The eastern glade was far enough from the patrol routes that no one would see him fail.
Legolas had left his chambers before dawn, moving through the palace's lesser-used passages with a stealth that came naturally to this body. The guards were changing shifts; the servants were occupied with morning preparations. No one noticed the prince slipping into the corrupted forest.
The glade itself was a small clearing where the canopy had thinned enough to admit weak sunlight. The grass grew in patches, struggling against the infection that spread through everything. But it was isolated, surrounded by trees too twisted to support observation posts.
Perfect for what he needed to do.
Legolas stood at the clearing's center and raised his hands. The theory played through his mind—light as song, radiance as frequency, the weaving of ambient energy into visible form. The First Age Elves had done this instinctively, their connection to the Two Trees making light-manipulation as natural as breathing.
He didn't have that connection. He had borrowed memories and absorbed knowledge and a soul that didn't belong to any category this world recognized.
He tried anyway.
Feel the light, the theory instructed. Not with eyes—with the part of you that remembers starlight. Every Elf carries echoes of the Trees within them. Find those echoes and amplify.
Legolas closed his eyes and reached inward. Legolas's memories offered something: a warmth at the center of his being, an ancient connection to light sources he'd never consciously touched. It was there. Faint, but present.
He pulled at it.
Nothing happened.
He pulled harder. Concentrated. Visualized the light flowing from that warmth, through his arms, into his hands, becoming visible radiance that would push back the darkness.
A flicker. So brief he almost missed it. A single spark of light between his palms, there and gone faster than he could react.
Legolas opened his eyes and stared at his empty hands. It had worked—barely, uselessly, but it had worked. The theory translated to practice. The ability was real.
He just had no idea how to control it.
The next attempt produced nothing. The third generated another flicker, slightly longer. The fourth went nowhere. By the fifth, frustration was building in his chest like pressure in a sealed container.
Stop thinking like a human, he told himself. Stop trying to force it. Elvish magic isn't about willpower—it's about harmony.
He took a breath. Let the frustration go. Tried to find the stillness that had led him to the Inheritance Space.
Sixth attempt. His hands warmed. The light-echoes stirred, responding to something that wasn't quite concentration and wasn't quite relaxation, but somewhere in between.
He reached for Legolas's instincts. The borrowed body had centuries of experience with things human minds couldn't grasp. Maybe if he stopped getting in the way...
Light erupted.
Not a flicker—an explosion. Radiance blasted from his palms in a sphere that expanded faster than he could track, blinding white-gold that seared through his enhanced vision. The force of it threw him backward, sending him tumbling across the grass until he hit a tree trunk hard enough to drive the air from his lungs.
Legolas lay there, gasping, as afterimages danced across his vision. His hands throbbed with heat he couldn't localize. His entire body felt wrong, like something essential had been drained from his core.
The light faded. The glade returned to its sickly twilight. And Legolas discovered he couldn't stand up.
His legs wouldn't respond properly. His arms shook when he tried to push himself upright. The warmth at his center—the light-echoes the theory had described—felt cold now, empty, like a tank run dry.
Spiritual exhaustion, some part of him recognized. You just spent resources you didn't know you had.
He'd done it. He'd actually performed light-weaving, channeled power that had been lost for ages, proven that his strange soul could access abilities beyond normal Elvish magic.
And the cost had nearly broken him.
Legolas managed to drag himself into a sitting position against the tree. His breath came in ragged gasps that his Elvish body shouldn't require. Every movement sent tremors through his limbs. The wrongness he felt wasn't physical injury—it was deeper than that, a hollowing-out of something he couldn't name.
How long to recover?
The theory hadn't covered this part. The First Age Elves had wielded light-weaving casually, effortlessly, their connection to the Trees providing unlimited reserves. Legolas didn't have that advantage. He'd forced a breakthrough using pure determination, and now he was paying the price.
Dawn light began to filter through the canopy—real light, weak and corrupted but present. Legolas watched it creep across the glade and tried to calculate how screwed he was.
Duties awaited him. Training. Patrols. Court appearances where every Elf in the realm would be watching for signs of the wrongness his father had proclaimed. He couldn't show up in this state. Couldn't explain why the prince who never tired was suddenly struggling to stand.
But he also couldn't stay here. Eventually, someone would come looking. Eventually, his absence would be noticed.
One step at a time. Just like learning to walk again.
Legolas braced himself against the tree trunk and pulled himself upright. His legs held—barely. His hands found purchase on bark that felt rougher than it should, sensory acuity diminished along with everything else.
The walk back to the palace took three times as long as the journey out. Every step required conscious effort. Every few minutes, he had to stop and lean against something, waiting for the trembling to subside.
But he made it. Through the lesser passages. Up the private stairs. Into his chambers before the palace fully woke.
Legolas collapsed into the chair by the window and watched the morning arrive through eyes that wouldn't quite focus properly. His hands still radiated faint warmth—the only sign that anything had happened beyond his imagination.
It had worked. The light-weaving was real. The Inheritance Space was real. He had abilities that no one in this age possessed, powers that could make a difference when the darkness came.
He just needed to learn to use them without nearly killing himself in the process.
The corrupted canopy caught the morning light and turned it poisonous green. Somewhere out there, Dol Guldur pulsed with malice. Somewhere out there, the Ring waited to be found.
And Legolas sat in his borrowed chambers, spiritually exhausted, wondering how many training sessions he could survive before someone noticed he was barely functional.
Worth it. Every cost was worth it, if it meant being prepared when the story reached its crisis.
At the edge of the glade he'd just fled, a figure stepped out from behind a twisted oak. Red hair caught what little light penetrated the canopy. Sharp eyes tracked the prince's stumbling retreat.
Tauriel, captain-candidate of the Woodland Guard, noted the strange behavior and filed it away for later consideration.
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