The Gates of Moria – Morning Fog Rising
The lake behind him shimmered with the early breath of dawn, rippling faintly where blood had washed from his skin. His body glistened with cold water, muscle flexing beneath golden-red light, veins of white and gold still glowing faintly beneath the skin.
In his teeth, a silver fish twitched—its tail limp, eyes wide, skull cracked from his bite.
Gollum stepped from the water, bare feet sinking into the muddy bank. He blinked into the rising mist. Pulled up his pants with one hand, the other holding the fish tight between his jaws like a predator on the move.
He chewed.
Swallowed.
Grinned.
And then he began to walk.
The Path to the Gate
The old road was cracked and overgrown, but still there—paved with slabs blackened by time, cut by dwarven chisels and once polished by the boots of kings.
Now moss crept between the stones, vines draped over ancient pillars, and the only footsteps echoing here were Gollum's.
But he didn't slink anymore.
He strode.
Wider. Heavier. Taller.
Like a lion pacing toward his throne.
Shoulders back. Arms loose. Spine straight.
The fish now half-eaten, he tore another chunk free with a grunt and kept walking. He didn't look left or right. He didn't flinch at the wind. He felt the weight of stone rising before him.
And he smiled.
The Gate of Kings
The black wall loomed before him at last.
The East Gate of Moria.
Carved into the side of the mountain like the mouth of a sleeping god, it stretched upward into shadow, its arch flanked by statues of ancient dwarves, now cracked and eroded by centuries.
Their faces were stern.
But their eyes were hollow.
One had half a beard missing. The other, a broken axe.
The gate itself was open—not wide, but cracked just enough for a body to pass through.
Dwarves had once sealed it tight.
But something from below had burst it outward.
Gollum stepped forward.
He placed his hand on the stone.
It was cold.
And it trembled, just slightly, at his touch.
Into the First Hall
He entered without fear.
Dust greeted him.
Dust, cobwebs, silence.
The First Hall of Moria—once a grand antechamber where merchants gathered, where guards patrolled, where caravans passed through under torchlight—was now a tomb.
The air was thick with the weight of years.
Every step he took sent up a puff of ancient grey, curling like smoke around his ankles.
He saw bones.
Dwarven bones, yellowed and dry, still wrapped in rusted mail and clutched around broken shields. Some lay scattered near the door—frozen mid-flight, as if they had tried to run.
Others were slumped against pillars, axes clutched in skeletal hands.
They didn't die fighting.
They died fleeing.
The light from the open door behind him began to fade.
The deeper he walked, the darker it became.
But he did not stop.
He chewed the last of the fish.
Swallowed.
Dropped the tail to the ground and crushed it beneath his heel.
The red in his veins flared briefly—a pulse of dominance.
His hands flexed.
His eyes glowed.
And deep beneath his feet…
Something old stirred.
Just a whisper.
Just a breath.
But it felt like a greeting.
"I have come," Gollum whispered, voice reverent, voice cracked.
"Not to kneel… but to reign."
---
Moria – The Deep Entrance to the Second Hall
---
The darkness swallowed everything.
The further Gollum walked, the more the light behind him faded. The last embers of the world above—dawn on stone, wind on skin—vanished like a dream.
Now there was only cold. Only stone. And the sound of his own feet echoing like whispers in a tomb.
But Gollum didn't fear the dark.
He was born in it. Reborn in it.
His eyes adjusted quickly—partly from instinct, partly from something else. From the light burning within his chest, the slow, steady pulse of the white core, keeping his body alive, warm, and whole.
Still, even his new sight could not pierce the deeper shadows beyond the Second Hall.
Then—
He saw it.
A flicker.
Small. Dull. Cold.
But still there.
A glint of light in the dark.
---
The Skeleton
He followed the glint and found a dwarven skeleton, half-buried in rubble, seated upright against the wall.
Its armor was blackened, torn at the seams. An axe lay rusted beside it, its edge notched and cracked. The helm had rolled away, and where the skull should have been… was only dust.
But in the dwarf's gloved hand—
A small stone.
Rounded. Polished. No bigger than a plum.
Mithril.
Dull from age. Cold to the touch. But not dead.
It shimmered faintly, like something waiting.
Gollum reached out, curious. His fingers, still wet from the lake, pressed against the metal surface.
And the moment he touched it—
The white core flared.
---
The Surge
A pulse shot through his arm.
Not pain.
Not magic.
Will.
His own.
The white light in his chest surged forward, through his veins, down into the stone. Unintentionally. Instinctively. Entirely.
The stone pulsed once.
Twice.
Then it ignited.
---
The First Light Stone
Brilliant white light burst from the mithril.
Not searing—but warm. Steady. Perfect.
The stone hovered in his palm, now floating slightly above his skin. Veins of red and gold swirled faintly through it, but the core was pure white. It vibrated softly, humming like a heartbeat.
The light expanded, illuminating a radius of ten, fifteen meters around him. Every stone, every pillar, every abandoned shield now bathed in the glow.
The dust burned away, curling into harmless ash.
The skeleton glimmered in memorial.
And the shadows fled.
---
The Stone Lives
Then it moved.
Not the way things fall or roll—but the way an eye turns.
The lightstone slowly adjusted in his hand, its beam swiveling to light his path forward. It pulsed gently, almost… asking.
Where to next, master?
Gollum blinked, breathless.
He tilted his head.
Smiled.
> "Good… yes. Obey, little light. We walk now. We go deeper. Deeper…"
He cradled the stone, held it high.
And with a grin of tooth and purpose, he stepped forward.
Into the black.
The halls of Moria lit once more—not by forge or flame, but by the will of a forgotten monster who had crowned himself king.
---
From the First Hall to the Bridge and Beyond
---
The First Hall whispered behind him—its vast, dust-choked silence echoing like the breath of a dead world.
Gollum turned for a moment.
He looked back.
Where once Dwarves had stood in gleaming armor, where once caravans had come to pay their tolls and pass through the might of Moria—now only dust clung to the walls, bones crumbled at the feet of statues, and decay reigned like a quiet god.
The lightstone hovered beside him, glowing with the soft pulse of a second heart—white with faint gold veins curling like tendrils through the air.
It was warm. Gentle.
It illuminated what the world had long forgotten.
Gollum stepped forward.
> "We walk now," he whispered.
His voice echoed across the stone, curling around the pillars, lingering a moment longer than it should have.
He crossed the cracked flagstones that led out of the First Hall, the white glow catching bits of shattered metal, faded merchant sigils, and the skeletal remains of toll-seekers too slow to flee when the world fell.
Ahead of him, the path narrowed into a grand stone archway.
---
The Toll Gate – "The Gate of Debt"
Two large dwarven statues flanked the arch, once carved in the likeness of judges—eyes stern, mouths downturned, each holding a scroll in one hand and an axe in the other.
Both statues had been broken and blackened. One had lost its face entirely, a blast mark scorched into its chest. The scroll in its hand was shattered. The other still stood—cracked, leaning slightly—but intact.
Its gaze met Gollum's as he passed.
He sneered at it.
> "How many coins? How many screams?"
To the side of the gate stood the remains of the toll station. It was more than just a booth—it was a checkpoint fortress. The iron-barred windows, once meant for taxation and interrogation, now hung open like wounds. The gatehouse was cracked wide, half-collapsed, and littered with the shattered gear of what might have been its last defenders—axes, ledgers, bones.
Gollum paused and stepped into the ruin for a moment. A rusted coin chest sat beneath a fallen beam, its lock long shattered.
Inside: piles of copper, a few bent silvers, and a handful of bloodstained gold coins.
He grinned.
> "Still taking payment, hmm? Dead dwarves still counting?"
He scooped a handful of coins and let them fall through his fingers like water.
Then turned.
And stepped onto the bridge.
---
The Bridge – "Durin's Spine"
It was wider than he expected—six meters across, flat and strong even after centuries of neglect. The flagstones were worn smooth in the middle where thousands of wagons had once passed. On either side, waist-high runed railings had been carved in interlocking patterns—meant to be beautiful as well as functional.
But now?
They were cracked, blackened, half-shattered.
One whole section had collapsed, leaving a jagged edge where stone once met stone.
The wind howled up from the chasm below—not loud, but cold. Thin. Wet. Alien. As if something far, far beneath was still breathing. Waiting.
Gollum stepped forward, the lightstone gliding beside him, now slowly rotating, casting long shadows like watchful eyes across the chasm walls.
He ran a hand along the railing.
The stone was rough. Brittle.
Runes flaked beneath his touch, shedding like scabs.
> "You taxed the world," he muttered. "And it burned you for it."
He flexed his hand.
His body was a weapon now.
His heart a furnace of light.
He could feel the second pulse of the mountain. The way the bridge subtly vibrated beneath his feet. The air was thicker here. Ancient. Watching.
---
Crossing into the Past
As he walked further, he saw faint glyphs etched into the flagstones at intervals—markers for caravan lanes, weight warnings, and Dwarvish edicts of order. Every ten paces, a slab would show words like:
"Honor the Toll, Obey the Gate."
"Trade is Strength. Disobedience is Death."
"The King Sees All Who Cross."
Gollum laughed when he read that last one.
> "Then look now, old king. Look what crosses your grave."
He paused midway, looking down into the chasm.
The lightstone brightened and peered downward at his command.
No bottom. Only black.
He leaned over the edge.
> "How many fell here? Thieves? Beggars? Traitors?"
> "Would you throw Gollum down too?"
He spat.
It fell for a long time.
He never heard it land.
---
He stood tall again.
The bridge continued.
And so did he.
---
At the midpoint of the bridge sat the toll booth—not a hut, but a bastion carved into the bridge wall, like a parasite lodged in stone, watching both sides of the causeway like a judging eye.
Its windows, once narrow slits guarded by crossbows, were now bent inward, as though something massive had forced its way through from the outside—or perhaps fled from within.
The main door lay half-buried under a collapsed keystone, a spill of ancient bricks frozen mid-fall, like a mouth left agape. Moss crept between the rubble, clinging to the edges of fallen stonework.
A dwarven skull rested just beside the threshold.
The jaw had been shattered, teeth cracked, the iron helmet still fused to the cranium by rust and age. One empty eye socket stared upward—silent, judging, forever watching the bridge it once defended.
Inside the booth, the bones of two others sat slumped in chairs behind a shattered stone desk, where a rusted bell chain still hung from the ceiling, gently swaying with the faint breath of the chasm's wind. One dwarf still gripped a quill in a skeletal hand. The ledger on the desk was no longer a book—just a lump of mold and paper rot, its ink bled into illegible darkness.
The toll chest had been pried open long ago, its coins spilled across the floor like teeth.
The room stank of ancient iron and stale air.
It was not a place of law anymore.
It was a cracked throne.
A seat of judgment long since abandoned by its kings.
Gollum passed it without slowing.
He did not need to see what was inside.
He had heard stories of dwarven toll collectors—how they taxed the desperate, scorned the weak, and cast those who could not pay into the abyss.
"We eat the world, coin by coin."
That's what one old Wildman had said.
Now?
There was no tax.
No question.
No gatekeeper.
Only silence.
And Gollum.
---
The far end of the bridge sloped upward, rising into a narrow ramp carved between two towering walls. Along these walls were murder slits, angled perfectly for defensive fire—but now they were dark, choked with dust and spiderwebs, their steel brackets rusted to flakes.
Once, these had bristled with crossbows and flame pots, ready to reduce any unworthy traveler to smoking bone.
Now?
Empty. Watching. Waiting.
Gollum's lightstone hovered ahead of him, casting its radiance into the narrowing space, the beam crawling up the incline as if hesitant to unveil what lay beyond.
And then—
The ramp leveled out.
The arch opened.
And the Second Hall unveiled itself.
It was a cathedral of stone.
Monumental. Unimaginable. Hollowed from the mountain like the ribcage of a god.
The ceiling was too high to see, lost in eternal shadow. From above, dust drifted like snowflakes, caught in the white glow of Gollum's floating lightstone.
Dozens of square-hewn pillars, thick as towers, ran in great rows along the hall—each one carved with reliefs of dwarves in battle, in council, in song. Their faces, once proud, were now worn smooth by time and sorrow.
Bones littered the floor.
Scattered in piles beneath tattered banners.
Some lay beneath the broken remains of merchant wagons, their cargo long since plundered or rotted.
Others clutched weapons, backs against pillars.
Some—perhaps the worst—lay as though crawling, fingers still stretched forward, as if trying to reach the far end of the hall before the darkness took them.
Banners still hung from the upper walls.
Once dyed in deep reds, bronze, and blue.
Now faded to ash-gray, their crests barely visible.
One showed a dwarven hammer, ringed by golden leaves.
Another—a stone crown above a fortress.
They flapped gently in a wind that had no source, stirred by the breath of something sleeping deeper down.
The dust was thick.
Not just a layer—but drifts, as if time had collapsed here and never left.
Every step Gollum took muffled his footsteps. Every movement sent small clouds spiraling upward.
He walked slowly now.
The lightstone cast long, silent shadows—his coronation entourage.
But it wasn't the size that gripped him.
It was the emptiness.
The death of purpose.
This hall had once been alive with voices—coin clinking, steel ringing, boots echoing, laughter, arguments, commands.
Now?
Nothing.
Not even the echoes dared return.
---
Second Hall – Within and Beyond the Guardhouse
---
The steel door gave way with a final groan, scraping rust against stone.
Gollum stepped into Stonepost One.
The white lightstone followed him, floating into the doorway and pausing for a breath—then sweeping slowly across the chamber like a divine eye, casting long shadows against the walls.
The guardhouse was intact.
Dusty. Silent. But standing.
Stone desks, broken at the corners. Bunks along the far wall, some collapsed, others still bearing the mold-stained remnants of dwarven mattresses. The walls were lined with old weapons—most rusted, some missing. Hooks hung empty. A few daggers remained, so brittle they crumbled at a touch.
Chains dangled from wall rings. Thick, black iron links coated in cobwebs.
And there, in the corner, sitting beneath the remains of a shattered wall lamp—a dwarven skeleton, still slouched in posture, a crossbow gripped in its skeletal hands, rust welded to bone.
Gollum stepped toward it.
The bones didn't move. Didn't whisper. Just watched.
> "You judged others," Gollum murmured.
"Now watch me."
He moved deeper, his lightstone gliding past the corpse as if dismissing it.
---
The Sleeping Quarters
He entered the largest chamber—a former barracks.
Six bunk beds lined the walls, frames warped from time, cloth long rotted into brown strips. A stone hearth sat at the far end, its chimney cracked open like a wound to the mountain's breath.
The air was still.
Heavy.
But not unkind.
Gollum dropped to one knee beside a dusty bench. He ran his fingers through the ash, inhaled deeply.
> "This is mine now," he whispered.
"This is where I begin."
The lightstone rose slowly toward the center of the ceiling.
And then it flared, bright and calm, casting a warm glow across every surface—softly pushing back the shadows as if they were obedient servants retreating.
---
Tauriel – The Silent Witness
From the shadows of a broken arch above the Second Hall, Tauriel watched him.
She had followed his light for days.
First at the river. Then across the slopes. Through the East Gate. Across the blackened bridge.
She had stayed far back—but never out of sight.
And now, she watched as he entered Stonepost One, and she felt her breath catch in her throat.
The light that followed him was not fire, not torchlight, not even elven craft. It was something… else. Something ancient. Something alive.
> That light should not exist here… not in Moria…
And yet it did.
He carried it. Controlled it. Breathed with it.
> How?
---
She shifted in the shadows, her eyes locked on the doorway of the guardhouse. And then… she smelled it again.
That scent.
That overwhelming, primal, manly scent—like sweat and iron and something feral, something alive in a way no elf had ever been.
It made her knees tremble.
Her thighs pressed together instinctively. Her breath hitched. She bit her lip, and her hand gripped the cold stone wall to stop herself from slipping.
> He walks like a king, she thought. Like the halls already belong to him.
She watched the way he moved—each step heavy with purpose, his chest broad, his back straight, his muscles coiling with every shift. He was naked from the waist up, blood from old battles still smeared across his shoulder blades like war paint.
> He should not be beautiful. But he is. In the way storms are beautiful. In the way fire is beautiful. Terrible. Real.
But she also remembered what the Wildmen had said.
Of the beast in the mountain.
The thing of fire and shadow that killed kings and dwarves alike.
And she trembled again.
> What if… it's not the Balrog that rules Moria now?
What if it's him?
Thinking of it her body began to burn even hotter.
Not just with heat—but with fear. With urgency.
He was going deeper.
He was not stopping.
And the thing beneath, the true ancient beast—it would feel him. It would wake.
She wanted to call out.
To warn him.
To step from the shadows and beg him to stop.
But she couldn't.
She was too overwhelmed.
Too shy.
Too afraid of his strength.
> Too afraid that if I call his name… he'll turn.
He'll see me.
And I'll fall to my knees before I say a word.
And yet she continued to follow him silently, while each step of the way she gripped the stone walls besides herself hard for support. By now her womb ached bad.
Her lips were red from biting. Her heart thundered like a war drum.
And she whispered into the dark, unheard:
> "Please don't go further…
You belong to me…"
But he was already walking.
And she was already following.
---