For three days, Bilbo and Edwen crossed the dead lands east of the mountains. Nothing grew. Nothing moved. The ground shifted from cracked earth to blackened stone to fields of ash that swallowed their footprints as soon as they made them. There was only the sound of the wind in the dead trees, ash falling from the dark sky, and sand all around them.
They spoke little. Speech felt wrong here, as if the air itself might carry their voices somewhere unfriendly.
By the second day, Bilbo stopped asking how much farther. Then the third, Edwen, stopped answering questions he hadn't asked.
The sky grew dimmer the farther east they walked. A haze hung over everything, faint at first, then thicker, until the sun looked pale and sickly even at midday, and always, ahead of them, a darkness that did not move.
When they reached Mordor, Bilbo's hand drifted to his pocket more often now. The Ring felt warm. Not burning yet, but alive. A pulse beneath his fingers.
"Do you feel it?" he asked quietly one evening.
Edwen did not pretend not to understand.
"Yes."
The ground trembled faintly beneath their boots, as though something vast shifted in its sleep.
"The closer we get," Bilbo whispered, "the more it feels like it wants to go home."
Edwen looked at him carefully. "It does."
They crossed into Mordor at dawn on the fourth day.
There was no gate through which they entered. No army. No horns.
Just broken rock and a sky the color of old bruises.
The land inside was worse.
The air tasted of metal and smoke. Jagged ridges cut across the ground like ribs. In the distance, Mount Doom rose not grand, not beautiful, but wrong. A wound in the world, bleeding fire.
They did not take the road.
Edwen led them through ravines and shadows, keeping low, avoiding open ground. Twice, they froze as shapes passed overhead, dark forms on wings that did not belong to Eagles.
Bilbo did not ask what they were.
The Ring grew heavier.
By the time they reached the slopes of the mountain, Bilbo staggered with each step.
"I can walk," he insisted when Edwen reached for him.
"I know," Edwen said. He did not reach again.
The path upward was narrow and treacherous. Heat bled through the stone. The mountain rumbled beneath them, a deep, grinding sound like teeth in sleep.
Halfway up, Bilbo fell to his knees.
The Ring burned in his mind now.
"They don't understand," Bilbo said suddenly, breath shaking. "It isn't evil. It's… strong. It wants to fix things. To make things right."
Edwen knelt in front of him.
"Bilbo."
"You could use it," Bilbo went on. "You're already a king. Think what you could do. No more war. No more hunger. No more"
"Bilbo."
The word cut through.
Bilbo looked at him.
For a moment, Edwen saw the pull. The temptation flickering behind his friend's eyes. The Ring did not shout. It reasoned.
Edwen reached forward slowly and placed his hand over Bilbo's clenched fist.
"You're not meant to carry it any farther alone."
Bilbo's breathing hitched.
For one terrible second, Edwen felt it too.
Power.
Order.
The ability to bend the world away from chaos.
It would be so easy.
The mountain groaned.
Edwen tightened his grip.
"We finish this," he said quietly.
Something in his voice broke the spell.
Bilbo nodded once, sharply, like someone waking from a dream.
They climbed the rest of the way together.
The Cracks of Doom were not dramatic.
They were worse.
A narrow ledge over a river of living fire. Heat that stole breath. Light so bright it hurt to look at.
The Ring pulsed violently now, almost eager.
Bilbo stepped forward.
His hand shook.
For a heartbeat, he held it out over the fire.
Then he hesitated.
The world seemed to hold its breath.
"I found it," Bilbo whispered. "It was mine."
Edwen said nothing.
This was not a moment he could take from him.
Bilbo's face twisted with fear, longing, grief.
Then the mountain roared.
The ledge cracked beneath their feet.
The sound shattered whatever hold the Ring still had.
With a cry that was half terror and half defiance, Bilbo flung it into the fire.
For a fraction of a second, it hung in the air, gold against flame.
Then it vanished.
The mountain screamed.
Not a sound of stone but something deeper. Something wounded.
The fire surged upward, violent and wild. The ground split. Ash exploded into the sky.
Edwen grabbed Bilbo and dragged him back as the ledge crumbled behind them.
The mountain began to tear itself apart.
They ran.
Stone fell. Fire spat. The air became unbreathable.
By the time they stumbled clear of the collapsing ridge, Mount Doom was vomiting smoke and flame into the dark sky.
Far to the west, something vast and unseen faltered.
As though a pressure that had pressed on the world for centuries had finally lifted.
Bilbo collapsed onto the blackened ground, coughing.
"It's gone," he said weakly.
Edwen looked back at the burning mountain.
"Yes," he replied.
For the first time in days, the Ring's weight was absent.
The emptiness it left behind felt strange.
But clean.
Above them, the ash-thick sky shifted.
And somewhere far off, wings beat against the wind.