The Light of Eltharion

Eltharion died with the world-that-was, and something of him refused to go: not his body, not even his soul entire, but the will alone — a stubbornness so absolute that it persisted as a flicker in the light of Hysh for an entire age. Tyrion, who perceives all things through light, found that flicker and recognized the hero it had been. Teclis forged it a vessel: a hollow suit of rune-worked armour, filled with nothing but radiance and refusal.

What walks now is called the Light of Eltharion — a memory with a sword-arm. He has no face, no voice and no doubts, for the parts of a person that hesitate did not survive the crossing. In combat he is swordsmanship distilled from the swordsman: he turns aside blows that cannot be parried, lands cuts that cannot be answered, and pairs his fangsword with a blade blessed by Celennar itself, moon-pale and merciless. Duelists across the Ten Paradises study the afterimages of his passes the way mages study scripture.

The Lumineth regard him with an awe sharpened by grief, for he is at once their champion and their cautionary text: proof that what endures of any of us is what we insisted upon most. He stands vigils no living aelf could endure, serves wherever Teclis points him, and has never, in any record, taken a backward step. The old world named him the Grim. The new one has learned why.