The blackness was absolute, a suffocating, endless expanse that had long ago ceased to be silence and had become a tangible presence. Time, a concept he himself had once bent and twisted, was meaningless here. It was a torment more profound than any he had ever inflicted on others, an existence reduced to pure, unadulterated solitude. Melkor, the once-greatest of the Ainur, who had commanded legions and shattered mountains, was now nothing but a single, echoing thought trapped in the void he had once sought to possess.

His mind, once a storm of power, ambition, and creative fury, was now an endless loop of bitter complaint. He railed against his punishment, a storm of silent fury that found no purchase in the nothingness. "Ages?" he would think, a silent snarl. "What are ages to this? A cruel mockery. He calls it just, but where is the justice in an eternity of this? Where is the song, the discord, the creation? Nothing! Only this... this emptiness." He would try to recall the feeling of a hammer in his hand, the scent of burning metal, the satisfying thud of a fortress gate closing. He yearned for the sound of his own voice, not the silent screams of his mind, but a roar that could make the very stars tremble.

He missed the hatred, the conflict, the simple, glorious joy of bending another's will to his own. He even longed for the irritating prattle of his lesser servants, the groveling of his orcs, anything to break the monotony of the absolute void. He was the very embodiment of power, rendered powerless. He was a song of discord, with no instrument to play. He was the Lord of Darkness, trapped in a darkness so complete, it defied even his own comprehension. Every moment was a fresh torment, an eternal prison of his own making, and the only company he had was his endless, impotent fury at the one who had finally, absolutely, defeated him.