The change wasn't sudden. It began as a distant dissonance in the Grand Music that Zac had become, a silence where a note should have resounded. He opened his eyes, drawn from his trance by the presence not of a threat, but of an absence. The Waterfall of Night, that eternal seep of corruption, had run dry. Its unending murmur was silenced. He looked to its counterpart, the Cascade of Dissonance. It too had ceased to flow. Both cosmic troughs were empty.
Realization struck with the serene clarity of a winter sky. He had succeeded. His asceticism, his long and silent war of attrition, had borne fruit. The Hungry Void, starved of all sustenance, had begun to devour itself.
That was when the prison began to die.
The first sign was a faint trembling, not of rock, but of reality itself. The cave's surface seemed to ripple, as if its fabric were being shaken by an invisible wind. Sections of black stone began to shimmer, lose their solidity, and simply vanished, leaving behind an absolute emptiness, a darkness so profound it felt as if it might swallow Zac's very soul.
He understood. This was no longer a battle to win, but a race against erasure. The prison was imploding, and he was still inside.
With calm determination born of new wisdom, he rose. He would not flee. He would make one last pilgrimage, a final farewell to the hell that had reforged him. He needed to see, one last time, the path that had led him to this instant.
He set out, leaving his cave for the last time. The depths were now a landscape of chaos and decay. Entire caverns vanished, replaced by silent voids. Time and space were no longer constants, but suggestions. A corridor could become infinite or constrict to nothing in a blink. Zac no longer trusted his eyes, but the Music. He followed the remaining harmonies, threads of creation yet unbroken, navigating a sea of nothingness like a sailor by starlight.
His first stop was the Spider's Cavern, or rather, what remained. The Soot Grotto was half gone, swathes of its floor and walls cut away as if by a cosmic cookie-cutter. He stood at the threshold, remembering. He recalled the pure, animal terror he had felt before the skeletal spider. His first victory, not won by courage, but by a cunning born from terror, using the poison from the waterfall for the first time. He remembered the intoxication of power, that first step on the path to his own corruption. He felt no regret or pride. He simply observed the memory, accepted it as a dark note in his own melody, and continued on.
Next was the Giants' Stairway, in the Cavern of the Balrogs. The grand structure was cracked, entire steps missing into the void. The solidified lava lake, his first great workshop, was now a mosaic of black and nothingness. He remembered his struggle against the Balrog, a duel of fire and shadow that had nearly broken him. He remembered the birth of Morngul, a blade born of hate and brutality, the symbol of what he had become at that moment. He remembered the arrogance he'd felt, finally the predator, not the prey. He acknowledged the pride, that particular dissonance, and left it behind.
He crossed what was left of the Cavern of Worms and Crawlers. The landscape was barely recognizable, a chaos of tunnels opening onto abysses of non-existence. He recalled his frantic flight, his back to the wall, using his intelligence not to win, but to survive, to delay the inevitable. He recalled how he'd used his Shroud for the first time as a tool of creation, an improvised shield. He remembered the despair, but also the flicker of creativity that only comes when every other option is gone. He smiled, light and serene, at the memory of that desperate man who had refused to surrender.
Finally, he reached the threshold of the greatest tomb. The Ossuary. The cavern of Ancalagon. Here, reality was even more unstable, as if the presence of the dead god and the seed of purity planted within Zac created a conceptual storm. The dragon was still there, its immense skeleton half consumed by the encroaching void. Light was gone from its eyes. Its sword, his pure, beautiful sword, was still planted in its skull, a silver needle in a mountain of coal.
He remembered his terror, his suicidal ascent, his final act of defiance. He remembered the revelation that had struck him: that he was just a pawn, an insect in a game of gods. It was here, before the embodiment of absolute power, that he had begun to understand the true nature of strength. It was not the ability to destroy, but the will to create balance where none existed.
He knew what he had to do.
Navigating through the cracks in reality, he began the final ascent. The Entity was too busy devouring itself to notice him. He reached the dragon's skull, slowly disintegrating, fragments the size of houses silently falling into the void. He placed his hands on the hilt of his sword.
With a fluid motion, he pulled it free from the bone.
The skeleton of Ancalagon the Black, freed at last from both curse and blessing, collapsed in on itself in majestic silence, returning to dust from which it never should have risen.