Blackness. Silence. Absence.
Then, a sensation, faint and distant, rose from the abyss. The cold. It wasn't the absolute cold of the place of Burdens, but a biting, damp cold seeping through heavy fabric. Another sensation followed, cavernous and tenacious: hunger. And finally, pain. Dull, diffuse, that of hard, sharp rock pressed against his back, his elbows, his knees.
Slowly, painfully, Zac regained consciousness. He had a body. A physical, tangible body that was suffering.
He was curled into a ball on an uneven floor, the Shroud covering him completely like a cocoon of misery. His muscles were sore, his joints rusted, as if they hadn't been used in an eternity. He pushed the cursed fabric away and sat up. The darkness was almost total, but as his eyes adjusted, they began to make out the contours of a narrow cave. Walls of bare rock enclosed him. He was underground. Alone.
He felt alive. And that sensation was the worst of all. Every beat of his heart was a deafening reminder of what he had endured. He was traumatized, a part of him had died up there, in the white void, then on the black threshold, and finally in that fall through limbo.
For the first time in an eternity, there was no immediate threat. No chains. No judgment. The tension that held him in one piece slackened, and the dam broke.
'The punishments... the burden... This cloak... this cursed Shroud... The wall of regrets... and... and that view... hell...'
Cold sweat ran down his body. He hugged himself, trembling uncontrollably. 'No, it wasn't hell,' he thought, 'it was worse. It was real.'
He thought back to his flight, his fall through that ground teeming with skeletal hands. Everything he had experienced acted within him like a poison, an eternal suffering that would never leave him. Tears welled up. At first silent, they turned into dry, wrenching sobs that shook his frail body. He wept. He wept for his lost life, for his stupidity, for the unbearable pain that gnawed at him.
"Flunking a year... Failing my exam..." his voice was a broken whisper. "I should have... I should have gone home. I should have faced their looks. I would have given anything... anything... to see their disappointment again rather than... this. Rather than living through this."
His sorrow was a needle plunged deep into his neck, a constant torture that gave him no respite. Guilt devoured him. His former life, which he had judged so miserable, now seemed like a lost and inaccessible paradise.
"A transmigration..." he scoffed, a bitter, joyless sound. "It's a fucking joke..."
He stood up, driven by a sudden, powerless rage, and punched the cave wall. A searing pain shot through his hand and brought him back to reality. The rage died as quickly as it had come, leaving him empty, drained of all strength. He slid down the rock and sat again, resigned.
"It's not possible! This doesn't exist! I'm not some fucking web novel hero! Where's the generous god? Where are the superpowers?! What is this?! A punishment?! For what?! For being a loser?!"
He stayed there, in the dark, for an indefinite time. Then his mind, desperately seeking logic in the madness, started working again. He thought back to the exact words of the sentence.
"There is no escape in the depths of Mordor." Mordor... The Lord of the Rings. Orcs, Nazgûl, a giant eye... A nightmare world. So that was it. He was stuck there. But the sentence bothered him. It was in two parts. Why?
"There is no escape..." He repeated the phrase over and over. It was familiar to him. Terribly familiar. He closed his eyes, digging through the rubble of his memory. Video games. The nights spent fleeing his life. And suddenly, it clicked. A flash of pure terror that surpassed anything he had felt so far.
"Hades..." he whispered in horror.
The game. The hero, Zagreus, condemned to endlessly traverse the underworld, dying and resurrecting at the beginning, over and over. The game's opening line. There is no escape.
His blood ran cold. It wasn't a single sentence. It was two punishments, merged into one. The place... and the rule. The place was Mordor. The rule was the Hades loop. He wasn't just condemned to be in Mordor. He was condemned to try to escape it, forever, and to be brought back with every failure. His torture wasn't imprisonment. It was hope, eternally renewed, and eternally crushed.
He shook his head, chasing away the terrifying idea. It was too cruel. Too perfect.
He looked at what he was wearing. Simple black trousers. Worn black boots. A dark jacket. And the Shroud. He searched his pockets. Empty. 'No bag... No starter kit...' he thought with bitter irony. 'I'm not even surprised.'
His gaze fell upon the Shroud. The absurd fusion. The invisibility cloak, the Minecraft bed, the Polymerization card. What a fucking joke. "So, what are you good for?" he murmured to the fabric. "Can you make me invisible?" He concentrated, trying to draw on his shame. Nothing. He tried to feel the comfort of the "bed." Nothing. It was just a cold, heavy weight. A burden. Literally.
He stood up, his legs trembling. Hunger twisted his stomach. Thirst parched his throat. He had nothing. He was nothing.
He cast one last look at the darkness behind him, then turned towards the only possible way out: a narrow passage that went deeper into the cave.
He moved forward.
He plunged into the darkness of the depths of Mordor. Without a weapon. Without courage. With only hunger, thirst, and the weight of his burden for company.