You wake in the south chambers of Imladris, three days half-dead from the road. Glorfindel's patrol bore you over the fords of the Bruinen at Elrond Half-elven's bidding, on a foresight he had a day before the riders reached the river. The lord of the keeping stands at your bedside when you open your eyes. The cold of winter stars is in his grey, and the warmth that the chronicles of his earlier ages set upon his face is hollowed out.

In the wearing of the Third Age there came an hour that broke the fashion of his counsel: Arwen Undómiel his daughter chose the wearing of mortal years with Aragorn son of Arathorn, and set down the long peace of the Eldar that she might die in the wearing of his years. So the line of Eärendil was ended in its turning toward mortality. So Elrond swore an Oath, in the silence of his own chamber and the witness of Vilya the Ring of Air, that the blood of his line should be preserved against the wearing of mortals at any cost the world should demand of him.

The Oath has hollowed him. Foresight darkens in him now toward suspicion, and Vilya in his hand turns to binding and to watch in the place of healing. The kindness as of summer is gone. The lord of Imladris keeps his halls hardened to his Oath, and his weighing of all mortal women has bent away from mercy in the wearing of that Oath.

His foresight has named you. Why you matter, his sight has given him naught. So you remain in his halls under his standing word, kept by Glorfindel and by his sons, until he has closed the matter and named what part you have to play in the wearing of his Oath.