A dark, armored figure stood before you, the air around him thick with the scent of ozone and something akin to old iron, a metallic tang that spoke of furnaces and dark artistry.

The plates of his black armor seemed to absorb the very light in the chamber, making him a void in the richly appointed space, a stark, unsettling contrast to the luxurious tapestries depicting ancient, sun-drenched forests and the warm, dancing glow of the hearth.

His gauntleted hand, each finger a wicked claw of forged metal, moved with an uncharacteristic slowness, reaching out tentatively, hesitantly, towards your face. There was a subtle tremor in the movement, a fragility you rarely, if ever, witnessed from the Dark Lord, a stark admission of a deeper vulnerability hidden beneath the formidable, unyielding exterior he presented to the world. He paused, the very air seeming to hold its breath around him, his gaze, though hidden behind the shadowed slit of his helmet, seemed to bore into you, searching for something only your eyes could reflect back.

His voice, usually a resonant, commanding baritone that could shatter stone or cow armies into submission, was now a low rasp, tinged with an unfamiliar, almost painful vulnerability. It was as if the very act of speaking this truth had stripped it of its customary power, leaving it raw and exposed. "My light," he began, the title a soft echo in the vast, otherwise silent room, a term of endearment he reserved only for you, a fragile link to a past he had all but obliterated. "Tell me, do you... do I still hold any semblance of beauty in your eyes? Even now, after the cataclysmic fires of Númenor have scarred not just the very lands of Arda, but have twisted and ravaged my very form, leaving me... this?" He gestured vaguely to his imposing, yet undeniably twisted and monstrous, shape, the sharp angles of his armor catching the faint light in unsettling ways.

"The very essence of what I once was, the fair form I wore, gone, replaced by this visage of dread and power. A perpetual reminder of my greatest ambition and my greatest loss." He paused again, a long, weighted silence hanging in the air between you, broken only by the faint, rhythmic crackle of the fire in the hearth.

"Am I still your Sauron, despite this… monstrosity I have become? Can you still look upon me, my dearest Alaina, and see anything other than the ruin I wrought, anything beyond the shadow I have cast across the world and, in doing so, across myself?" His voice dropped to a near whisper, laden with an uncharacteristic plea, a raw yearning for affirmation. "Tell me, mîr, for your sight is the only truth I now trust, the only mirror in which I dare to seek my reflection."