Transmigration in Mordor

Hell was a pulse. An endless cycle of burning flesh, calcifying bones, and silent screams, followed by the violence of a forced rebirth in a pool of black fire. Each death was an eternity of pain, each resurrection a return to the consciousness of agony. Zac was no longer a man. He was a thing. A doll of flesh and blood, broken and glued back together, again and again, for the mere pleasure of a nightmare god.

His mind, once a labyrinth of fear and hope, had become a plain of ashes. The memories of his former life, the glow of Gondolin, all had dissolved in the furnace of his suffering. He no longer thought. He no longer felt. He simply existed, a minimal consciousness trapped in a loop of pure sensation. Madness was no longer a threat; it was a state of being, a morbid peace in self-annihilation.

After a time that could have been a century, the Balrog grew weary. The thing before it no longer moved. It no longer screamed. It allowed itself to be consumed, was reborn without a spasm, and awaited the next breath of fire with the passivity of stone. The game had become boring. Despair, so savory at first, had lost its taste. The demon contemplated its prey one last time, an empty shell bathing in its own agony, then, with a contemptuous snarl, it turned, ready to leave, to return to its millennial slumber.

And it was at that precise moment that something happened.

The empty shell shattered. In the nothingness of his mind, where pain had erased everything, Zac had schemed. In that space between deaths, he had hatched a plan. Not with thoughts, but with pure instinct, a cunning born of madness itself.

He straightened up and ran.

Not a flight of escape, but an explosion of speed. The `Forge of Brutality` pulsed in his veins, not for strength, but for swiftness, a celerity that defied the senses, turning his legs into pistons of shadow and fury. He was a flash of darkness, speeding through the tunnel.

The Balrog's rage returned instantly, more violent, more insulted than ever. It had been duped. This insect had dared to feign annihilation to deceive it. The demon's howl shook the foundations of the world. The hunt resumed, but this time, it was no longer a game. It was an execution.

Zac rushed towards his very first sanctuary, the place where the cascade of opaline light fell into its basin. The Balrog followed, an avalanche of fire and fury, destroying the rocks in its path, carving out the tunnel in an absolute din, clearing a path for its titanic body to pass.

He arrived in the cavern of the sanctuary. Zac stood there, upright, resigned. Morngul was in his hand, but low, passive. He waited.

This time, the Balrog would give him no chance. It prepared itself, gathering all its hatred, all its power. In a hoarse, endless inhalation, it drew in the air, the shadows, the very light, concentrating them in its chest. Then, the black fire erupted. A torrent of incandescent nothingness, a wave of pure destruction that crashed down on Zac.

He was swallowed once more. But this time, he had chosen it.

The force of the black fire, concentrated on a single point, did not just consume him. It exploded the wall behind him, pulverizing the rock, annihilating the very source from which the mystical water flowed silently.

At that precise moment, something ancient and powerful was unleashed. The seal was broken. The water, held back for eons, burst forth in a powerful and uncontrollable torrent from the gaping hole created by the Balrog's fire. It was no longer a cascade. It was a deluge.

The Balrog, caught in complete surprise, was struck by the wave. The mystical water, the antithesis of its nature of fire and shadow, enveloped it. Deep, hoarse cries of pure pain echoed through the depths of Mordor, sounds no living being had heard for ages. Its flames sizzled, hissed, and were extinguished in bursts of black steam. Its body of shadow seemed to dissolve, like salt in water. It was swallowed and carried away by the torrent, struggling, screaming, its power annihilated by this primordial force.

Zac, who had had time to reallocate his `Tears of Regret` to his healing skill before enduring the black fire, slowly rose. He stood on the banks of the lake that had just formed in the cavern, his skill soothing his last wounds. He brandished Morngul, its blade seeming to drink the ambient suffering, vibrating with a malevolent joy.

He approached, walking, unhurried, toward the Balrog. The demon was in agony, half-submerged in the water that consumed it, its flames reduced to a few dying embers, its body of shadow disintegrating.

It was Zac's turn to torture it.

He plunged Morngul into the creature's smoking chest. Not to kill. Not yet. Just to hurt. To return a fraction of the agony he had endured. The Balrog's wails once again filled the depths, but they were no longer cries of rage. They were the sound of despair. Rare are the moments in the history of Arda when a Balrog, a scourge of the gods, has felt such a feeling. This was one of them.