Transmigration in Mordor

Time had shattered, fragmented into an infinity of seconds frozen in the nightmare. In the infernal loop the Balrog had woven for him, each death was a universe of suffering, a cacophonous symphony of burning flesh, calcifying bones, and silent screams tearing at the depths of his soul. And between each universe, there was a suspended moment, a thin spider's thread woven in the void. A moment of pure nothingness where his mind, torn from the charred flesh, floated in an echoless void, a place where consciousness struggled to exist.

It was there, in this infinitely repeated non-existence, that madness had saved him. Not a destructive madness, but a lucidity sharpened by horror. Deprived of rational thought, his survival instinct, pure and bestial, had begun to plot. He remembered these illuminations, not as clear and constructed ideas, but as flashes of blinding light piercing an endless night, revelations etched in pain.

'Water…' The thought had not been formulated; it was a primal sensation, a visceral knowledge. 'The demon's black fire… it consumes all. It devours. It annihilates. But the mystical water of the fountain… it is its antithesis. Not life, no. Order. Constancy. A primordial force opposed to its raging fury. A force that can engulf the fire.' He had understood that the Balrog's raw power, its greatest strength and greatest pride, could also become its own downfall. The monster was a force of blind destruction, devoid of subtlety, of thought. It was enough to direct this destruction toward the right target, to turn the executioner's power into its own executioner. He had felt the plan form, an architecture of sacrifice and cunning, a trap patiently set by an insect the demon believed it had crushed to pieces. 'He must destroy the source himself. I must be the bait. I must be the catalyst.' He had accepted his next death, not as a humiliating defeat, but as a move in a life-sized chess game, a necessary sacrifice on the altar of his survival.

Returned to reality, the reality of the devastated sanctuary, he spent a long time contemplating the new geography of his hell. It was a spectacle of grandiose desolation, of macabre beauty. Several walls had crumbled under the Balrog's furious blows, paths had been erased, and several caverns had merged into one, forming a single, titanic, unrecognizable space. It was no longer the intimate room he had arranged. It was an open-air abyss.

The ground was a sludge of rubble and black dust. A large lake was slowly forming in the center, its dark and murky waters heavy with the debris and ashes of the battle. And along the breached wall, where his modest fountain had been, a much larger waterfall had formed, a powerful and roaring torrent whose crash echoed in the immensity of the new cavern. He was stunned by the raw force of the elements, by the violence of the powers he had unleashed. His makeshift bed, his rock armchair, those small islands of normalcy he had created for himself in this nightmarish place, had been swept away, carried off by the tumult. He was alone again, in the midst of a chaos he himself had orchestrated.

His gaze then fell upon the Balrog's corpse. This titan of fire and shadow, which had almost destroyed him body and soul, was now just a smoking carcass, half-submerged in the nascent lake. A bitter victory, of an unexpected coldness. A dark determination seized him. He approached the pestilential remains, whose malevolent aura lingered, and began the butchering. It was a macabre, precise, almost surgical job. With Morngul, whose blade seemed to sing upon contact with the demon's charred flesh and bones, he carved into the fragments of this quasi-divine matter. He extracted the strongest, densest bones, a deep black, like obsidian.

The process was slow, meticulous. He used the Shroud, his living cloak, to repair the damaged parts of the bones, healing the fractures, smoothing the rough edges. Then, in a ritual he invented as he went, an alchemy of corruption and survival, he fused these pieces of Balrog with spider threads torn from the remaining webs. Piece by piece, a raw armor took shape. An armor of matte black, angular, each fragment bearing witness to its infernal origin. It seemed to absorb the light, exuding an aura of silent menace, a heavy silence that contrasted strangely with the ambient din.

Fascinated, Zac donned his new skin. He felt the weight of the armor, not as a constraint, but as a new spine. It fit perfectly, molding to the contours of his body, giving him a feeling of solidity, of invulnerability. He reveled in the sensation. It was not just protection; it was power. He felt heavier, more anchored, as if the Balrog's power had been transfused into him, a dark and colossal inheritance. His own muscles seemed to contract under the black plates, amplified, fused with the demon's strength.

Driven by a curiosity mingled with a new thirst. He headed toward the waterfall, or rather, the Falls of the Night, given their new size. He wanted to know the extent of what the Balrog's death had bequeathed to him.