Transmigration in Mordor

Air rushed into his lungs in an inhalation so violent it was an assault. Zac surged from the primordial fountain in a spasm, spitting out water that had no taste, water as inert as the void from which he had just been torn. He fell to his knees in the shallow basin, his body wracked with tremors, his mind a maelstrom of contradictory sensations.

The time it took to collect himself was an eternity. He was not where he should have been. Not on the mountainside, not in any refuge he might have built. He was back at the beginning. At point zero. In the deepest cavern, before the fountain he had first discovered, as if to mock him. As if to tell him that every cycle, every escape, was just an illusion that would inevitably bring him back to his original cell.

He was mentally drained. The echo of the pure joy he had felt upon seeing Gondolin was still there, a radiant ghost dancing at the edge of his consciousness. But this ghost was chased away by a much more powerful terror: the memory of the eye of fire, of the abyss, and of the icy truth of the illusion. Joy. Terror. Joy. Terror. The cycle spun in his skull, a wheel of psychological torture that threatened to crush him.

To escape his own thoughts, he slipped under the cascade of light. The spectral water fell with a surprising force, a relentless hammering on his shoulders and skull. He hoped the physical sensation might drown out the inner din. He let himself go, leaning back, seeking the cold support of the cave wall.

But the wall was not there.

His back met emptiness. For a fraction of a second, the world dissolved. He tipped backward, off balance, and passed through the curtain of water as if it were a mere projection.

He found himself on the other side.

Here, the sound of the waterfall was muffled, as if heard through a thick pane of glass. And the light was different. Softer, less aggressive. Before him, woven into the very fabric of the waterfall, new inscriptions floated, their letters an opalescent white.

[Waterfall of Dissonance]

[Bearer's March]

[Healer's Hand]

[Flame of Anor]

Zac stood frozen, stunned. His mind, despite the chaos, immediately made the connection. Dissonance. The Mirror of Night. It was the same principle. An alternative version, a reflection.

Heart pounding, he passed back through the waterfall. The sound returned, deafening. The familiar, cruel inscriptions were there: `Waterfall of Night`, `Coward's Stealth`, `Healing Stagnation`, `Forge of Brutality`. He went back to the other side. The relative silence, the soft glow, and the three new skills. It was real.

A new door. A new rule of the game. But how to understand it?

He focused on the `Bearer's March`, trying to allocate his `Tears of Regret` to it. Nothing happened. The interface remained inert, the opalescent letters mocking him with their mere presence. He tried to spend his `Echoes of Ungoliant`. Failure. Nothing worked. The mechanisms he had learned to master were useless here.

He sat cross-legged behind the waterfall, in this secret sanctuary, and he thought. He spent hours there, perhaps days. He tried everything that came to mind: meditating, touching the inscriptions, trying to "activate" them by sheer force of will. Nothing.

Frustration gave way to a cold analysis, the only thing he had left.

The Waterfall of Night was the path of least resistance. It offered him immediate, tangible power in exchange for a terrible cost: his own corruption. Every point spent was a transaction, a piece of his soul exchanged for an advantage. It took in order to give.

'Dissonance,' he thought. The word itself was the key. It was the opposite.

If the first cascade was instant corruption, the second had to be... deferred redemption. The names of the skills were not random. `Bearer's March`, `Healer's Hand`, `Flame of Anor`. These were not passive states like "Coward" or "Stagnation." They were roles. Actions. Titles to be earned.

And then, he understood.

You didn't buy them. You became them.

The Cascade of Dissonance did not respond to the resources he had accumulated. It responded to his actions. To unlock the `Healer's Hand`, you didn't spend points, you had to… heal. To master the `Flame of Anor`, you didn't rely on brutality, but embodied that righteous violence.

It was the reverse path. It wasn't a matter of power, but of practice. Of discipline. To pursue his redemption, to cleanse his soul, he no longer had to simply survive.

He had to train. Hard. Relentlessly. Not to become stronger, but to become better.