Torn from the world and cast into the Void eras ago, Morgoth lay in the endless darkness, seemingly asleep, yet brimming with terrifying power. He radiated an immense pressure that formed its own independent domain, a realm unto itself within the boundless emptiness.
Since his defeat in the War of Wrath, his capture, and the forging of divine shackles by Aulë to bind his body, Morgoth's power had not weakened. It had gradually increased, even surpassing his former strength.
Especially during the War of the Ring, Sauron had sacrificed countless lives in his master's name, channeling that harvested energy to Morgoth across the Void. This replenished the Dark Enemy's power and gave him the first real possibility of breaking free from his bonds.
Though Morgoth was called the Lord of Darkness, his power was not rooted in the laws of darkness alone. In essence, he was a creation of Eru Ilúvatar, sharing the same fundamental nature as the other Ainur. But unlike his brethren, who each wielded authority over a specific domain, Manwë commanding the airs, Aulë the craft of making, Ulmo the waters, Morgoth possessed no single fixed domain.
Or rather, he possessed fragments of all domains.
Before his fall, the being known as Melkor had been the mightiest and most glorious of all the Ainur that Ilúvatar had created. The Creator had placed the greatest expectations upon him, bestowing upon him the greatest power and the broadest authority, encompassing fragments of every domain of law. He was considered the Ainu closest to the Creator himself.
It could be said that, aside from Ilúvatar's unique ability to create true life through the Flame Imperishable, Melkor possessed virtually all other powers.
Ilúvatar had entrusted Melkor with this immense strength intending for him to become the king of the Ainur, to lead the Ainulindalë, the Great Music, in shaping the vision of the world. But Melkor developed a boundless ambition. He refused to use the power Ilúvatar had given him to create collaboratively. Instead, he sought to disrupt and distort the Great Music, bending it to his own will, desiring that creation conform to his vision alone.
Disappointed, Ilúvatar allowed Melkor's brother, Manwë, to become King of the Valar and lead the Ainur in shaping the world of Arda.
This only deepened Melkor's jealousy and resentment. While continuously sabotaging the Valar's work of creation, he also sought to claim the world of Arda as his own dominion and become its sole ruler. He even coveted the Flame Imperishable, the unique creative fire of Ilúvatar, for the Flame was the core of creation itself: universe, life, and soul. Every being, whether Ainu, Elf, or Man, had been brought into existence through the Flame Imperishable, and it was through the Flame that Ilúvatar had bestowed free will upon his creations.
Morgoth desired this power above all else. He wanted to use the Flame to create a race entirely his own and to become the lord of the world. He aspired to become a Creator God equal to Ilúvatar, to replace him entirely.
Failing to seize the Flame, Morgoth poured his own will and power into the material substance of Arda itself, corrupting the earth, tainting living beings, and defiling souls. He twisted Elves into Orcs, animals into fell beasts, Maiar into Balrogs, and created evil dragons and giants, an entire host of dark creations.
But because he had dispersed his power so widely, infusing it into the very fabric of the world to control everything within it, his personal strength gradually diminished. He became what the Valar called "Morgoth's Ring," the cancer of Arda, his essence woven inextricably into the world itself. This was what ultimately led to his defeat in the War of Wrath.
Yet this dispersal also bound him permanently to Arda. As long as the world endured, Morgoth could never be truly destroyed. This was precisely why the Valar, after capturing him, did not kill him but merely banished him to the Void beyond the Door of Night.
From the moment of his banishment, Morgoth had been slowly gathering his scattered power, plotting to escape his shackles and return to Arda.
Under the original trajectory of fate, he should have waited until Dagor Dagorath, the twilight of the world, when the Valar's power waned, before seizing the opportunity to break free and instigate the final apocalypse.
But Sauron's mass sacrifices during the War of the Ring had changed the equation. The influx of harvested life-force was like water in the desert for the imprisoned Dark Enemy. Though it could not fully restore him, it gave him the breathing room to begin recovering in earnest. And that recovery, however partial, was enough to produce a qualitative change, allowing him to escape his bonds far sooner than fate had intended.
As human civilization developed, especially after the transition into the Age of the Supernatural, individual human strength grew dramatically and the world of Arda was constantly being reshaped. Correspondingly, the abuse of magic became widespread, dark magic most of all.
Even some humans, while excavating ancient ruins, uncovered traces of Morgoth's legacy. In the darkness of forbidden knowledge, worship and belief in the Dark Enemy took root and spread. And this darkness, this faith born of fear and fascination, became Morgoth's finest nourishment.
Then, at a certain moment, the accumulated power reached its threshold.
Morgoth opened his eyes.
Those terrible, demonic eyes blazed with malice, and a wave of annihilating force erupted outward, stirring a storm across the vast, empty Void that had been his prison for uncounted ages.
Morgoth's body began to expand. Rapidly, impossibly, he grew, swelling to the size of a mountain, then continuing: ten thousand feet, twenty thousand feet, until his form was comparable to a continent, until he rivaled the very world of Arda in scale.
The iron chains that bound him, Angainor, strained and groaned as his body continued to grow. Angainor was a divine artifact forged with the supreme skill of Aulë himself; once locked upon a prisoner, escape was thought to be impossible.
But now, as Morgoth's form expanded to world-shaking proportions, even that masterwork of divine smithing began to buckle under the strain. The impossibly durable links deformed, metal shrieking against metal.
"RAAAAGH!"
Morgoth roared. The sound was low and cataclysmic, rolling through the emptiness of the Void like the death-cry of a world. A shockwave of terrifying force erupted from his body. His face contorted with savage fury as he gritted his teeth and threw every ounce of his recovered strength against the chains binding him.
The immense power tore through the surrounding Void itself, ripping open the fabric of empty space and stirring up storms of chaotic energy. Countless elemental particles and stray matter were annihilated on contact, reduced to primordial chaos.
In the end, Morgoth prevailed.
With a deafening crack that echoed across dimensions, Angainor shattered, the great chain splitting in two.
Free at last, Morgoth was exhausted. He stood in the Void, chest heaving, his strength severely depleted from the effort. But his eyes blazed with unquenchable rage, and his laughter, wild, unhinged, and triumphant, rang out across the emptiness like the cry of a prisoner who had at last broken free of an eternal cell. Boundless joy and boundless madness, intertwined and inseparable.
When the laughter subsided, Morgoth fell silent.
His gaze dropped to the broken remnants of Angainor. His expression twisted with disgust, humiliation, and something deeper, a complex, incomprehensible emotion that only one who had been chained for eras beyond counting could understand.
He seized the shattered chain.
In his grasp, a flame appeared, intensely hot, corrosive with ancient evil, radiating pure destruction. The moment the divine shackles met that flame, the metal that had resisted his strength for ages lost all its power and melted instantly into molten slag.
Morgoth reshaped the lava with his bare hands, working it like a smith at a forge. The liquid metal flowed and hardened, taking form beneath his will, until a new creation sat before him: a crown of black iron, jagged and terrible.
He placed it upon his brow.
Then Morgoth turned his gaze outward, through the Void, toward the distant, shimmering sphere of Arda.
"Arda... your king has returned."