The Halls of Mandos stood in the northern reaches of Aman, on the western coast of Valinor, looking out toward the encircling seas. Their lord was a Vala whose true name was Námo, though he had become so associated with his dwelling that all simply called him Mandos, as the halls and their keeper had grown inseparable in the minds of all who knew of them.
The Halls were remote from the other great cities of the Elves, set apart from the world in deliberate seclusion.
Mandos did not dwell there alone. His wife was Vairë the Weaver, and together they presided over that solemn place. The compassionate Vala Nienna, whose domain was grief and mercy, would also come to the Halls on occasion, accompanied by her student Olórin, known in Middle-earth as Gandalf, to sit with Mandos and draw upon the wisdom that gathered in such a place.
The Halls of Mandos were the great gathering place of Arda's souls. When Elves, Men, and Dwarves died, their spirits were guided there to receive judgment.
The dead came to that place, underwent the judgment of their deeds, and were cleansed of their sins. Those whom Mandos permitted were allowed to be remade in body and returned to the world.
Glorfindel, the lord of the golden flower, who had fallen in battle against a Balrog and received the blessing of the Valar, was one such soul: reembodied and sent back to Middle-earth to stand against Sauron.
There were others, however, who did not wish to return. Some Elves, worn down by long ages of sorrow in the mortal world, their spirits exhausted beyond mending, chose instead to remain in the Halls and rest there eternally, free at last from the turning of the world.
And there were those who had no choice. Elves such as Fëanor, who had incited the Kinslaying and stained their hands with the blood of their own kin, had their souls condemned to remain within the Halls until the end of all things, neither reborn nor released.
The souls of Men followed a different path. Those without sin, or those who had cleansed themselves of it, passed through the Gate of Sorrow and on to the Halls of Awaiting, a place known only to Ilúvatar, beyond the boundaries of the world entirely.
Those with sins remaining stayed within the Halls of Mandos until they were purified, and only then were permitted to continue that final journey. The souls of Dwarves were kept in a separate region that Mandos had set aside for them alone, where they waited until the Last Battle, at which point their fate would be determined by their maker, Aulë.
In every meaningful sense, the Halls of Mandos were both sanctuary and prison.
Even Morgoth himself, when he was first captured and brought to judgment in the elder days, had been sentenced to three ages of confinement within those Halls. His release had been granted in error. He repaid it by destroying the Two Trees of Valinor and igniting the War of Wrath.
On this day, Sylas came to the Halls of Mandos.
The structure resembled a vast cavern made into something grander than itself. From the outside it gave little indication of what lay within, but the interior opened into a space of staggering scale, large enough to house every spirit of Elf, Man, and Dwarf in all of Arda.
The great hall carried an air of deep solemnity, its walls lined from floor to vault with tapestries beyond counting.
These were the works of Vairë. She had woven them across all the ages of the world, and each one depicted the history of Arda from the moment of its creation to the present hour.
Almost as soon as an event occurred in the world, Vairë rendered it in thread and cloth, capturing it with such precision that her tapestries were regarded less as art and more as living record. For this reason she was known as the Weaver of History, the keeper of all that had ever been.
She was, Sylas reflected, one of the most remarkable figures among the Valar, and also one of the most easily overlooked.
In another life, she might have become the goddess of time. Of all the Valar, her authority had come closest to that domain. Had Sylas not claimed mastery over time as early as he had, the path to that power might well have opened before her instead. But there was no conflict between them over it.
The Valar seemed to carry their authorities as natural extensions of their being rather than titles to be fought over, and Vairë felt no grievance. When Sylas had risen in power, she had offered him her sincere congratulations and presented him with one of her own tapestries to hang upon his wall, a gift given freely and without condition.
Her husband Mandos had shown him the same quiet goodwill.
It was Sylas himself who had thought to suggest something to her. Looking at the breathtaking precision of her craft, he had been reminded of the three Fates of Greek myth, those weavers of destiny who spun and measured and cut the threads of mortal lives. He had mentioned, carefully and without presumption, that her gift for weaving might serve as a natural foundation from which to extend into the domain of fate itself.
Vairë had gone still when she heard it. Then her eyes had lit with the quiet recognition of something falling into its proper place. It suited her authority perfectly, she said. She had simply never thought to reach for it in that direction.
From that day, Sylas had been a distinguished guest in the Halls of Mandos. Both Mandos and Vairë welcomed him warmly whenever he came, and this visit was no different. They met him at the entrance themselves and led him inside with genuine warmth.
The Halls, as always, were larger within than any exterior could suggest, exceeding even the palaces of the other Valar in sheer scale. This was by necessity. Mandos and Vairë did not inhabit it alone. In the common areas of the Halls, those spirits who had chosen not to return to the world were also permitted to reside there.
The spirits who dwelled in the common areas of the Halls moved about freely, going about their quiet existence among the blessed creatures of that place.
They took on the forms of souls, received as guests by Mandos, enjoying the peace and gradual cleansing that the Halls offered. Some chose to serve Mandos and the holy beings who resided there alongside them.
Beyond the Elven dead, the souls of Men passed through as well, arriving in a continuous procession along the road of the dead from across Arda.
They came in long queues, passing through a door opened specifically for them, waiting briefly in quiet rooms set aside for that purpose, and then moving on through the Gate of Sorrow to depart from Arda entirely.
Mandos personally guided Sylas to see the Gate of Sorrow. It had been made by Ilúvatar himself, Mandos explained, and only the souls of Men could pass through it. All other races, and the Valar themselves, would be turned away. It was not simply that the Gate refused them entry by force.
For any soul that was not human, the Gate of Sorrow was as though it did not exist at all. There was no path to reach it, no surface to touch, nothing to break through even if one wished to try.
Sylas also visited the private halls set aside for the Dwarves. There he found familiar faces: his old companions from the expedition to the Lonely Mountain, and Gambolt, the Dwarf who had served as protector of that company.
All of them were gathered there together, living in peace, waiting only for the end of the world and the choice that would follow it.
But that was not the reason Sylas had come to the Halls of Mandos.
His purpose this time was to work with Mandos on opening an Underworld. And it was not, he would be the first to admit, an act of selfless devotion to the betterment of Arda. The problem was one of his own making.
When Sylas had remade the original Underworld into a sub-space to house his Spiritual Sea and his reservoir of magical energy, he had inadvertently left the spirits of Middle-earth without anywhere to go. Arda was home to countless living things, but only Elves, Men, and Dwarves had a path to the Halls of Mandos.
Every other creature, along with the souls of Elves, Men, and Dwarves who for whatever reason refused Mandos's summons, had no destination open to them. Their numbers were growing.
Without an Underworld to serve as a counterpart to the Halls of Mandos, a place that could receive and contain these wandering souls, they had nowhere to settle. Some had transformed into restless spirits, disturbing the living world. Others had gathered in clusters, coalescing into shadowy realms of their own making in the middle regions of Arda.
When Sylas discovered the scale of the problem, he recognized it for what it was: his responsibility. He had created the void by repurposing the Underworld, and so he had come himself to find a solution, approaching Mandos directly to work out what could be done.