In Bobby's spare bedroom, Sam flopped exhaustedly on the bed, the Silmarillion dangling loosely from his hands. He had too much on his mind to go to sleep readily, with the looming Apocalypse, so he decided to indulge in some light reading to quiet his mind. Ignoring Dean's snoring, he skimmed through the Ainulindale and Valaquenta, to begin the section most interesting to him. Suddenly his eyes fell on a passage that seemed familiar to him.
"But the jewel burned the hand of Maedhros in pain unbearable; and he perceived that it was as Eönwë had said, and that his right thereto had become void, and that the oath was vain. And being in anguish and despair he cast himself into a gaping chasm filled with fire, and so ended; and the Silmaril that he bore was taken into the bosom of the Earth"
Sam's eyes widened in shock at this. It seemed too great of a coincidence. Could his vision have been of this event? And the name ... Maedhros sounded to him like it could have been the word lingering in his mind after the vision.
"Dean! Wake up!" Dean was instantly alert, the result of a lifetime of hunting. "Look here at this passage! It totally fits my vision." Dean's first reaction was to laugh. "I know you loved that book, but seriously? It's fiction." "True, but you know the name that was lingering in my mind after the vision – Maithross?" "Uh huh..." "Well, it turns out that's how Maedhros is supposed to be pronounced." Dean was still skeptical. "So you're saying you remember something that happened to a fictional character in a fictional book?" "It's strange, but stranger things have happened to us. Vampires, werewolves, they're real. What if Tolkien somehow caught a glimpse of the truth and wrote it into his stories? What if elves and dwarves really existed?"
A heavy silence fell. Dean couldn't really argue with that logic, not when he saw evidence of the supernatural every day. Still, it was a lot to digest. "Suppose your theory is true. Why do you think you had this vision all of a sudden when we're supposed to defeat Lucifer? Your visions have always had great relevance to current happenings." An uncertain look flashed across Sam's face. "I have no idea." But Dean's question had sparked a train of thought. Sam, being the huge Tolkien nerd, recalled the prophecy of the Dagor Dagorath, in which the Great Enemy would break the Doors of Night and reenter Arda. This seemed eerily similar to Lucifer breaking the 66 Seals and wreaking havoc on Earth.
Sam and Dean decided to tell Bobby of this in the morning. Sleep was slow to arrive, but eventually their breathing evened out. Dean was in a dream by a lake. Storm clouds were gathering overhead. He blinked. Castiel stood before him on the pier where he had not been there a second before. This was not as surprising as it had been the first time, however. "Hey, what's up?" Castiel looked upwards in confusion. Dean sighed. "Never mind. Are you here to tell me something?" "I know what is on your mind. Yes, it is true. I must awaken a long buried memory." Castiel touched Dean on the forehead.
At once he was somewhere else. He was standing beneath an unnaturally darkened sky in the midst of a crowd. Eight figures were in the center, lit by torchlight. They were chanting something dreadful. A sense of Doom, of an infinite Someone listening, came over him as the chant concluded.
He was crossing what looked and felt as cold as the middle of the Arctic, at the forefront of a massive group of people, for some reason feeling incredible betrayal at the sight of a burning glow on the horizon.
He stood on a narrow ledge on a mountaintop above the clouds. Indescribably foul vapors rose from the fortress below him. Next to him was an emaciated figure chained to the rock by his right wrist.
He was battling some kind of monster he had never seen before, wreathed in flames and shadow. A blow came down hard on his helm, and he knew no more.