There was a sound akin to breaking stone, so eerily familiar that Mairon shuddered with recognition within his cunning disguise.

As the air grew heavy with pressure, a roaring wind swept across the ocean, setting off a slew of ripples that spelt out doom and destruction.

Memories came flooding back, rising like a wall of lethal water, to drown him in the depthless ocean of his culpability.

With cutting clarity, he remembered the hot, crackling sounds of Aulë’s forge, yet knew that mightier hands than his old master’s had wrought this inescapable disaster.

Bracing stubbornly, he faced the maker’s wrath.