physical world, stretching from horizon to horizon without beginning or end.
Sylas felt his consciousness soar with limitless power. He grasped the full authority of time and pulled, upward, past every barrier he had ever known. In a single blazing instant, he shattered through the final threshold and entered a higher plane of existence.
In that moment, Sylas felt he could do anything. Time was a toy in his hands. The vast, infinite River of Time lay spread before his eyes like a map.
Amid the singing of fourteen Valar, Sylas had, for a fleeting, transcendent instant, stepped into the realm of a Lord of Time.
His conscious mind grew hazy, but his instincts guided him with absolute certainty.
With the barest flicker of will, the entire world of Arda fell silent. Every creature, every leaf, every wave, frozen. Time itself had stopped.
None of the Valar noticed.
Unconsciously, Sylas entered the River of Time and turned downstream, toward the future. He sang as he went, the Song of Time pouring from him in an unbroken stream, his voice a living embodiment of temporal law. Under the song's influence, the turbulent downstream currents, which had always been so perilous and unpredictable, grew calm and still.
He ran further and further downstream. Through the Age of Men. Through an age of science and technology. Through an age of space exploration. His footsteps never faltered. His song never ceased.
At last, he arrived at the end.
The terminus of the River of Time, the final moment of the world.
At the end of time sat a fisherman.
He was perched at the river's edge, a line cast into the fading current, utterly at peace. When he saw Sylas approaching, dazed, unconscious, carried forward by instinct alone, the fisherman tilted his head and allowed himself a small, knowing smile.
It was not unexpected. He had been waiting.
The fisherman was Sylas. His future self.
Without a word, the future Sylas reached casually into the River of Time and drew out a single gemstone, blue as the deepest ocean, blazing with inner light. It transformed in his hand into a circle of radiance that floated forward and sank into the present Sylas's forehead.
It was the power of time, complete and absolute, containing the full, unabridged laws governing the River of Time.
"This is not your place," the future Sylas said quietly. "Not yet. Return to where you belong."
He raised his hand, and with a single, effortless palm strike, sent the present Sylas hurtling backward through time.
In an instant, Sylas was surrounded by rapidly reversing temporal currents. The River of Time blurred around him. In the space of a heartbeat, he was expelled from the stream and deposited back beneath the Two Trees of Valinor.
The frozen world resumed its motion. The Valar's chorus swelled once more, seamless and unbroken. Not one among them had noticed that time had ever stopped.