Transmigration in Mordor

Zac didn't get out of the water.

The shock of his revelation hadn't turned into rage or renewed determination. It had collapsed inward, a structure of false certainties reduced to dust. He floated on his back in the basin, the icy, inert water becoming one with the coldness that had invaded his soul. The cascade of light, once a beacon of hope or a dispenser of power, was now just a column of mocking numbers, the great ledger of his damnation.

He closed his eyes.

And eternity began.

At first, his mind was a storm. A relentless whirlwind of images and regrets played on a loop. Liberty's face, twisted in fear a split second before impact. The empty eye sockets of the entity that had judged him. The sound of his own bones breaking under the skeletal spider's leg. The number "301%" burning behind his eyelids, a symbol of his taint. Every thought was a shard of glass lacerating his mind.

He relived his cowardice, not dozens of times, but millions. He felt the paralysis, the cold in his veins as the truck approached. He felt the weight of his inaction, the shame so heavy it seemed to pin him to the bottom of the fountain. Then came the punishment. The deaths, the failures, the harvesting of Echoes, his stupid race for power. And finally, the understanding, that unbearable truth that was the real end point.

Action. Punishment. Impossible redemption. The loop turned, again and again.

Time lost all meaning. There was no day or night in this underground sanctuary. Only the cycle of his thoughts served as a metronome for his agony. How long did he stay like that? The equivalent of days? Months? Years? The water around him had become perfectly still. A thin layer of dust, fallen from the invisible vaults, had settled on the water's surface, forming only a slight depression where his body floated.

Then, slowly, imperceptibly, the storm began to calm. Not through appeasement, but through exhaustion. The engine of his mind, overheated by the infinite friction of remorse, began to fail. The images became blurry, the sounds muffled. Liberty's face lost its features, becoming a simple blur of light and fear. The sound of the accident became a dull hum. The loop didn't break, it eroded.

Until the day it stopped.

The silence in his skull was more deafening than any scream. This was not peace. It was emptiness. A sterile, white void. For a time he could not measure, his mind was erased. He was no longer Zac. He was no longer a coward, a prisoner, or a monster. He was a thing floating in the water, a consciousness reduced to a single, thoughtless point.

And it was in this absolute void, from this zero point of his being, that a single thought emerged. Clear. Cold. Devoid of all emotion, all guilt, all fear.

A pure analysis.

For the first time, he didn't see his situation as a victim or a player, but as an outside observer dissecting a system. He opened his eyes. The cascade of light was no longer mocking. It was factual. A document.

His inner gaze turned to his Burdens, those "skills" he had suffered and used without ever understanding them. And suddenly, everything was agonizingly clear.

*The Shroud.* It wasn't a cloak. It was the materialization of his desire to hide from the world, to disappear in the face of danger. In life, he had draped himself in social invisibility and passivity. Here, this Burden had been given to him, a tangible version of his own flaw. He had literally clothed himself in his own cowardice.

*Coward's Stealth.* The name had always been there. He had read it hundreds of times but never understood it. It wasn't a skill for discretion. It was a sentence. The system wasn't telling him, "Here's how to be stealthy." It was telling him, "This is what you are: a coward. And here is the only thing you know how to do: run and hide." Every Tear of Regret invested in this skill wasn't an upgrade but an affirmation of his core nature, a signature at the bottom of his indictment.

*Healing Stagnation.* The most perverse trap. A healing that only activated in stillness. It was a reward for passivity. The system encouraged him to do exactly what had condemned him: do nothing, wait for the danger to pass, stagnate. Every second spent healing while hiding was a micro-repetition of his original sin.

*Forge of Brutality.* The only "active" path offered to him. And what a path. To escape the consequences of his cowardice, he had no choice to become brave, altruistic, or noble. No. He had to become brutal. He had to kill, massacre, harvest. The system offered him a single alternative to flight: monstrosity. Become a beast, or remain a coward. There was no third option.

*Echo Distillation.* The finishing blow. The final touch to the masterpiece of his torture. The system had offered him a path to power, knowing full well he would take it. And that power was literally made from evil, a corruption that transformed him into the very image of what he fought. It was not a resource: it was a character test he had failed before he even knew it was happening.

Everything became clearer in his mind. This wasn't a purgatory designed for redemption. It was a custom-made hell, a perfect thesis on his own failings, a mirror that reflected not only his actions but the very essence of what was wrong with him.

He was not a prisoner in a game. He was the game.

Zac remained motionless in the water, but he was no longer empty. He was filled with a cold, absolute understanding. The frantic madness had given way to a terrifying lucidity. He now knew the rules. Not the rules to win, but the rules that governed the architecture of his own damned soul.

Slowly, with a calm that was anything but peaceful, he straightened up in the fountain. Water streamed from his shoulders. His gaze was no longer that of a lost young man, but that of a man who had just finished reading his own obituary and understood every word of it.