Spanish to English Other History

I'm translating the script for a short video on the Spanish Reconquest. It's done with Time as the "cuentacuentos", and he is talking about all of the battles he has witnessed, all of the suffering, etc. As he reaches the end of the story (he has just finished talking about the brutal Battle of Alarcos and the loss of Salvatierra), he just can't go on anymore, and he ends it like this:


Estos recuerdos me han hecho sentir el temor de los hombres que claman a Dios y luego se lanzan a la Guerra…lo he visto, y lo veo tantas veces...

Una última cosa les digo.

Ahora, cuando cuente tres acabaré la historia.

UNO. Cada vez que escucho las voces de la guerra, un enorme peso se carga sobre el infinito de mi espalda...

DOS.
Y entonces, me da por pensar:
esta espalda mía…que negra a veces, qué negra....

TRES:
La espalda del tiempo.

(cierre súbito el audiovisual se lo traga un agujero negro)


The problem I'm having is with the word "negro". I've translated "la espalda del tiempo" as "the shoulders of time", but I'm not convinced translating "qué negra" as "how black" transmits the same sense in English as it does in Spanish. I've thought about using "dark" instead, but that doesn't convince me either...and I think the options for a literal translation are pretty limited here, but what I'm really looking for doesn't have to be literal, it just has to fit, and if it can tie in with the black hole at the end, so much the better.

Any creative souls out there?