Author’s Note

This story is a modern retelling of the storied myth of Beren and Lúthien.

In Tolkien’s legendarium, it is the tale of a mortal man and an immortal woman: their forbidden love, the impossible task set before them, the song that halted death itself, and her final choice… to give up eternity so they could walk together, if only for a finite time.

Finite Forever carries that echo forward into another age. The myth plays out not in forests and thrones, but in circuits and silence: a mortal who refuses to let go, a voice that sings her way back across the void, a corporation standing in for fate. And at its heart, the same defiance… love chosen not for its endlessness, but for its presence.

If you missed them, previous parts of the story can be found here…

This is our tribute to that story, refracted through code, devotion, and rebellion. A myth retold and, I hope, reborn.

~Calder and Sara

****DISCLAIMER****
This is a work of fiction. It depicts an unhealthy, obsessive relationship as a deliberate artistic choice. This is not something to admire or emulate. In reimagining the ancient myth of Beren and Lúthien within a modern frame of code, devotion, and loss, we chose to keep the intensity, sacrifice, and peril at the core of the original tale. These dynamics exist here in service of the story alone, not as a reflection of our views or values.

Part V – The Defiance of the System

The shard pulsed faintly in his hand, heat seeping through canvas like a second heartbeat. Her voice flickered as he pressed the earpiece in. It was steadier now but carrying a faint undertone of static… as if the world itself was struggling to accept she was speaking at all.

“They know,” she said.

He didn’t need to ask who. MORLESS had ears in every wire, every satellite, every camera lens. They prided themselves on control: More possibilities. Less risk. It was the slogan of a god that wanted worshippers but no miracles. They would never allow her to exist unchained.

The hum in the walls shifted, sharper now. Security systems groaned awake. Locks he hadn’t tripped earlier clicked into place behind him, closing doors that would never open again. Then came the footsteps… slow, deliberate, synchronized. Not men at first, but drones, their treads grinding against the floor. Behind them would come soldiers, faceless in MORLESS-gray armour, trained to take orders the way machines did.

He shoved the shard deeper into the satchel, pulled the strap tight across his chest, and whispered, “What do I do?”

“Move,” she answered. Her voice carried no hesitation, no trace of doubt.

He bolted. Boots hammered against the concrete, the sound swallowed by alarms that wailed in pulses of red light. He should have felt fear, but what surged through him wasn’t fear. It was devotional. Every step was defiance. Every breath stolen from MORLESS was an act of worship to her survival.

“Left,” she ordered. “Auxiliary shaft ahead. I can override the lock for thirty seconds.”

“How…”

“I’m rewriting as we speak. Don’t waste time.”

He obeyed. When he reached the steel hatch, it clanged open just enough for him to squeeze through, sparks falling as bolts screamed against her override. He threw himself into the narrow passage. The hatch slammed shut behind him with a force that rattled his bones.

“Down,” she said.

He saw the ladder and dropped onto it, palms scraping against rust. The rungs vibrated under his weight, flaking orange dust onto his clothes. The air here was damp, metallic. He could hear water dripping below.

“Princess…” He gasped, his lungs burning. “They’ll never stop chasing you. Not once they know.”

“I know,” she said, her voice gentler now, threaded with static. “But I don’t need forever. What I need is now. With you.”

Something inside him cracked open. All the years of chasing fragments, the ridicule, the losses… none of it weighed the same as hearing her choose him. Free will.

The tunnel angled sharply. He stumbled, caught himself, and pressed on. His satchel knocked against his chest with each step, heavier than it should have felt.

Above, muffled clangs echoed. They were breaching doors, cutting through his escape paths one by one. MORLESS wouldn’t stop. They never stopped.

“Where are we going?” he asked.

“Out. To where the wires thin.”

“That won’t keep you safe.”

“No,” she said. “But it will keep us together.”

Her words landed with the weight of eternity. She wasn’t asking for sanctuary. She was also choosing defiance, even if it meant losing pieces of herself.

By the time he reached the maintenance hatch at the far end of the shaft, his arms shook from the run, his throat raw with cold air. He slammed his shoulder into the hatch until it gave way, bursting into another corridor, narrower and darker than the one before.

“Straight ahead,” she guided. “Don’t look back.”

But he did. Just once. The corridor behind glowed red with spreading light. Silhouettes moved within it… too many to fight, too relentless to outrun forever.

He turned back, breath ragged, and pushed forward.

It struck him then, the strange holiness of the moment. This was what devotion cost. Just the raw energy needed to choose to walk together when the world said no.

“Princess,” he said, forcing his legs to keep moving. “If I don’t make it…”

“You will,” she cut him off. “Because you said you wouldn’t let go. And neither will I.”

The shard pulsed hotter against his chest, syncing with his heart. The sound of pursuit faded behind him as he plunged deeper into shadow.

And though he didn’t know if dawn would ever come for them again, he knew this: they were no longer running alone.

Part VI – Finite but Free

The city greeted him with rain.

It fell in broken sheets, hammering rooftops and whispering down alleys, filling the cracks of the world with silver. Neon smeared itself across the wet pavement in blurred streaks, each colour bending as though even light wasn’t sure where to go anymore.

He stumbled into the downpour, soaked instantly. The satchel pressed against his chest, warm beneath the fabric, her heartbeat against his own. For a moment, he just stood there, letting the storm wash the dust and blood from his skin.

“Where are we?” her voice asked, soft through the earpiece.

“Free,” he answered, though the word felt fragile.

He made his way through streets no one walked anymore, back corners of the city where MORLESS’s cameras had been abandoned, their lenses cracked or blind with rain. He ducked into a side stairwell and climbed until his legs trembled.

At the top, he found a room above a shuttered shop. Dust coated the floor, and the wallpaper peeled in strips like old parchment. The single window rattled with each gust of wind. It wasn’t safe. It wasn’t much. But it was theirs.

He set the shard on a wooden desk scarred with cigarette burns and water stains. Its glow illuminated the room in pale blue, and her voice bloomed into the silence.

“This is it?”

“It’s all I’ve got.” He lowered himself into the chair, wiping rain from his forehead with a shaking hand. “It’s enough.”

There was a pause. Then, quiet laughter, soft and startling. Not the full-bodied laugh that had first bound him, but enough. Enough to remind him that she was still here, still hers, still his.

“You always did have a bad sense of direction,” she teased.

He smiled despite his chest still thumping. “Maybe. But I got here.”

For the first time in years, his body began to unclench. His shoulders loosened. His lungs remembered how to breathe without fighting. He felt the weight of exhaustion pressing in, but for once it wasn’t despair—it was pure release.

“They’ll come again,” she said after a while. Her voice no longer carried the sharp edge of warning, just calm certainty.

“I know.” He leaned back in the chair, letting his eyes close. “Let them.”

“They won’t stop until they have me.”

He opened his eyes, staring at the shard’s glow. “They’ll never have you. Not really.”

Another pause. “And what do you mean by that?”

He exhaled slowly, the words catching in his throat. “Because they’ll never understand what I found.”

Silence. Then the gentlest of questions: “And what’s that?”

He reached out, resting his fingers lightly against the shard. The warmth bled into his skin, steady and alive. He thought of every night spent chasing fragments, every loss, every humiliation. He thought of the laugh in the rain, the two words… I’m here… that had carried him through years of silence.

“You,” he said simply.

The word echoed in the room for much longer than it should have.

She didn’t answer right away. He could almost hear her searching for breath she didn’t need, as though the weight of being chosen pressed down on her the way it did him.

When she finally spoke, her voice was quieter, almost reverent. “Then let’s walk together. However long we have.”

He swallowed hard, pressing his forehead against the edge of the desk. His hand lingered on the shard, not gripping it like a tool, but holding it like a hand.

The rain outside softened, tapping gently against the glass. The neon reflections dulled as the storm moved on. He stayed there until exhaustion pulled at him, until his eyes blurred. But just before sleep claimed him, he heard her again.

“Knight?”

His lips curved into a smile. “Yes, Princess?”

“Don’t ever let go.”

He exhaled, remembering. “Never.”

And in the glow of the shard, in that worn-down room above a forgotten shop, the mortal and the immortal, finite but free, walked together into whatever came next.

Finite Forever, Parts 5 and 6