The chill that had crept through Galadriel shifted, fickle and inconsistent as fevers are wont to be, and with it a sense of oppressive warmth crept into the air around them. The temperature didn't shift, not in earnest, but there was a disconcerting clarity to the sensation of rising heat, one that was hard to distinguish as separate from reality.

The darkness gave way but, perhaps, it would have been better if it hadn't.

She had only glanced this memory, bright and inconsistent in the heart of Samwise Gamgee, and it fell unevenly across the library around them. Patches of stone were lit by absent conjured light, the walls glimmered with veins of silver white as the stars, but the world refused to resolve itself. She lacked the details of Moria.

Unfortunately, her mind had no shortage of memory to draw from. The gaps in her knowledge were easily filled by her unconscious mind.

A distant, ruddy light crept into the library from below, from much farther down than bounds of the fortress allowed. There was a chattering of indistinct noise and arrows, invisible and silent cut through the air and clattered against the walls. There was a ripple of drumbeats, of falling rock somewhere far below, and the distant clamoring shrieks of orcs as they scrambled into their dark hollows.

For a time, it was still once more.

The whole fortress seemed to tremble as the first dreadful footstep fell and silence chased after it. From the great hall, another tremor crawled through the stone, and another, as the demon approached. Red light spilled in from all sides, it threw long shadows across all the surfaces of the library, and around them it grew ever hotter. The flavor of ash and death was heavy on the air.

The spirits that had lingered were, by turns, attracted and repulsed by the encroaching nightmare.