Synopsis

Ring of Darkness is a trilogy set in Tolkien’s Middle-earth, three centuries after the destruction of the One Ring.

Tome 1: The Elven Dagger

Faramir II, archivist of the White Tower of Minas Tirith, discovers a sealed letter from the year 180 of the Fourth Age — buried in the records, deliberately forgotten. The letter warns that the darkness is not truly dead.

Following the letter’s clues, Faramir II assembles an unlikely fellowship: a Ranger from the remnants of the Dúnedain, a Dwarven scholar from Erebor, and a half-Elven healer who is one of the last of her kind in Middle-earth. Their quest leads them east, into Rhûn, where they find evidence of a new power consolidating — not Sauron, for he is truly gone, but something that fed on Sauron’s shadow and grew in his absence.

At the heart of the Black Fortress in Rhûn, they find an ancient Elven dagger — a weapon that predates even the First Age, whose purpose none of them understand. The tome ends with the dagger recovered, but the enemy aware of them, and a greater darkness beginning to move.

Tome 2: The Black Spear

The fellowship, now hunted, returns west through the Misty Mountains. They seek Rivendell — but Rivendell is a ruin, inhabited only by a small community of scholars maintaining the old library. Among the old records they find references to the Black Spear: a weapon made in the same age as the Elven Dagger, its twin and counterpart, somewhere in the cold North.

The second tome follows the journey north: through Weathertop, into the Grey Mountains, where a remnant of Angmar’s ancient evil has been quietly regathering. The Black Spear is found, but its recovery costs them dearly — and they learn that the dagger and spear together unlock something that should never be unlocked.

The tome ends with the fellowship shattered: one member captured, one dead, the others scattered across Middle-earth with both weapons, each trying to prevent the other from falling into the enemy’s hands.

Tome 3: The Adamant Khenny

Khenny — in the Black Speech, a word that does not translate cleanly into Westron. The closest rendering is “the Eye that remained open.” It refers to a fragment of consciousness that Sauron deposited outside himself, outside the Ring, before the War of the Ring — a failsafe, a seed.

The third tome brings together the surviving members of the fellowship to face the Adamant Khenny: the fragment that has spent three centuries slowly waking, slowly gathering strength, using the new power in Rhûn as its instrument.

The final confrontation takes place not in Mordor — Mordor is empty, its fires cold — but in the depths of the sea, in a drowned fortress off the coast of Umbar, where the fragment has been gathering strength since the Second Age.

The ending is not the ending of the War of the Ring. It is quieter, costlier, and more ambiguous. Middle-earth survives. But some things that were lost cannot be recovered.

The full text is available in French and English translation on Codeberg.