Consciousness returned to him, not as a wave, but as a slow, icy tide, pulling Zac up from the abyss of non-existence. He awoke, wrapped in the cold familiarity of his Shroud. The image of the dragon's tail, a comet of bone descending upon him, was a fresh scar etched across his soul. But he was alive. Or rather, he was here once again, in the starting cave, the game reset.
He stood, his body sore but whole. The shock was no longer the panicked fear of an animal, but the intellectual vertigo of a man confronted with a truth that defied reason. Ancalagon the Black. Revived. An apocalyptic weapon his creator hadn't even had time to wield. A cold, analytical thought crossed Zac's mind: Uldor, in his haste, his millennia-old arrogance, had likely underestimated the slowness with which so massive an instrument of death could be roused from sleep. He probably hadn't conceived that it could never fully awaken, a toy too great, even for a fallen god.
But the fundamental question remained, a nail in his skull. How had the dragon's skeleton ended up here, so far from its original resting place? The question resonated with his own mysterious arrival. There was no longer any doubt. Only one power could achieve such manipulation, such a staging: the Entity. It must have moved it, "placed" it here as a centerpiece on its macabre chessboard. The "how" remained an unsolvable riddle, but the "why" was taking on a terrifying shape in his mind.
For now, these questions were a luxury. He had to know. He had to explore. Armed with his new twilight-hued blade, he set out on a long pilgrimage through the world's depths. He retraced his steps, visiting the places that had been the theaters of his worst nightmares. Silence was the only thing that remained. A sterile, profound silence, an emptiness screaming the absence of life. The spider caves, the worm tunnels, the hatcheries... all were empty tombs, swept clean. After weeks of methodical and solitary exploration, a chilling certainty settled within him: he was alone.
He returned to the deepest depths, where the very rock exuded a palpable terror. He descended as far as he dared, until he felt again the familiar pressure, that weight on his mind signaling the Entity's proximity. He stopped, gazed into the void before him, then withdrew, not in panic, but with the cold respect of a man who knows the limits of a hostile domain.
Back in his cave, he sat facing the Waterfall of Night and resumed his sole task, his only remaining task.
[Song of the Ainur : 5,060,381 / 999,999,999]
[Song of the Ainur : 5,060,382 / 999,999,999]
[Song of the Ainur : 5,060,383 / 999,999,999]
The count was a litany, a meditation in madness. And within that measured void, the pieces of the puzzle fell into place, not as conscious thought, but as epiphany: a revelation at once vast and terrible, nearly sublime in its horror.
He had believed Uldor had lost a war. He had been wrong. There had never been a war.
The Entity was a farmer. The depths, her farm. And the creatures of evil, her livestock. Uldor, in raising his army, was no rebel, just a weed, a disease threatening to infect the herd. The Entity had not fought Uldor. She had purged her farm. She started a controlled fire to eliminate the disease, sacrificing almost her whole stock to preserve the purity of her domain. The overwhelming silence of the caverns was not calm after battle, it was the sterile stillness of a field after harvesting and burning.
And in this purged farm, two things remained:
The dragon.
And him.
He grasped their respective roles with devastating clarity. Ancalagon, with its sheer power and size, was the prime livestock, the larder for millennia to come, a constant source of raw energy. And himself, Zac, with his complex soul, his guilt, his particular despair, he was the delicacy. The rare vintage. The refined nourishment the Entity cultivated with special care. They were not survivors. They were the last two dishes on the menu.
In the face of this truth, his gaze settled on his new sword at his side. Its aura was serene, a thing of beauty and balance. But what could a needle do against a mountain? What could a blade do against something as abstract as hunger? His weapon suddenly seemed futile, not from weakness, but from irrelevance. One does not kill an ocean with a knife.
A new despair, colder and more intellectual, should have arisen. Yet he felt nothing. The understanding was so total it surpassed emotion. He was no longer a panicked victim; he was an experimental subject who had just read the protocol.
He sighed, turned back to his work, his mind emptying once more to focus on the endless current of numbers.
[Chant des Ainur : 5,062,723 / 999,999,999]
[Chant des Ainur : 5,062,724 / 999,999,999]
[Chant des Ainur : 5,062,725 / 999,999,999]
[Chant des Ainur : 5,062,726 / 999,999,999]
[Chant des Ainur : 5,062,727 / 999,999,999]