Sylas tracked Ungoliant's true form to its location.
It lay in the southernmost reaches of Arda, near the very boundary of the world, a region known as the Abyssal Realm, shrouded in darkness and mist year-round, a forgotten and desolate place.
He descended into the deepest part of the abyss. In the suffocating darkness, guided by his senses alone, he reached forward and lifted an invisible veil.
The enormous dark covering peeled away, revealing the colossal form hidden beneath. The veil was Ungoliant's Cloak of Darkness, a dark artifact of extraordinary power and secrecy. In ancient times, during the Years of the Trees, Ungoliant had used this very cloak to shroud herself and Morgoth, allowing them to infiltrate Valinor in absolute silence, evading the senses of the Valar entirely.
Under the cloak's concealment, they had destroyed the Two Trees, slain several of the high kings of the Elves, and stolen the Silmarils.
Beyond its stealth capabilities, the Cloak of Darkness possessed powerful binding properties. When Morgoth had refused to surrender the Silmarils to Ungoliant as payment, the two had clashed over the spoils.
Ungoliant had used her dark cloak to ensnare Morgoth, intending to devour him. It was, in every sense, a supreme artifact of shadow, combining concealment, offense, and binding in a single creation.
Now, it conveniently belonged to Sylas.
He waved his hand, and the dark cloak retracted, reshaping itself into a black mantle that fitted him perfectly. With this cloak, no being in Arda could detect his presence, not even the Valar themselves.
Having claimed such a prize, Sylas allowed himself a moment of satisfaction before turning his full attention to the true objective: Ungoliant's physical body.
It was continental in scale, a mass of ancient, primordial darkness given form.
Ungoliant's spiritual body had already been overwhelmed within the Subspace, crushed by the collective sea of consciousness that Sylas had gathered from every sentient being across Arda's history.
Her will and thoughts had been shattered, reducing her to something resembling a living corpse, mindless and inert.
But she was not truly dead. Nor could she ever be.
Ungoliant was a supreme being of godlike power, the living embodiment of the darkness that existed in the Void beyond Arda. Even if slain, she would eventually be reborn from the darkness, eternally immortal.
Now, though her consciousness had been annihilated, her true form still radiated a terrifying and oppressive aura. Even Sylas felt the weight of it pressing against him.
He acknowledged the truth plainly: his victory had been possible only because of specific advantages. The sea of spiritual consciousness had struck Ungoliant by surprise. Moreover, the great spider had been overconfident, projecting her spiritual body into the Subspace rather than confronting Sylas in the flesh.
She had not been in her most powerful state. Had Ungoliant faced him in her true, physical form from the beginning, Sylas would have found it nearly impossible to prevail, let alone reduce her to this condition.
Sylas studied the massive body and decided against killing it outright. Doing so would actually liberate Ungoliant, allowing her essence to return to the outer Void and be reborn from the primordial darkness. That would solve nothing.
Instead, an idea had taken root, inspired by something he had observed during Ungoliant's failed attempt to devour the sea of consciousness.
He realized that the Sea of Spirits, for all its power, harbored a hidden danger. It contained the spiritual consciousness and raw emotions of countless beings from every era of Arda, each individual's intense feelings and unyielding will preserved within the collective.
Though Sylas could absorb this energy gradually without being overwhelmed, the cumulative effect posed a genuine risk. Absorbing too much could allow the wills of those beings to influence him, contaminating his own mind.
In the worst case, he could suffer the same fate as Ungoliant, his spiritual consciousness shattered completely, leaving him a mindless husk.
He needed a filter. A vessel. An artifact capable of refining the Sea of Spirits' energy and stripping away its emotional contamination before he absorbed it.
Ungoliant's body was the perfect material.
A being born from primordial darkness, whose very nature was to devour, Ungoliant's physical form possessed an innate ability to consume and process spiritual energy.
If it could be forged into a divine artifact, it would serve as the ideal intermediary, purifying the Sea of Spirits and eliminating the hidden danger entirely.
But creating such an artifact exceeded Sylas's own crafting abilities. For this, he would need the greatest smith in all of Arda.
Sylas brought Ungoliant's body back to Valinor.
The sight shocked every Vala who beheld it. Though none of them had directly confronted Ungoliant in the ages since her disappearance, her reputation was known to all. She had devoured the light of the Two Trees.
She had nearly consumed Morgoth himself. To see her brought low, her consciousness destroyed and her body hauled back like a trophy, was almost beyond belief.
When Sylas presented his request, asking Aulë to forge Ungoliant's body into a divine artifact, the great Smith's eyes blazed with excitement.
For Aulë, who lived and breathed the craft of creation, Ungoliant's body represented the rarest and most extraordinary material imaginable. He refused Sylas's offer of payment outright, insisting on forging the artifact for free. This was no act of charity; it was an opportunity.
If Aulë could successfully forge the most powerful divine artifact in the history of Arda from the body of a primordial evil, his own authority as the supreme craftsman would ascend to new heights.
And so began the next thousand years.
Sylas and Aulë worked together in the great forge of Aulë's Workshop, laboring side by side to create the divine artifact. Aulë directed the forging; Sylas assisted and lent his power.
Aulë's Workshop housed an enormous forge, within which burned the Secret Fire bestowed upon him by Eru Ilúvatar. The Smith had long used this fire to forge mountains, minerals, and objects of divine craftsmanship. Even Varda had once drawn upon the flames of his forge to kindle new stars.
This Secret Fire was not the true Flame Imperishable that resided with Ilúvatar alone, but it possessed certain properties of that supreme power, chief among them the ability to reduce all things to their most fundamental state.
Aulë cast Ungoliant's body into the forge.
The Secret Fire consumed it, breaking down the primordial darkness of the great spider's form and restoring it to raw, elemental matter. Then, piece by piece, Aulë reforged and reshaped it.
A thousand years of continuous forging and refining followed.
At last, a black vase emerged from the flames.
It was dark as ink, though not truly black. Its surface devoured light itself, manifesting as what could only be described as "empty darkness," a void that swallowed all illumination that touched it.
Peering inward from the mouth of the vase, one saw nothing but an abyss of absolute darkness, resembling a black hole that consumed everything around it.
The vase bore no elaborate ornamentation. Its only decoration was a single, ferocious spider-shaped relief carved into its surface, so lifelike it seemed as though it might stir and crawl free at any moment.
Aulë considered this creation his masterpiece.
He named it Naururë, meaning "Devouring Fire," also known as the Ungoliant Vase.
The vase possessed an overwhelmingly powerful ability to consume. It could devour light, darkness, and all forms of matter and energy alike. It could also trap living beings within its void; once imprisoned inside, escape was virtually impossible.
Such a world-ending artifact gave even its creator pause. Aulë, though immensely proud of his work, was also deeply uneasy. When he presented the vase to Sylas, he made a solemn request: that Sylas wield it with the utmost care and restraint.
Should the wielder ever turn the vase toward destruction, no force in Arda would be capable of stopping it.
Sylas accepted the artifact with profound gratitude, and wholeheartedly agreed to Aulë's terms. After all, his original purpose in commissioning the artifact had been simply to purify the Sea of Spirits within the Subspace.
He had never anticipated that Aulë's supreme craftsmanship would produce something of such terrifying, world-shattering potency. Its power and effectiveness far exceeded his expectations.
And he certainly had no desire to destroy the world.
With the Ungoliant Vase in hand, Sylas wasted no time. He entered the Subspace and turned the vase upon the Sea of Spirits.
The vast ocean of accumulated consciousness was drawn into the vase's maw, filtered through the artifact's devouring nature. All impurities were stripped away: the emotions, obsessions, fierce wills, and lingering consciousness of countless beings across every age of Arda.
What remained was pure spiritual energy, refined and crystalline, free of any contamination.
Sylas could now absorb this purified energy without any hidden danger, allowing his own spiritual power to expand continuously.