This is utterly delightful and I adore it so much.

I'm not sure if this is the quickest challenge response ever, but it's definitely the quickest this round! :)

You made this run through a "difficult" strand of the Matryoshka Challenge quickly, and produced a story that has touched my heart. I've just read through it again on SWG and love it so much. ❤️

I really liked this!! The snapshot format was great - the cut from finding the necklace to the Fall of Gondolin was awesome and hit really hard. The transition from realizing he’s lost the children (and everything else) to therefore having nothing to protect was a great emotional impact too. I loved how you wrote Mairon’s interactions with the ghosts, and the memories of Tyelpe and Maeglin!! Ah! I could picture them both so clearly. I also really enjoyed the detail of Mairon corroding in the damp, and how it affected his resonance. And the scene of him eating the spider made me laugh 🤣🤣 

Bittersweet and really enjoyable, thank you for writing! 

I suspect that some of this connects to other work of yours that I haven't read, but it is very effective throughout!

Amazing scenes with the ghost (is it Rian's?), the dragon, Gothmog, and Tinweriel. Among others,..

Oh my goodness!  I feel like no comment I leave can do this story justice - but not leaving one would be unthinkable.

So many little delights, like hidden gems - the friendship with Gothmog, the fallen necklace, the echoes which led him...

I was so terrified when I read him bleeding, and I thought the worst had happened at first!  But then his defiance, his hope!

The way the three of them were there to help when he woke in Mandos, to support him, to love him, to assure him that he was not alone and abandoned.  How the Valar slowly began to come to his side, or at least his aid.

This was so unexpected, every chapter I could not imagine where it would go!  💖