Author - before you read, this is a crack, power fantasy, harem, nsfw type story wrote by me purely for my own enjoyment and out of boredom, I might not get some timelines right, or things in the Tolkien universe so forgive me. (I love Tolkien I have all his books and recently re-read Silmarilion)
The last thing I remembered was the screech of tires on wet asphalt, headlights flaring like dying stars, and the sickening crunch of metal folding inward around a ribcage.
My ribcage.
There was no pain, really. Just a sudden and absolute stop followed by darkness and not the peaceful kind. More like the kind that tasted like oil and burnt rubber while you can feel your bones pierce your skin and organs.
Just then.
Slam.
Just then he startled as air rushed into lungs that weren't his. Or were they?
The chest expanded violently, ribs creaking under sudden pressure, and a cough ripped out of his throat, raw and wet. Ash coated his tongue. Not metaphorical ash but real ash. The kind that came from forges burning day and night, from mountains that breathed smoke even when they slept.
His eyes snapped open.
Torchlight, dim and flickering orange that barely reached the corners of the long stone chamber. Rows of narrow bunks stacked three high, bodies sprawled under thin wool blankets that stank of old sweat and iron.
Snoring, low, guttural. Somewhere farther down the hall a man was muttering in his sleep, words in a language that sounded twisted with something harsher than english or any langauge he really knew.
Adûnaic. He learnt it online when he was bored, but this one is corrupted, foul. Black Speech of Mordor.
He sat up too fast and the world tilted. His head pounded like someone had driven a railroad spike behind his left eye.
Hands.
His hands? Came up instinctively to press against his temples.
They were not as callused along with being smaller than he remembered. As well as Darker. The skin had the deep olive-bronze tone of someone born under a harsher sun than any he'd ever known.
Long fingers, knuckles somewhat scarred from training, not from hard work or as a result of being conscripted in the army in a country with mandatory military service in the 21st century. No they looked scarred by holding wood and metal all day and training with it relentlessly.
He looked down to see body that was lean, tall for what felt like adolescence, ribs faintly visible under taut skin. Black hair, longer and messier than his old as stray cuts fell into his eyes.
He shoved it back and felt the unfamiliar weight and length of his hair sliding over his shoulders.
What greeted his sights was a bunk within what seems to be a barracks. Stone walls blackened by centuries of smoke with high, narrow arrow-slits instead of windows, letting in the faintest grey pre-dawn light.
The air was cold, damp, carrying the distant clang of hammers and the low bellow of some beast far below that sounded nothing like anything he knew.
Then memories started flooding in, he knew this place, he knew this life. Durthang.
The name arrived in his mind the way a Wikipedia page loads when you've already half-read it: North-Western fortress in the Ephel Dúath, South-West from the black gate overlooking the black valley of Udûn, it is one of the old strongholds Sauron's servants had claimed after the fall of Númenor.
Mentioned once in the appendices of Tolkiens writings. Barely a footnote.
Now it was real.
Now it smelled like sweat and molten metal and despair.
He pressed both palms to his face. "Okay," he whispered, voice cracking on the first syllable higher than he remembered, adolescent, not yet broken fully into manhood. "Okay, fine. Reincarnation, isekai whatever. Truck-kun finally got me. Fine."
A dry, bitter laugh escaped him. It sounded wrong in this throat.
He swung his legs over the edge of the bunk, small bare feet hit cold basalt. The shock of it jolted up his calves.
Of course, no carpet no heated up hardwood. Just stone worn smooth by thousands of feet before his.
Standing felt… taller surprisingly. He had to be five-eleven already, maybe six feet, and fourteen years old by the body's estimation. The growth spurt hadn't finished yet, but the frame was promising broad shoulders starting to fill out, long limbs built for reach with a spear or other long range primitive weapon.
He crossed to the nearest polished shield hanging on the wall, the reflection stared back: sharp cheekbones, strong jaw already shadowed with the first faint stubble, dark eyes so deep brown they looked black in the torchlight. A thin scar curved along the left cheekbone old, faded, probably from some childhood training accident that he can't recall right now.
It clearly is not his face.
But it was his now.
More memories flooded in not just the crash, but everything before. Twenty-first-century life. Went into military to get funding for higher education, did 2 tours in some sand covered forgotten place, after that it was his education followed by landing a job where it was filled with corporate strategy decks.
Late-night reads on Clausewitz and Sun Tzu. History podcasts while driving and every Lord of the Rings appendix memorized like scripture. The movies. the various games like the old PS2 game or the new shadow of war. There was also Divide & Conquer mod for medieval 2 where he'd played as Angmar and Mordor until the sun came up.
Those memories now mixed with the new ones, gives me a more solid picture of where and what time period it is.
It is 2930 of the Third Age.
The Watchful Peace still held, barely. Sauron was hiding in Dol Guldur as the Necromancer, gathering strength in secret with few years before the events of the Hobbit books.
Barad-dûr lay in ruins supposedly but in reality has been rebuilding for years now, the Nazgûl were scattered, waiting and gathering strength and power for when the dark one returns.
Minas Morgul had been Minas Ithil once, but that wound was old now. Gondor watched from the west with the rangers of Ithilien attacking anything associated with the shadow while Rohan rode the plains to the west.
The elves faded and most dwarves are wandering until the kingdom of Erebor is reclaimed.
And here he was.
A minor-blood Black Númenórean youth in a fortress full of Sauron's loyalists. Pure enough by blood to serve in the guard and rise if he worked hard enough and got lucky not to get his throat slit by those above him.
Blood is not pure enough for a name-house or estates.
An utter lowborn by their standards, disposable only barley higher than the various thralls and orcs.
If he slipped, if anyone suspected he wasn't who this body was supposed to be they'd gut him and feed his body to the orcs or beasts. Or worse. Black Númenóreans didn't suffer impostors.
And if Gondor or the elves ever captured him? A "Black Númenórean filth" would be lucky to die quickly, if I was a child and somehow escaped I would have had a chance but I am too old and "set in my ways".
I exhaled slowly. "Pragmatism and loyalty to the shadow," the sentence was muttered lowly. "That's the play. Loyalty to the dark side because the alternatives are execution or worse. One advantage is my knowledge of the events, I got to climb, survive and win. If I Sauron wins? Great if Aragorn does I will just melt further east."
The body responded with a strange heat in the chest ambition, already there, coiled like a serpent.
This flesh had been born under the shadow, it knew hunger for power the way a starving man knows bread.
He straightened.
First things first: blend in and observe, learn the rhythms and exploit the gaps.
A low horn sounded outside three short blasts. Dawn call.
Men began to stir around him with grunts and curses in Adûnaic and black speech or a mix of the two.
He reached for the clothes piled at the foot of his bunk: rough wool breeches, linen undershirt, padded gambeson, black mail shirt that clinked softly as he lifted it. A short sword in a plain scabbard and a spear leaning against the wall, iron head already nicked from use.
His fingers closed around the haft.
It felt rightm too right.
He smiled, a small, cold thing in the dark. "Let's see how far cunning and my memory can take me in Mordor."
The voice of the superior sounded, close now.
Time to move.
---
The horn's echo had barely died when the barracks erupted into motion. Men rolled from bunks like stones dislodged from a crumbling wall grunts, curses, the metallic clatter of mail shirts being dragged over heads. No one spoke much.
Dawn in Durthang was not for conversation; it was for survival.
Zagardûr moved with them, letting muscle memory guide his hands while his mind catalogued every detail.
The gambeson first thick padded wool that smelled faintly of old lanolin and smoke. Then the hauberk: interlocking rings of blackened steel, heavier than he expected, pressing cold against his collarbones as he shrugged it on.
A broad leather belt cinched it at the waist, holding the short sword in its scabbard and a small dagger opposite. The spear he took last ash haft, six feet long, iron head leaf-shaped and already pitted from use.
He tested the balance, solid. Familiar in a way that unnerved him.
A tall cadet nearby older, maybe seventeen shot him a sidelong glance. "You're late tying your laces again, runt."
Zagardûr met the look without blinking. "And you're still breathing through your mouth like a landed fish. Fix that before the sergeant notices." The cadet snorted, but turned away, small victory achieved withing 2 minutes of waking.
Zagardûr filed it for later as well: sarcasm worked here, as long as it stayed sharp and quiet.
They filed out into the pre-dawn chill, the courtyard of Durthang was vast, ringed by high basalt walls topped with iron spikes. Torches guttered in iron brackets; their light barely touched the central well or the squat armoury building. Beyond the eastern gate, the land dropped away into the black gulf of Udûn endless shadowed valley, dotted with distant red glows where orc-forges never slept. The air tasted metallic, like licking a coin.
Sergeant Varnad waited at the gate. Broad-shouldered even for a Black Númenórean, face scarred from brow to jaw, one eye milky from some old wound. His voice carried like a whip-crack."Pens detail. Thirty today. You" he jabbed a finger at me, "stick close to me. Don't stare, don't flinch. And if any thrall so much as looks at you wrong, crack his skull. Clear?"
I nodded once. "Clear, Sergeant." Varnad grunted approval and led them down the switchback path carved into the cliff face. The drop was sheer hundreds of feet to jagged rocks below with wind rising up from the valley, carrying the faint stink of sulphur and rot.
Halfway down, the path widened into a ledge overlooking the slave pens.
The pens weren't cages in the modern sense, they were quarries vast sunken pits hacked out of the mountainside, ringed by iron palisades and watch-towers. Tiers of stone steps descended into darkness where thousands moved like ants, men, women, children most of them Easterlings or Haradrim by their darker skin and tangled hair, though some had the paler cast of hill-men or broken northern stock. They wore rags or nothing at all, chains linked ankles in long coffles.
Overseers, orc-taskmasters mostly, squat and bandy-legged prodded with barbed whips or iron rods.
The sound hit next: a low, constant moan. Not screams, screams would have been cleaner this was exhaustion given voice.
Hammers rang on stone, picks scraped while carts groaned under loads of black basalt blocks destined for Barad-dûr's slow rebuilding.
30,000 thralls, his mind supplied. Give or take, with a few favoured ones within the main city to cater to every whim and desire of better men.
But with the 30,000 it was enough to feed an army if you worked them to bone and replaced them fast enough.
Varnad led them along the upper walkway. "Eyes front," he barked at a younger guard who'd slowed to stare. "They're not your entertainment."
I kept pace, and forced my self to look not out of morbid curiosity or pity, but calculation. Logistics, supply and manpower.
A woman near the edge of the nearest pit, maybe thirty with hair matted with dust stumbled under a basket of broken rock. It slipped from her shoulders, stone spilled across the path.
An orc overseer was on her in an instant, as if he was observing her till she inevitably made a mistake. The whip cracked once with a sharp and wet bloodied crackle.
Skin parted along her back in a long red line as she dropped to her knees without a sound. The second lash curled around her ribs; blood sprayed in fine droplets that caught the torchlight. The third landed across her shoulders as she curled inward, arms over her head, silent except for the wet rasp of breath.
If I was still with my old body my modern stomach would have lurched. But the body, the body he wore now didn't flinch. I watched it with clinical interest, the way one might watch a machine part fail.
Varnad noticed. "Problem, boy?"
"No, Sergeant." My voice came out steady. "Just watching how they break."
Varnad's scarred lip twitched almost a smile. "Good. They break fast if you let them keep them moving, keep them afraid, that's the job."
The orc finished while the woman stayed down.
Another thrall a thin boy, barely twelve darted forward, dragged the basket away, eyes wide with terror while the woman crawled after, blood trailing in the dust.
I filed this away for later as well: Fear worked.
However fear alone was wasteful, better rations meant stronger backs while better rest meant fewer dead before the next shift. Optimized quotas could squeeze another ten percent productivity without extra bodies.
Small changes, it would be invisible at first. But they would compound with interest in the future.
They continued along the rim, in one pit, a line of women hauled water-skins up from a deep well, their arms trembled; one collapsed halfway, spilling half the load. The orc in charge didn't whip her.
He simply kicked her in the ribs a few times until she crawled back to the rope. I felt my jaw tighten, not from pity but from the sheer inefficiency of it all.
Dead and maimed thralls didn't carry stone afterall.
A low growl came from behind a palisade, something big moved in the shadows an uruk overseer, taller than the orcs, black plate armour studded with spikes.
It watched them pass with yellow eyes.
Varnad spat. "Keep walking."
They completed the circuit within 2 hours. No incidents beyond the routine brutality, when they reached the upper ledge again, the sun had cleared the eastern peaks, throwing long shadows across Udûn.
The valley looked almost beautiful if you ignored the smoke and the screams.
Back at the gate, Varnad dismissed the detail. "When we are back it's time for drills."
I lingered a moment, staring down at the pits, 30,000 lives reduced to statistics and numbers. Fuel for an empire that hadn't yet declared itself dead from the ashes.
He felt the first real spark of something hot and dark in his chest.
Not guilt.
But opportunity.
If he could make these pens more efficient, raise output, lower waste he'd be noticed. Captains talked, lieutenants listened.
And somewhere far above, in the half-ruined tower that would one day rise again, an eye waited.
He turned away from the edge.
One day at a time.
One small change at a time.
And when the moment came he would be ready to take everything, from the unknown easterly steps all the way to the elvish ports of Mithlond.
---
The courtyard hit me like a slap when we marched back through the gate.
Sunlight was thin and pale, almost grudging as it finally cleared the eastern ridge and poured over the basalt flagstones. It didn't warm anything, it just made the shadows sharper.
I fell into line with the others heading for the training yard. My arms already ached from carrying the spear down to the pens and back up again; the hauberk's weight pressed into my shoulders like a constant reminder that this body wasn't used to being idle.
The yard was a wide square ringed by low walls and weapon racks, wooden posts stood at intervals, scarred from years of strikes while straw dummies sagged on frames, leaking stuffing like pale guts.
About 50 of us gathered mostly youths my age or a little older, a handful of full guardsmen supervising. All of Black Númenórean stock, though not of the noble houses that retained the full beauty and might of númenór past.
These men were all still tall but had a more dark and rough complexion with mostly dark-hair and olive-skinned, eyes hard from birth under the shadow.
Sergeant Varnad wasn't here another man took charge, Captain Thalor, lean and hawk-faced, voice like a file on iron."Form ranks! Wooden blades first. Pairs. No blood today save that for the orcs."
I picked up a practice sword from the rack as I set down my own weapons off to the side.
It was heavier than I expected oak, weighted to mimic steel.
My fingers closed around the grip and something clicked. The body knew this, along with my somewhat scattered memories.
Hours, maybe years of drills lived in the muscle as I tested the balance, gave it a quick twirl. Not bad.
We paired off with my partner being the same tall cadet from the barracks Karnad, I'd heard someone call him.
He smirked as he squared up, holding his wooden blade in a high guard. "Try not to cry when I bruise you, runt."
It's on Kajāzir (bitch)
I stepped into stance feet shoulder-width, weight forward on the balls, knees soft.
Modern boxing footwork layered over the Númenórean forms the body already knew, pair that with my somewhat hazy memory of army from the old world and it made me feel confident.
Just then, Thalor barked out an order "Begin!"
Karnad came in fast overhead chop, telegraphed, arrogant. I slipped left, let the blade whistle past my ear, then drove a short upward cut into his ribs.
Wood cracked against padding.
He grunted, staggered half a step.
He snarled and swung againmhorizontal slash this time. I ducked under it, stepped in close, hooked his ankle with my foot while shoving his shoulder he went down hard on his back, breath whooshing out.
The yard went quiet for a heartbeat.
I offered my hand, he slapped it away and scrambled up, face red.
"Luck," he spat.
"Skill," I retorted quietly. "You drop your guard when you swing hard. Fix it before you die to a rebelling snaga."
Thalor walked over, arms folded. His eyes cold grey studied me like I was a new blade he wasn't sure about.
"Again. Both of you."
We reset, this time Karnad was cautious feinted high, then stabbed low. I parried, twisted my wrist, sent his blade wide, then tapped the flat against his throat in a clean stop-thrust.
He froze.
Thalor nodded once. "Enough. Next pair."
Karnad stepped back, rubbing his throat, glaring. I felt the others watching now not with mockery, but something closer to wariness. Good.
We rotated through drills: thrust-and-parry lines, shield walls (even though most of us didn't have shields today), spear work against dummies.
My body moved smoothly, but my mind kept adding layers angle of attack like fencing, leverage from jiu-jitsu principles, breathing control from years of reading and experiencing tactical combat.
Every strike landed a fraction cleaner, every block a fraction tighter.
Sweat ran into my eyes, the salty sweat stung my eyes but I just wiped my eyes and carried on. The gambeson clung wetly to my skin while my arms burned, lungs pulled air that tasted of dust and forge-smoke.
At one point a younger cadet barely twelve missed a block and caught a wooden blade across the knuckles.
Crack.
He yelped, dropped the sword, cradled his hand, blood welled between fingers split skin over bone.
Thalor didn't blink. "Wrap it. Back in line. Pain is a teacher."
The boy bit his lip, tore a strip from his tunic, bound the hand, and stepped up again, there were no tears they were not allowed as most of us have learnt the hard way. In it's stead there was just pale determination.
I felt a flicker of something not pity. Respect, maybe.
These people were forged in the same crucible that had made Sauron's empire endure for millennia. Weakness got culled early with extreme prejudice if one shows weakness to often they die or get collared and thrown in with the thralls.
We finished with free sparring.
I drew another partner this one a stocky guardsman named Dûrnak, older, scarred, better than Karnad.
He came in low and fast, using reach.
I circled, feinted twice, then stepped inside his guard and drove an elbow into his solar plexus, modern dirty fighting blended with the spear-form twist the body knew. He immediately doubled over, wheezing.
I stopped short of following through.
Dûrnak straightened slowly, rubbing his chest. A grin split his scarred face. "Not bad, whelp. Where'd you learn that elbow trick?"
"Observation," I said evenly. "You leave your side open when you thrust."
He laughed a short, barking sound. "Keep observing. Might live long enough to matter." Thalor called end of drill we then racked the training weapons, wiped sweat with tunic hems.
My hair stuck to my neck; the mail shirt felt twenty pounds heavier now. As we dispersed toward the mess hall, Thalor caught my eye. "You. Rûna Kamât, they're already calling you. Stay sharp and you might one day even achieve something."
He walked away without waiting for a reply.
I stood there a moment, chest heaving, tasting copper on my tongue from a bitten lip.
Rûna Kamât.
Iron Shadow huh?
They'd given me the name already because of the way I'd ended that first small scuffle in the pens yesterday? Or because I hadn't flinched at the whipping? Or was it because of today? Didn't matter. Names were currency here, reputation was armour
.Inside my head, a dry voice the old me, chuckled.
If only they knew I once spent three hours watching HEMA longsword tutorials on YouTube while eating cold pizza and off brand cola. They'd probably burn me for witchcraft, or something along the lines since there are plenty of witches, warlocks and dark mages in the employ of the lidless eye. Witchking Of Angmar, a Nazgûl of terrible power and sorcery chief among them. He is second only to his dark master.
I headed for the mess hall, legs heavy, mind racing. Drill was over. But the real training climbing this ladder of blood and shadow was just beginning.
---
The mess hall had been a blur of thin stew barley and stringy goat meat and hard bread that tasted like ash.
I ate mechanically, sitting at the end of a long trestle table while the others talked in low voices about patrols, quotas, and which thrall overseer had lost an eye to a pickaxe last week.
No one really spoke to me, or about me for that matter. That was more than fine with me as I used that time to listen.
Names, ranks and various grudges.
Every word was data and possible helping anchor in my quest upward.
By the time the torches were guttered low and the barracks fell quiet, my body felt leaden. The whole day of drills and the climb back from the pens had burned through whatever reserves this teenage frame had.
I stripped off the hauberk first, the rings clinking softly as I draped it over the foot of my bunk. Then the gambeson, damp with old sweat smelling even worse then when I put it on in the morning.
The linen undershirt came last, clinging for a second before I peeled it away off my skin.
I sat on the thin straw mattress in just the breeches, back against the cold stone wall, the barracks was dim now only a few dying torches at the far end cast long orange tongues across the rows of bunks.
Already some snores rose and fell in ragged waves. Somewhere deeper in the fortress a man cried out once sharply, it cut short. Probably a thrall in the pens dreaming of escape, or remembering one.
For the first time since waking, I had real privacy.
No eyes on me, no orders. Just the dark and the slow rhythm of breathing around me.
I looked down at myself, really looked like I did in the morning.
The body was tall, limbs long and starting to fill with lean muscle. Tanned, dark skin unmarked except for that faint scar on my left cheek and a few small nicks on my knuckles from today's and older drills. Chest narrow but defined, ribs faintly visible when I exhaled stomach flat with a hint of ridges forming under the skin.
Hands large, fingers long made for gripping a spear haft or a throat.
Pure númenórean stock, even though supposedly diluted blood I was probably the offspring of a low númenórean with either a half blood or also a low númenórean. One way or another I was still either orphaned or given up young since I dont know anyone even closely resembling a familiar figure.
I exhale as I can somehow feel the famous númenórean longevity.
This frame of mine would stretch out another decade before it truly settled into manhood, then hold strong for centuries if I didn't get a sword through the guts first.
I flexed my fingers, watched the tendons shift under the skin.
Strange to feel so young and so old at the same time.
The mind of a man who'd once paid rent and argued taxes while having to occasionally having to participate in basic training to keep my skills sharp in case of war. It was now trapped in skin that had never known either.
My thoughts driftedunbidden, but not unwelcome.
Power and not the abstract kind, the real kind.
The kind that made men kneel and women bend. I saw flashes: myself older, taller in black plate armor chased with silver, standing on a balcony overlooking some namless fields while thralls toiled below.
Captains saluting.
Lieutenants waiting for my word.
And women, mot one but many.
From an Easterling warrior from the golden steppes of Rhûn swarthy of skin gleaming with oil, gold scales on her armour, fierce amber eyes that would fight me until the moment they submitted.
A Haradrim from the southern oases ebony curves, ritual tattoos curling like flames across her breasts and thighs, whispering dark prayers while she knelt.
Perhaps a proud black númenórean noblewoman of higher house, pale and sharp-featured, raven hair spilling over silk as she schemed beside me in bed.
I can feel a grin start spilling across my face as my thoughts turn wilder to a captured Northman shieldmaiden from Rohan's borders or perhaps the Anduin Vale, golden-haired and defiant, broken slowly under my hand.
My grin now positively feral as my thoughts settle on the elves, and the different ones there are, from the ones in Rivendell, Mirkwood, Lothlorien to mayhap the elusive and secretive Avari elf from the eastern woods, from the elves that never left the lands of the awakening before even the open rebellion of Morgoth.
A harem, not whores but prizes, allies and lovers as being an extensions of my reach. Women who would scheme with me, fight with me, warm our bed and guard eachothers back while the Eye watched approvingly from above.
The thought sent heat curling low in my gut.
Not just lust, though that was certinaly there, sharp and insistent. Ambition wrapped around desire, power made flesh.
I shifted on the bunk, suddenly aware of a problem. The body's reaction, teenage hormones raging like a furnace I hadn't asked for.
I exhaled through my nose, slow and controlled.
Fucking great.
Reincarnated into Mordor with a teenager's libido. Thanks, universe, or should I thank Eru? Who knows.
I leaned my head back against the stone, closed my eyes, tomorrow.
Tomorrow I'd start trying to rise.
One tweak there.
One step here.
Then another, and another.
Until the ladder was mine to climb.
The snores around me rose and fell. A distant scream echoed once more from the pens, this one notably tinged with pain then silence.
I stayed awake a little longer, letting the fantasies play behind my eyelids watching them unfold like maps of the empire I would build.
Power, gold and women.
My own place beneath the Lidless Eye.
When sleep finally took me, it was dreamless and black.