Transmigration in Mordor

The library was a mausoleum of knowledge. Zac searched the room with a near-religious minuteness, his gloved fingers brushing across centuries of dust. Every shelf, every corner was a mystery. For a moment, he wondered if the other bone towers rising out of the accursed valley also held secrets, forgotten libraries, or silent chambers of torture. The thought was as fascinating as it was frightening.

His exploration led him to a black iron chest, nestled beneath a collapsed table. Unlike the rest of the furniture, it had withstood the bite of time. Inside, scrolls, rolled and sealed, had miraculously survived. He unrolled one with infinite care. The vellum was thin, almost translucent, and covered with runes so complex they formed a living tapestry of darkness.

He began to read, or at least, to try. He didn't understand the words. But he felt them. Each symbol was a note in a symphony of power, a wave of energy flowing straight into his mind. The more he felt, the more an instinctive, non-intellectual understanding emerged.

"Do you feel that, Morngul?" he whispered, his breath a cloud in the icy air. "It's... older. Purer in its malice than anything we've seen."

The blade at his hip vibrated softly, a dark, contented purr. It drank in this knowledge, delighting in it. Zac realized he was before a fundamental magic, far beyond his own ability to master. He was a novice deciphering the grimoires of a dead god.

After a long stretch of study, lost in the contemplation of this shadowy power, a subtle breath, light as a feather, brushed his ear.

He froze.

Every muscle in his body tightened. His heart, which had been calm, thundered with a silent, deafening panic. Absorbed in his reading, lost in his inner dialogue with Morngul, he hadn't sensed the presence now accompanying him. An entity was in the room. Behind him. Its presence pressed upon him, a chill so deep it froze his marrow. Cold sweat streamed down his forehead and along his temple.

He snapped out of his stupor, struggling against the instinct to leap or strike. Slowly, with an agony that seemed to last forever, he turned his head, his eyes moving before his neck dared follow.

He saw it. A withered figure, almost a corpse, cloaked in robes so ancient they merged with the shadows. Its face was parchment skin stretched over a skull, but its eyes... its eyes were wells of pure darkness, holes in reality from which no light escaped. It was perfectly still, as if it had always been a part of the setting.

Zac turned fully, his movement slow and jerky, like a rusty automaton. The figure watched him. No, it didn't watch, it probed, dissecting his soul with clinical, indifferent precision. Then the muscles in its jaw flexed, its skin cracking like old clay, as if attempting a smile. Another wave of cold sweat swept over him.

"Do you enjoy my collection?" The voice was not a sound, but a whisper resonating directly in Zac's mind, a rustling of dead leaves in a tomb.

Zac stayed silent, his hand instinctively tightening around Morngul's hilt.

"Don't be so tense, little ephemeral," the voice resumed inside his skull. "If I had wanted your end, you would already be nothing more than a pinch of dust in my library."

"Who are you?" Zac managed to ask, his own voice hoarse and faint in the room's silence.

"I am the keeper of this knowledge. Some call me Uldor. The Regent of Silence. And you... you are an anomaly. A living being in my domain of death."

"I'm looking for a way out," Zac declared, trying to inject a hint of defiance into his tone.

Uldor's papery smile widened. "A way out? Naive. You don't even understand the nature of your cage. The thing you sensed in the deepest abyss is not merely a warden. It is the prison itself. She is your true enemy."

Zac's mind spun. "What do you mean?"

"For millennia, this entity has drawn in and kept here all creatures of evil. It drains their strength, feeds on their despair to grow. It withers, emaciates, and forces all evil life to reproduce, creating ever more vile amalgams... merely to keep feeding."

A wave of vertigo overcame Zac. His condition, his punishment, his struggle, all of it was only a detail, one more meal in the infinite banquet of a cosmic horror. He wasn't a prisoner. He was livestock.

"She didn't appreciate you trying to escape, by the way," Uldor added, his empty eyes seeming to gaze right through Zac.

"Escape?" Zac echoed, confused.

"You touched the skin of the outside world. She felt it. The earthquake that followed... that was her anger. A mere convulsion of her discontent."

Zac shivered, the memory of the perfect illusion stabbing at him. So that was it. Not a vision, but a failed escape that only irritated his cosmic jailer.

"Why are you telling me this?" Zac asked, wary.

"Because we share a common enemy. And because your arrival has created... an opportunity. I know a ritual. An ancient rite that could bind this creature, lock her away in darkness deeper even than these depths."

Zac's suspicion peaked. "And why should I believe you? What do you gain?"

Uldor's smile vanished, replaced by an expression of bottomless emptiness. "Let's say my silence has lasted long enough. I yearn for a change of scenery. And for that, the prison door must at least... be cracked open. Your success would be a promising start."

It was a clear trap, a manipulation barely veiled. But it was also the only lead he had.

"What do you need?" Zac asked, resigned.

"There is an altar, somewhere in this valley of bones," Uldor explained, his mental voice taking a more directive tone. "That is where the ritual must be performed. Unfortunately, my memory, eroded by the ages, no longer recalls its exact location. You must find it. Seek it, and notify me once it is discovered."

Zac did not trust him. Not for one second. Every word from Uldor was a lie sheathed in partial truths. But what could he do, refuse? Remain in this library until madness consumed him?

Uldor's offer, poisonous as it was, was the first glimmer of a plan, the first hint at a possible end. It was hope, and hope, even the most tainted, was a drug he could no longer resist.

Without another word, he stood, left the scrolls behind, and exited the tower. He returned to the vast, silent white expanse of the ossuary, a pawn accepting a new quest in a game whose rules he would never fully understand.