Transmigration in Mordor

It was not a scream. It was the first word of a new age of darkness, a shockwave that struck reality and shattered it. The surge of pure, glacial breath swept across the necropolis, and the bones answered the call of their new master.

At first, there was a buzzing, a seismic shiver running through the mountains of skeletons, the sound of billions of bone fragments vibrating as one. Then the buzzing grew to a rumble, and the mountains began to rise. Everywhere, in the deepest abysses, the breath of death was lifting the carcasses. The worms, the crawlers, the nameless things Zac had petrified in lava heard the order. The black rock that imprisoned them like amber fractured and then burst in showers of fire and ash. The creatures, sheathed in a spectral glow, stirred to life, their shattered bodies animated by a new will. Every fragment of severed worm was now a distinct entity, a serpent of bone and hate.

At the heart of the solidified lava lake, where thousands of creatures had perished in their agony, the horror reached its peak. A gigantic abomination, an ulcer of flesh, chitin, and molten stone, broke the surface. Dozens of worm heads, hundreds of crawler limbs, and even several fused Balrog silhouettes heaved up into the cavern, an unprecedented terror rising until it scraped the ceiling. It was the most grotesque atrocity Arda had ever seen born, a deity of blasphemy, its body still threaded with veins of burning lava.

The Balrogs, too, rose again, the fire in their hearts rekindled by necromancy, an even more terrifying fire shining in their empty sockets. Armed with this resurrected army of cruelty, Uldor, in his spectral colossus form, wasted no time. He soared through the cavern in a silent flight, heading for the spider's nest where, Zac guessed in horror, an apocalyptic scenario was unfolding as well.

All the deep places of Mordor had become a battlefield. A war of titans had just begun, between Uldor's will and the hunger of the primordial Entity.

Zac ran. He ran using every ounce of his strength, his body still broken by Uldor's scream, his healing skill desperately working to hold his flesh together. He took advantage of the nameless chaos, this moment outside of time when the gods' attention was elsewhere, to escape. His plan had failed in the most spectacular way, but it had given him an opportunity. He was alone. Alone to carve his way to the surface. Part of him hoped Uldor would perish, another, more selfish part, prayed that this battle would last long enough to let him flee.

He ran without stopping. Even out of breath, he pressed on, ignoring the burn in his lungs, the pain in his legs. He had endured the worst physical and mental tortures. His agonized body was no longer an obstacle. It was a tool, and he would use it to the last. His teeth clenched until his gums bled. Amidst the surrounding chaos, his blade Morngul sang on his hip, delighted by the feast of death, the total war, and craving to join in. Zac ignored its call.

Days slipped by, a heedless flight measured by the tremors of the mountain and the cries of suffering and chaos rising from the deep. The very bowels of Mordor seemed to scream.

At last, he arrived, at the summit of the volcano, the summit of Mount Doom.

And he saw it. The sky on the horizon. Majestic blue, pure, infinite. For the second time since entering these cursed lands, he saw the light of the world. He fell to his knees, spent, his body refusing to obey. It was not a tidal wave, but an inner collapse. The walls of his will, raised at such a cost, crumbled, letting the ghosts of his deeds swarm the ruins of his soul. The specter of his original cowardice danced with that of his newly acquired cruelty. He saw the thread of his story, not as an ascent from darkness, but as a downward spiral, each loop bringing him closer to the very sin he thought he was fleeing. Every choice, every sacrifice, every murder had only tightened the chains of his own damnation.

And then, through the veil of his own exhaustion, he saw it. Not an illusion, rather a mirage wavering on the horizon, a scar on the blue sky. The silhouette of Gondolin.

His heart stopped. The image sharpened, not by any effort of his own but like a tide receding to reveal the wreck. It was not the glorious city, the ivory spire of his first vision. It was a skeleton of marble, a raw wound on the landscape, its towers broken like bones, its plazas drowned under a shroud of saltwater. An aquatic cemetery bathed in pitiless light. An infinite sadness, so pure and deep it was physical, settled in his chest, a cold weight that left him breathless. Nothing lasts forever. Least of all beauty.

But then confusion, like a slow venom, seeped into his grief. Gondolin in glory, then Gondolin in ruins. Temporally, it was heresy. Impossible.

And there, atop the world and on the edge of despair, the truth—a truth so simple and so monstrous—exploded in his mind.

In the depths of Mordor, time is not a river. It is a swamp. A mire where centuries ooze by like mud. A year in the abyss... how long on the surface? A hundred years? A thousand?

Memories collided in his skull, a chain reaction of horror. The necropolis gate he'd felt move. The dozens of Balrogs, sleeping, sensed in the deepest layers. And the earthquake. The earthquake he himself had triggered, trying to escape, touching the skin of the world.

His earthquake.

He had sounded the alarm. He had pulled these horrors out of their millennial slumber. The Balrogs had taken the path to the surface. They had joined Morgoth's army. To destroy Gondolin.

This is my fault.

He had not been a witness. He was the catalyst. Not a victim of fate, but its unwitting architect. The fall of Gondolin, the drowning of the elves' last great light, the deaths of thousands... it was him.

His knees buckled. He collapsed onto the ground, face pressed into the hot, grainy ash, and a soundless scream, a spasm of pure spiritual agony, tore at his throat.

Why? Why did every attempt to rise only drag him lower? He had struggled, he had suffered, he had fed on hatred to survive, but it was as though the universe itself, in a cosmic and cruel joke, had decided that each of his choices would be the wrong one. Rage rose, a wave of fire that scorched the despair. He pulled himself up to his knees and screamed. A scream that had nothing left of humanity, a beast's howl, wild and broken, a roar of hatred at his own stupidity, his bad luck, his existence.

There is no redemption. There is no escape.

And at the bottom of this absolute despair, something else awaited. As his scream faded, he felt his soul stir, the tainted part, rooted within. In the end, I didn't succeed, he thought, with a strange, terrifying clarity.

He stood. The chaos of his emotions had vanished, replaced by an end-of-the-world calm. His gaze was cold, unflinching. He was resigned. Terribly determined.

He walked slowly to the gaping edge of the crater, to the mouth of Mount Doom. The power inside was growing, ready to erupt. His blade, Morngul, buzzed with anticipation, craving to be wielded.

Zac raised his weapon, the light of the sky glinting one last time on its cursed surface. He looked at it, not as a weapon, but as the symbol of all his mistakes.

And he let it go.

He could have sworn he felt a psychic shockwave, a feeling of pure betrayal emanating from the blade as it tumbled into the void. It fell, not in slow motion, but in sudden, absolute silence, before piercing the surface of the lava without a sound, swallowed by the heart of the world.

He was resigned. From now on, he would carve his own path, right or wrong, but it would be his. The only one left to him.

With a weary gesture, he removed his Balrog bone armor. Each piece clattered to the ground with a sinister sound, the breaking of a shell. He was naked again, vulnerable under the immense sky.

He had no time to feel the Entity's summons, nor to consider what came next.

Clutching his battered bag and cloak around him, the only remnants of his journey, he stepped forward.

He was not ending his life. He was ending the game.