Mirrormere lay behind him like a dream that refused to end—black water holding the stars without a tremor, the valley cupping it in quiet slopes and pale stone as if the mountains themselves meant to shelter it. In the moonlight the pines stood thin and sharp, their needles inked against the sky. Low shrubs crowded the shore in dark, matted clumps, and here and there berries hung in small bruised clusters—edible, sweet if you were hungry enough to ignore the cold. The air smelled clean out there, like snow melt and wet granite.
Gollum left it anyway.
He walked with the steady appetite of a creature that had decided the world belonged to him, bare feet slapping softly against the earth, toes gripping loam and stone. His light-stone burned in his fist—white and steady, not bright enough to tame the night but enough to make shadows obey. Each step took him farther from the lake's calm, and closer to the mountain that swallowed sound.
The slope began to rise. The grass thinned, replaced by broken rock and old laid stone half-sunken into the ground. The road the Dwarves had once made still held its shape even under soil and years—flat slabs fitted too precisely to be nature's work. Ahead, the eastern face of the mountain loomed, and then the stairs appeared: a broad climb of pale stone, wide enough for wagons, for processions, for the daily traffic of a kingdom that had once expected to last forever.
On either side of the stairs, the statues watched.
They were old, huge, and ruined—Dwarves carved in stone, faces stern and bearded, hands set on axes and hammers, crowned with helms that had lost their edges to wind and frost. Many were broken at the knees or the waist, toppled and cracked, their fragments scattered like bones of a giant race. Lichen crawled across their chests. Their eyes were dark hollows that caught no starlight. They looked less like guardians now and more like corpses posed to stand.
Gollum liked them. He liked the idea of them.
He climbed, feeling his calves tighten and release, enjoying the work of it the way a predator enjoys the stretch of a hunt. The higher he went, the colder the air became, and the clean scent of the valley faded beneath something drier, older—stone dust, ancient mortar, the breath of a place shut too long. The lake's faint whisper fell away behind him until all he heard was his own movement and the small hard sound of his feet on steps.
At the top, the Eastern Gate waited—vast, black, open.
Not ajar, not welcoming—simply open, as if the mountain had yawned and never bothered to close its mouth again.
The gate was wide enough for two wagons side by side, wide enough to swallow a crowd. The stonework around it was fitted so cleanly it looked poured, runes cut into the lintels and jambs in patterns his eyes couldn't read but his skin could feel. The carvings were worn in places by weather, but the craft still held—cold and precise, dwarf-made in a way that made even his twisted heart thrum with admiration.
He paused at the threshold.
Outside, night still belonged to wind and pine and distant water. Inside, the air changed. The temperature dropped as if the mountain exhaled against his face. Sound narrowed. Even the rasp of his breath seemed loud.
He hissed once—habit more than fear—and stepped in.
The First Hall opened around him with the blunt force of scale.
It was not a room. It was a world of stone. Rows upon rows of pillars marched into darkness, each one thick as a great tree, rising so high their tops vanished, supporting a ceiling that might as well have been the underside of the mountain itself. The floor spread wide—wide enough for markets, for caravans, for armies—now cracked and worn in places, scattered with fallen fragments where age and violence had finally made something give.
And over everything lay dust.
Not a thin coat, not a polite grey film—dust in a deep settled layer, soft as ash, thick enough that each step made it billow. When his foot struck, it lifted in a slow, choking cloud that rolled outward and then hung in the stale air. It clung to his skin. It got into his mouth. He tasted it and grinned anyway, because it tasted like ownership. Like time defeated.
His light-stone pushed a small circle of pale illumination ahead of him, and the shadows at the edge of that circle seemed heavier for being held back. The pillars threw long black bars across the floor. His own shape stretched and twisted, larger than it had any right to be.
Then the light found what the darkness had been hiding.
Bodies.
At first he saw only fragments—bones jutting from cloth, a hand skeletal and curled, a helm half-buried in dust. Then the circle widened as he moved, and the truth of the hall came into view in pieces like a story told by firelight. Dwarves lay where they had fallen: small, broad-limbed folk in ruined mail and soot-stained tunics, their beards tangled with ash. Some were soldiers with battered shields and axes snapped at the haft. Some were not—women with broken fingers still clutching bundles that had long since rotted into rags. Children with too-large boots, ribs charred black, skulls split or burned smooth as stone.
The hall was not merely abandoned.
It had been fled.
He had never seen a Dwarf before. He had heard the name in old mutterings and half-remembered tales, but the reality was stranger—stocky bodies made for tunnels and labor, faces built around beard and stubbornness. They looked like the mountain had tried to grow people and then lost patience. Dead, they were smaller than he expected, and that made what had killed them feel larger.
Many were burned. Some were twisted as if they had tried to crawl away and were seized mid-motion. The fire that had taken them had not been the clean fire of a camp. It had been something deeper, something that belonged to stone and rage.
Gollum stood among them and felt nothing like pity.
He felt awe.
A kingdom big enough to carve a hall like this. A people bold enough to live under a mountain and call it home. And something—something worse—big enough to make them run.
He prowled forward, light-stone held low, the glow sliding over discarded gear. There were weapons everywhere once his eyes adjusted: axes with Dwarven runes dulled by soot, spears snapped and bent, shields half-melted and warped. Here a pack spilled its contents—tools, cups, a child's carved toy blackened and cracked. There were coins too, glinting like cold teeth in the dust where a purse had burst.
He crouched once, touched the edge of an axe head, and considered it with a narrow, sharp stare.
Metal. Weight. Craft.
Then he left it where it lay.
Steel could break. A blade could be taken. A haft could snap. But his hands—his fists—those were his. His body was his. Since the Ring had changed him, since the heat had started living under his skin like a second heart, he trusted muscle and bone more than anything made by someone else. Tools were for people who feared being weak.
He did not.
He rose and walked on, letting the dust bloom and settle behind him. His breath came steady. His heart thudded with excited certainty. Fear did not touch him, not here, not among corpses, not under a mountain that had swallowed a civilization. If the darkness that lived deeper inside had once been enough to drive all this out, then it would learn a new truth.
The hall did not belong to the dead anymore.
It belonged to him.
Farther in, he found the wide passage that led onward, and beyond it the long stair that climbed toward the bridge—the ancient route deeper into the mountain. Even from the hall floor it looked like a patient, endless ascent, steps broad enough for wagons, worn smooth by a traffic that had once been constant.
At the foot of those stairs, the dead were thicker.
Here were not warriors posed for a last stand but people crushed by panic—bodies piled where the flow had choked, bones snapped at wrong angles, ribs caved, skulls broken under the stampede of others fleeing the same doom. Wagons lay collapsed and eaten by time; their wood had rotted away to nothing, leaving twisted iron frames half-buried in dust and ash. Pots lay cracked, tools rusted, cloaks reduced to threadbare strips.
Gollum looked at it all as if it were weather.
Not his problem. Not his grief.
His gaze climbed the stair. His legs tightened with eager purpose. He started upward, and each step sent dust flaring into the stale air in rolling clouds. It scratched his throat, made him cough once, harsh and amused—like the mountain itself was trying to warn him off.
He kept climbing, but the stair did not simply climb—it labored upward like a road built for stubborn people and heavy loads, each step broad and shallow, worn smooth by centuries of boots, wheels, and iron-rimmed traffic. It went on and on, curving through the stone as though the mountain itself were slowly lifting its chin. Gollum climbed with the pleased relentlessness of something that had discovered strength and wanted to spend it. Dust rose with every footfall, drifting in pale sheets through the thin circle of light cast by his stone.
The air changed as he went higher.
It grew colder, tighter. The stale breath of the First Hall faded behind him, replaced by a draught that moved unseen from deep places—an upwelling of chill that tasted faintly of old water and rock. His footsteps rang harder now, the echoes bouncing strangely ahead of him, as if the mountain were listening from around corners.
At last the stair delivered him to a threshold of open darkness—and the Bridge of Khazad-dûm lay before him.
Not a narrow plank, not some desperate sliver of stone, but a true Dwarven span: wide enough for two carriages abreast, broad enough that a column of wagons could have rolled across without slowing, broad enough to make you understand this was not merely a defensive choke but a working artery of a living city. Its surface was worn and scuffed, the stone polished by vanished wheels. Low parapets lined the sides—heavy blocks fitted so precisely the seams were hair-thin even after ages.
And yet the chasm beneath it made all that width feel like a lie.
It fell away into nothing. Not darkness like a room without a torch—darkness like depth without end. The light-stone in his hand could not touch the bottom. It only found the near edges: a sheer drop, a hungry void, the faint suggestion of stone far below and then—nothing again. Cold air breathed up from it in slow pulses.
Gollum stepped closer until his toes reached the bridge's lip. He leaned over, squinting, as if his eyes could bully the abyss into revealing itself.
It did not.
He straightened, lips peeling back in a grin that was more teeth than joy. Here was a thing built to impress, to humble, to warn—this is where the mountain begins, and you are small. He felt none of that. The drop did not frighten him. It pleased him. It meant the mountain had teeth. It meant his kingdom had a throat.
"Aaahh," he breathed, the sound rough and intimate in the empty air. "Good…"
He could imagine how this place would have worked in the old days: guards posted at either end, a steady flow of trade behind them, the bridge watched and controlled, the chasm serving as its own threat. Not because the bridge was narrow—because the height and exposure made every crossing a decision. Even wide, even built for traffic, it demanded respect.
Gollum gave it none.
He stepped out onto the stone with easy confidence, bare feet sure on the cold surface. The light-stone made the bridge glow faintly around him, turning the dust to pale smoke at his ankles. His shadow ran ahead of him, long and distorted, stretching toward the far end where the darkness thickened into a mouth.
Halfway across, he paused—not from caution, but to savor it. The silence. The depth. The feeling that the world fell away on either side and left only his path suspended above emptiness. He breathed once, deep, and felt his chest expand with ownership.
Then he crossed the rest of the span and stepped into the Second Hall.
If the First Hall had been a cathedral carved from stone, this was a corridor made for purpose.
It was narrower—still enormous by any normal measure, but constrained compared to the vast cavern behind him. It ran long and straight into shadow, the ceiling lower, the acoustics sharper. Great pillars still stood along the walls, but here they were closer together, more utilitarian, less ceremonial. Some had cracked and buckled. Some had fallen, leaving jagged stumps and shattered drums of stone scattered like dropped teeth.
The air was worse. Older. Staler. Dust lay everywhere, undisturbed in smooth blankets. His footsteps sounded different too—tighter echoes that seemed to run ahead of him, whispering his arrival into the dark long before he reached it.
He moved forward, light-stone held out, and the glow began to reveal the hall's details: carved lintels over side-passages, half-collapsed arches, the faint lines of Dwarven patterns worn dull by time. In places the walls bore scorch stains—old, faint, uneven—like the memory of fire rather than fresh destruction.
Then the light caught iron.
To his left, tucked into an alcove off the hall, sat the remains of an armoury—or a guardhouse built to serve the bridge. The room's mouth yawned open. Inside, racks leaned at crooked angles, their wood long turned brittle and grey. Rusted weapons still hung where hands had left them: axes, short spears, a few blades, their edges dulled by air and neglect. Shields lay scattered across the floor, their emblems faded into meaningless stains. Iron fittings had bloomed with corrosion, and shelves that once held order and readiness had collapsed into heaps of splinters and dust.
It felt less like a place abandoned over time and more like a place abandoned mid-breath.
As if the defenders had run out of it and never had the chance to return.
Gollum stood in the Second Hall and let his gaze drift to the branching tunnels beyond—dark mouths leading who knew where, the deeper veins of the mountain. For a moment he felt the pull of them, the lure of discovering what lay inside his new kingdom.
But the guardhouse was closest. Easiest. A bite-sized prize.
He turned toward it without hesitation, his excitement sharpening, and padded across the dust—already imagining the ways this bridge, this hall, this choke-point could be his. How a king would need watchers here. How a king would need hands that were not his own.
He stepped over the threshold.
Inside, the room was smaller and meaner than the halls—built for function, for men who stood watch and slept in their armor. Stone bunks lined one wall, hard slabs with shallow grooves where blankets might once have been tucked. Pegs and racks still jutted out, meant for mail and helms and gear. A table—or what remained of one—sat half-collapsed under a drift of dust. Everything was still, as if time had been told to stop and had obeyed.
One door, set lower and heavier, opened onto a narrow side chamber.
A dungeon.
Chains hung on the walls, thick links blackened with age, sized for Dwarves—and for larger captives too, if need demanded. Iron rings were bolted into the stone. The air in there smelled different: colder, more confined, touched with old damp.
Gollum's eyes narrowed, curiosity flickering like a quick flame. He listened, half-expecting something to answer him from the deep. Nothing did. No skittering. No breath. No whisper.
The evil that had emptied this place was not here.
Not at the gate. Not at the bridge. Not in this room.
And that, more than anything, thrilled him.
He prowled back into the guardhouse proper, letting the light-stone sweep across corners and shelves. That was when he saw the desk—stone and iron, built to last—and the shallow drawers beneath it. He dragged one open with a rasping scrape, and the sound echoed off the walls like a shout.
Coins.
Old Dwarven currency lay piled and scattered inside, dulled by age but still unmistakably metal, still real. A small hoard left behind in haste, forgotten in panic, abandoned when life mattered more than wealth.
Gollum stared at it, and something hungry and delighted moved behind his eyes.
Treasure. Just sitting there. Untouched. Waiting.
His fingers twitched, but he did not scoop it up—not yet. Not like a thief stuffing his pockets. This was not looting.
This was inventory.
A king taking stock.
The thought warmed him. Then another thought, colder and sharper, followed right behind it—practical, unavoidable.
A mountain this size could not be held by one pair of hands.
He could walk it. He could claim it. He could kill for it, if he had to. But rule it? Guard the bridge? Keep watch on the gates? Control the mouths of these tunnels?
He would need bodies.
Subjects. Guards. Creatures that would obey—enough to hold the key points while he prowled deeper.
Gollum stood in the abandoned guardhouse with the light-stone shining over dust and rust and forgotten wealth, and the idea settled into him like a hook set deep.
How do you build a kingdom when you are alone?
Where do you find hands to hold what is yours?
Torn by the problem gnawing at him—how to hold a kingdom too large for one body—Gollum turned from the guardhouse interior and strode back toward the entrance.
He almost collided with her.
He stopped so abruptly that for a fraction of a heartbeat the world seemed to stall, his senses lagging behind his body. What filled his vision was not stone or shadow, but flesh and form—too close, impossibly close. A woman stood directly in his path, her presence sudden and overwhelming.
An Elven maiden.
She was taller than him by a head, her posture straight and unguarded, as if she had not expected resistance. Her red hair blazed even in the dimness, spilling down her slender shoulders like living silk. Her eyes—bright, blue, wide—were locked on him in naked shock.
Gollum did not know her name.
He knew only that she was real, and here, and far too close.
For a suspended instant, neither of them moved. His gaze dropped involuntarily, taking her in with a predator's speed: the rise of her chest beneath her clothes, unmistakable; the curve of her waist narrowing into hips shaped by training and motion; strength disguised as grace. His eyes flicked back up just as quickly, sharp and assessing, narrowing.
She stared at him as though the mountain itself had stepped forward and spoken.
Awe washed over her face—raw, unhidden. Confusion followed, then something quieter and more dangerous: fascination. She did not recoil. She did not shout. She stood there, frozen, breath caught, her hands slack at her sides.
She wanted to speak. He could see it in her throat, in the way her lips parted slightly and then failed her. Whatever she had expected to find beyond the bridge, it had not been this.
Gollum felt the moment stretch thin.
His mind, already frayed by hunger and suspicion, twisted the silence into threat. His instincts screamed warnings. He was still hunted it seemed. He was pursued. Those evil Stoor Hobbit bastards had sent an elf chasing after him. Elves did not appear by accident—not here, not underground where no trees grew.
He imagined her thoughts bleeding into the air between them. This is him. The beast. The thing she had followed into the dark.
If she had come for his head, he would not hesitate.
Female or not.
With a sudden snarl ripped from deep in his chest, Gollum lunged.
His fist came up in a brutal, efficient arc—an uppercut driven by coiled muscle and certainty. It struck her chin before she could so much as draw breath for a greeting. The impact snapped her head back, and she dropped instantly, her body folding as consciousness fled.
She fell down the guardhouse steps in a loose, boneless tumble, stone striking flesh with dull finality. The sound echoed through the Second Hall, swallowed slowly by the mountain.
Gollum stood above her, chest heaving. His eyes were bloodshot, blazing. Foam gathered at the corners of his mouth as he hissed, shaking with fury.
"Damned Elf!" he spat into the silence. "Why do you make me do this? Why do you hunt me? Why do you trespass in my kingdom?!"
His voice cracked and rose, rebounding off stone and iron. "You leave me no choice! Gollum, Gollum, Gollum!"
He leapt down the steps in a single motion and seized her by her red hair, fingers tangling in its silken weight. He hauled her upward with terrifying strength, her limp body scraping against stone, unmoving, silent.
She did not stir.
At the dungeon door he did not slow. He threw her inside without ceremony, metal rings clattering as he dragged chains free. He looped one around her slender neck alone—no wrists, no ankles. She was unconscious. Unarmed. No threat.
For now.
He fastened the chain and stepped back, breathing hard, eyes fixed on her fallen form.
He would wait.
He would let her wake in the dark, let her understand where she was and whose mountain she had entered. He would teach her the price of trespass. The cost of hunting him.
Gollum straightened, his back stiff with possession.
He was strong.
He ruled here now.
No Elf—no one—would walk into his halls and expect mercy.
This was his kingdom.
And god damn it—
He was Gollum.