The echo of the sentence froze in Zac's soul: '...in the depths of Mordor'. The screen went dark, plunging him one last time into the absolute silence of the white void. A moment of respite. A moment of pure terror. Then, the golden chains tightened and pulled. Downward.
The immaculate white tore like cheap paper, revealing a total darkness, a gaping maw that sucked him in without ceremony. The fall was dizzying, but it wasn't a fall. A fall has an end. This was a drowning in an ocean of nothingness, an endless engulfment.
As he sank deeper, a new sensation, worse than fear, seeped into him. A pure, cold, and heavy despair, that emanated from the depths like a black tide. It was the accumulated suffering of millions of souls, a concentration of regret and pain. He breathed it. He drank it. It became a part of him.
Suddenly, the nature of the chains changed. The divine gold extinguished, replaced by black, rough, white-hot iron. A horrendous hiss, the sound of his very essence beginning to sear, resonated not in his ears, but in the core of his consciousness. He screamed without a voice, a mute agony that tore him apart from the inside. It wasn't his nerves that were burning; it was his soul.
'Pain... the pain is real... If the pain is real, then everything is real... Mordor... the punishments... No... impossible... this is a nightmare...'
His thoughts, fragmented by the suffering, collided with one another. Flashes tore at his mind. Not images, but raw, primal impressions: the crushing weight of a lidless eye probing him; the piercing shriek of a winged creature that chilled his soul; the suffocating heat of a volcano on the verge of erupting.
'No, no, no... It's just a book, a movie... It can't be...'
But the pain was an anchor, holding him firmly in this nightmarish reality. The chains grew hotter, the darkness denser. The despair was so intense it had a texture. He was no longer falling. He was being devoured.
With a tremendous, dull crash, everything stopped.
His soul crashed heavily onto an unknown ground. He was still chained, his essence smoking at the contact with the black iron. The pain was a constant throb, an infernal rhythm that beat the measure of his damnation. And then, one by one, like a poisoned gift, his senses returned.
The smell first. An unbearable stench, a putrid bouquet of sulfur, decaying flesh, and damp regret. The air was so thick he felt like he was chewing it, tasting the decay on his non-existent tongue.
Then hearing. There was no silence here. Only auditory hallucinations. Muffled sobs seemed to rise just behind him, demented whispers slithered at the edge of his consciousness, and sometimes, hysterical laughter erupted far in the darkness before being abruptly cut off.
And finally, touch. The ground beneath him was viscous, warm, and sometimes seemed to undulate, like the skin of a monstrous beast. The chains burned him relentlessly, an endless torture.
'Enough... Please... Make it stop... or let me cease to exist. I can't... I can't anymore...'
His terror was a bottomless ocean, and he was drowning in it. He was at his limit. He closed his "eyes" and waited, praying for madness or the end to come first.
An eternity passed, punctuated by the drips of an unknown liquid falling somewhere in the dark. Slowly, painfully, his vision began to adapt. There was no light. It was the darkness that had different shades. He made out a massive shape a few meters away. An altar of black stone, so dark it seemed to absorb the surrounding shadows, making them even deeper. And on this altar, a screen. The same one from the void, but its light was faint, sickly, like a candle about to go out.
The chains vibrated and loosened slightly. A silent command. He had to go.
He crawled. Every movement was agony. The pain of the chains, the foul texture of the ground. He used all his remaining strength to pull himself to his knees, then to his feet, staggering like a newborn in a slaughterhouse. He approached the altar, step by step.
On the screen, a single word blinked, ominously:
[Burden...]
A hoarse, broken cry escaped his throat. "NO! NOT AGAIN! NOT ANOTHER ONE!"
He shook his head, refusing reality, but the screen remained unchanged. The same protocol of psychological torture, the same cruel wait.
A new line appeared.
[Burden of Cowardice: Cloak of Shame]
Below it, a holographic and trembling image: a cloak of grey silk. Despite his brain being numbed by pain, Zac made the connection. 'Cowardice. Cloak.' He thought of his life, of his perpetual flight. Then his mind derailed, recognizing the shape of the object. Harry Potter's invisibility cloak.
'A bonus? Is that the trick? They torture me to the brink of madness and then give me a legendary item? "Cloak of Shame"... It's a trap. It must be a trap.'
He thought back to the truck, to his stupid death. A bad Isekai. As if some cosmic entity had seen his pitiful life and decided to press the "reset" button... only to throw him into hell.
The screen changed.
[Burden of Apathy: Tomb of Stagnation]
The image below was unmistakable. A bed with familiar, cubic textures. A Minecraft bed.
'I'm going crazy,' he thought, a silent, hysterical laugh shaking his soul. 'It's the only explanation. I'm dead and my frying brain is inventing a purgatory based on my stunted adolescent hobbies.'
A third message.
[Burden of Corruption: The Crucible of Grudges]
The image was that of the Polymerization card from Yu-Gi-Oh. Zac no longer knew what to think. Could he really hide with the cloak? It would be too simple. The word "Burden" weighed too heavily.
As he was lost in his confusion, the image of the card came to life. The spiral began to spin, emitting a hum of corrupted power. It sucked in the other two images. The hologram of the Cloak and that of the Tomb were stretched, distorted, and swallowed with a shrill scream of merged souls.
The screen went black for a second, then displayed a new result:
[Cursed Burden: Shroud]
The final image appeared. A cloak, deep black on the outside, absorbing the light. But its interior, visible in a fold, was lined with a blood-red fabric, covered with dark patterns reminiscent of the seams of a mattress... or scars.
Immediately, the hologram solidified. The Shroud pulled itself out of the screen, floating in the air like a living creature. It wrapped itself around Zac. At the fabric's touch, the black iron chains that burned him disintegrated into ash and dust.
The burning pain vanished. Replaced by an icy cold and a terrible weight on his shoulders. The weight of his new, and only, burden.