The trees grew thicker here.
The sky above had turned from blue to ash, smothered in mist that curled down from the mountains like a slow breath. The air hung heavy with the scent of damp leaves, pine sap, and old soil. Everything was quiet now. Eerily still.
Beneath the twisted roots of an ancient tree, Smeagol lay motionless, buried in mud up to his chest, like a corpse waiting to be forgotten.
Only his eyes—wide, brilliant blue—peeked through a veil of grass. His skin shivered. His body trembled with cold. His breath came shallow and slow, like he was trying to disappear.
The Ring pulsed inside him.
Faint.
Then hot.
Then hotter.
Like an ember behind his ribs.
> They'll go home, he told himself. They'll get tired. They'll remember me. I was good. I helped. I worked. I lifted heavy things. I laughed when they laughed…
But the voices came closer.
Tobbin. Nessa. Fenna. Brandric.
He heard them. Their footsteps. Their cruel chuckles. The creak of their bows and the hiss of steel being drawn.
"Check near the riverbend. He's hiding somewhere like the beast he is."
"Let me catch him first. I'll bash his skull open and throw him off the cliff."
"I can still smell the freak's sweat."
Smeagol's lip quivered.
His fingers curled in the mud.
Fenna… she smiled at me once.
Nessa gave me drinks. She said I was funny.
Tobbin said I was strong. Stronger than any of them.
Brandric… he's family, isn't he? He's blood…
> Why are they here?
His heart was pounding now. Not from fear, but from something deeper. Something older.
A sound rose from deep inside him. A low, shaking murmur. "Gollum…"
His tears stung his mud-caked cheeks.
> They never understood me…
He'd tried. He really had. More than any of them. He woke up before dawn. He carried the heavy baskets. He chased fish with his bare teeth. He broke his back to be useful. To be liked. To belong.
He built a body they had never seen—eight-pack abs, thick arms, a chest like a tree trunk. He made himself strong, strong like a dwarf, fast like a wolf, silent like a shadow.
And still… they laughed.
Still… they looked at him like something wrong.
And now?
Now they called him a murderer.
For punishing a traitor. For justice.
For protecting what little he had left.
---
He shifted in the mud, just slightly.
And that's when he saw her—Fenna, walking lightly, her red scarf trailing behind her like a serpent's tongue. Her curved knife caught the light, gleaming.
> She smiled at me once… just once… and now she comes to slit my throat.
His breath hitched.
His stomach twisted.
And the Ring pulsed harder.
Hot. Boiling. Radiating.
It hurt.
His veins felt like molten wires.
His bones creaked.
His skin itched like it was stretching, reshaping.
---
Then the pain came.
A furnace ignited inside his chest.
His body arched in the dirt, silent scream locked behind clenched teeth.
His fingernails cracked. His jaw locked. His spine popped.
Mud began to crack and fall from his shoulders, from his chest. Light began to bleed through his skin—first faint, then pulsing.
The Ring was no longer an object inside him.
It was being devoured—like meat in a starving belly.
And in its place, a core of living light began to burn beneath his heart.
Three lights.
Red – Strength.
Gold – Protection.
White – Life.
They orbited one another inside him like stars behind his ribs. From them came veins of fire and power, glowing like lightning beneath his skin.
Red surged into his muscles.
Gold wrapped around his bones.
White flowed into his heart and brain.
His skin thickened. His arms swelled. His chest expanded.
And his tears?
They stopped.
Replaced by breath. A slow, final breath that came out hollow and heavy.
His hands stopped shaking.
His eyes stopped crying.
His soul stopped hoping.
---
And in that moment, something clicked.
He looked at his hands—caked in dried blood, mud, and now light.
He looked at the hunters—faces he had once longed for.
And then he understood.
> They never wanted me.
They never loved me.
They never will.
They called me Gollum… so Gollum is who I'll be.
He rose, slow, deliberate.
The mud fell from him in chunks, revealing the body beneath—larger, harder, more monstrous than any hobbit could ever be. His muscles twitched under the strain of transformation. His spine cracked taller. His eyes glowed like distant moons.
And he whispered, no longer trembling—
> "They see Gollum."
> "So Gollum… Gollum is who we are."
---
Fenna passed the tree.
Too close.
Too blind.
Too loud.
She never saw the hand as it reached from the brush and grabbed her ankle.
She screamed—too late.
Smeagol—Gollum—erupted from the roots, pulling her down into the mud with monstrous force.
Her face hit stone.
Her knife dropped.
She kicked, screamed, flailed—he didn't care.
He tore her throat open with his teeth.
The blood was hot. Coppery. It soaked into the soil. Into his hair. Into his soul.
She twitched.
Then stilled.
Gollum stood.
Mud-covered. Blood-dripping.
And he roared.
"COME THEN! COME AND SEE WHAT YOU'VE MADE!"
The forest echoed.
Birds exploded from the trees.
The hunters froze.
Nessa shrieked. Tobbin tripped. Brandric snarled.
Gollum's silhouette burned in the gloom—muscles coiled, eyes glowing, skin steaming, mouth red.
And for the first time—
they were afraid.