Transmigration in Mordor

Weeks passed, a succession of cycles without dawn or dusk. Zac spent them wandering the sepulchral valley, driven by a methodical obsession to explore every bone tower, every mausoleum of silence. He mapped the demented necropolis in his mind, becoming the only living being to know its darkest corners.

At last, in the heart of a square paved with giant skulls, he found it: the altar. Exactly as Uldor had described it, one smooth, cold slab of obsidian, floating a few centimeters above the ground, upheld by an invisible force. It was covered in runes that seemed to drink in the faint ambient light.

Zac read them carefully, Morngul vibrating at his hip, hungry for magic. He had no intention of helping Uldor. Unleashing such a being, with his legions of endless specters, would be a catastrophe for Arda, a scourge greater than Morgoth's armies.

No. He would use the ritual, this concentration of power, for his own ends. This wasn't his first attempt. He had learned to sense the melody of runes, to pick out discordant notes and rewrite them with his blade's tip. He was confident. The primordial entity that had driven him mad was a problem for another time. Today, he would rid himself of Uldor and his legions once and for all. A dark jubilation, a heady intoxication of power, seized him as he contemplated his flawless plan.

With the confidence of a master artisan, he struck the altar skillfully with his blade. The metallic clatter against obsidian was the only sound in the eternal silence. He rewrote the runes, altering their curves, modifying their connections, transforming the song of release into a lament of damnation.

When he finished, the melody of the runes swelled, shifting, now the target was no longer the prison, but the prisoner. Soon, Uldor would descend into the deeps, taking his armies with him.

Zac stepped back, a wicked smile on his lips, savoring his victory.

That's when he heard footsteps. Slow, deliberate, the sound of a scepter tapping on bone.

Behind him, Uldor advanced, aided by a long staff of bone and sickly glowing jewels.

"'You really put your whole heart into it, didn't you?'" murmured a voice in Zac's mind, every word a shard of ice. "'It's perfect. Every step of your betrayal was a note in my own symphony.'"

Zac froze, his triumph turning to ice in his veins.

"'Do you truly believe you can deceive a mind that studied these runes before your race learned fire?'" Uldor continued, drawing closer. "'That was my plan all along. I laced those scrolls with hidden scripts, invisible traps for a novice like you. I am a master of this art, little ephemeral. But the Entity, in its jealousy, stripped me of the power to use rune magic. I can understand them, create them… but not activate them. I needed someone from outside. A catalyst. You.'"

The ritual fully activated. The specters nearby, motionless for millennia, stirred. A collective whisper, the sound of a thousand souls awakening, swept the valley. The cavern itself seemed to move. Zac went pale. He had been the pawn, the key.

Uldor spread his arms, his withered face lifted toward Ancalagon's skeleton. "COME TO ME!" he projected into the minds of every creature in the necropolis. "RETURN TO ME MY POWER!"

Specters took flight. From every direction, torrents of spirits converged on Uldor, who began to absorb them into a vortex of screaming light. Zac, panicked, fled at full speed, fear clutching his gut, now just an insect in a storm.

For what seemed an eternity, the ghosts were drawn in. Then, as the last specter was consumed, Uldor's physical body turned to dust.

Zac stopped dead, confused. An intoxicating sensation flooded his soul, a mountain's worth of pure Echoes, a colossal reward.

'Did I… did I kill him?'

He stood stunned, frozen in incomprehension. Then, from the pile of dust, a soul emerged. A vast, mighty soul, radiating the presence of a king of the dead. Uldor's true form. The primordial spirit drank deeply the death-charged air.

Then it screamed.

A scream made of the suffering of millions of dead and thousands of years imprisoned, an overwhelming shockwave. Zac was swept away like a dead leaf, his body hurled violently against a wall of bone. He felt his own bones crack, his eardrums burst. Hot blood streamed from his nose, ears, and eyes. He immediately triggered his healing skill at full power, a greenish light enveloping him as he fought off unconsciousness.

In the distance, Uldor's scream spread, a wave of icy energy sweeping all before it, a revolt against millennia of captivity. And in pure terror and incomprehension, Zac saw that wherever the wave passed, something else began to move.

The mountains of bones were starting to tremble.