The Knight of Waning Echoes
Beneath the boughs where twilight never dies,
A knight in tarnished silver treads the mold,
His pauldrons hung with moss like mourners’ shawls,
His helm a nest for shadows, cloyed and cold.
The forest breathes in whispers—cracked and old—
A labyrinth of sighs that coil and fold,
Where roots, like knuckled bones, protrude to clasp
The pilgrim’s ankle in their splintered grasp.
He seeks a specter sung in tavern tales:
A maiden’s ghost who weeps in moonlit glades,
Her tears, they say, a balm for mortal wounds,
Her voice a salve for souls the world degrades.
Yet every step he takes, the darkness wades
Deeper into his mind, where memory fades—
Her face, once carved in fire upon his breast,
Now smudged to ash by time’s indifferent jest.
Three nights he wanders, guided by no star,
But phosphor-eyes that blink between the firs.
The undergrowth exhales a silver mist
That clings like cobweb-thoughts to all that stirs.
At last, a glade—a stage where moonlight blurs
The edge between the living and the hers—
There, wreathed in willow-skeins, she floats, half-born,
A riddle spun from sorrow and moonthorn.
“Why tread you, sir, where even shadows tire?”
Her voice, a harpstring plucked by frost, replies.
“I seek an end to quests,” the knight declares,
“To mend the breach where all my honor lies.”
She laughs—a sound like icicles that shriek—
“Honor’s a cloak stitched tight with nobles’ lies.
What festers in your heart is not your creed,
But grief, unmarked, that gnaws your father’s deed.”
He reels as if her words were arrows true,
For in her gaze, the past unspools its thread:
A father’s blade plunged into traitor’s ribs,
A mother’s wail that choked the marriage bed.
The knight falls prostrate, armor gouging earth,
And weeps for oaths that rot when vows are dead.
The ghost descends, her touch a viper’s kiss,
To sip the salt of wounds she’s sworn to miss.
“Rise, broken man,” she croons, “and claim your due—
A crown of ivy for the king of naught.
Your valor’s but a rind the world has sucked,
Your name, a leaf the wind has overwrought.
Forget. Forget the wars you never fought,
The love you bartered, cheaply bought.
This forest thrives on champions like thee—
Their husks make splendid compost for my tree.”
He claws the soil, but roots ensnare his wrists,
And tendrils braid his throat in verdant chains.
The maiden’s form dissolves to dappled light,
Her laughter merging with the woodland strains.
His armor blooms with lichen’s creeping stains,
His sword, a rusted hymn to fruitless pains,
As centuries compress to one long sigh—
The knight becomes the glade he could not fly.
Now travelers who dare the wood’s embrace
Report a sighing oak whose branches hold
The semblance of a face, its bark streaked gray
As armor left to crumble in the cold.
They hear a dirge when autumn winds grow bold,
A hymn of glory’s lie, too late retold—
How pride, that gilded seed, when left to sprout,
Will choke the heart until the soul leaks out.
Thus ends the tale of he who sought to bind
His worth to phantoms birthed by others’ breath.
The forest keeps his bones as trophies hung
To teach the price of bargaining with death.
For every quest that lures with promised breath
Is but a snare where mortal dreams catch death—
And memory, that fickle, fleeting spark,
Grows dimmer than the knight’s erased hallmark.
A knight in tarnished silver treads the mold,
His pauldrons hung with moss like mourners’ shawls,
His helm a nest for shadows, cloyed and cold.
The forest breathes in whispers—cracked and old—
A labyrinth of sighs that coil and fold,
Where roots, like knuckled bones, protrude to clasp
The pilgrim’s ankle in their splintered grasp.
He seeks a specter sung in tavern tales:
A maiden’s ghost who weeps in moonlit glades,
Her tears, they say, a balm for mortal wounds,
Her voice a salve for souls the world degrades.
Yet every step he takes, the darkness wades
Deeper into his mind, where memory fades—
Her face, once carved in fire upon his breast,
Now smudged to ash by time’s indifferent jest.
Three nights he wanders, guided by no star,
But phosphor-eyes that blink between the firs.
The undergrowth exhales a silver mist
That clings like cobweb-thoughts to all that stirs.
At last, a glade—a stage where moonlight blurs
The edge between the living and the hers—
There, wreathed in willow-skeins, she floats, half-born,
A riddle spun from sorrow and moonthorn.
“Why tread you, sir, where even shadows tire?”
Her voice, a harpstring plucked by frost, replies.
“I seek an end to quests,” the knight declares,
“To mend the breach where all my honor lies.”
She laughs—a sound like icicles that shriek—
“Honor’s a cloak stitched tight with nobles’ lies.
What festers in your heart is not your creed,
But grief, unmarked, that gnaws your father’s deed.”
He reels as if her words were arrows true,
For in her gaze, the past unspools its thread:
A father’s blade plunged into traitor’s ribs,
A mother’s wail that choked the marriage bed.
The knight falls prostrate, armor gouging earth,
And weeps for oaths that rot when vows are dead.
The ghost descends, her touch a viper’s kiss,
To sip the salt of wounds she’s sworn to miss.
“Rise, broken man,” she croons, “and claim your due—
A crown of ivy for the king of naught.
Your valor’s but a rind the world has sucked,
Your name, a leaf the wind has overwrought.
Forget. Forget the wars you never fought,
The love you bartered, cheaply bought.
This forest thrives on champions like thee—
Their husks make splendid compost for my tree.”
He claws the soil, but roots ensnare his wrists,
And tendrils braid his throat in verdant chains.
The maiden’s form dissolves to dappled light,
Her laughter merging with the woodland strains.
His armor blooms with lichen’s creeping stains,
His sword, a rusted hymn to fruitless pains,
As centuries compress to one long sigh—
The knight becomes the glade he could not fly.
Now travelers who dare the wood’s embrace
Report a sighing oak whose branches hold
The semblance of a face, its bark streaked gray
As armor left to crumble in the cold.
They hear a dirge when autumn winds grow bold,
A hymn of glory’s lie, too late retold—
How pride, that gilded seed, when left to sprout,
Will choke the heart until the soul leaks out.
Thus ends the tale of he who sought to bind
His worth to phantoms birthed by others’ breath.
The forest keeps his bones as trophies hung
To teach the price of bargaining with death.
For every quest that lures with promised breath
Is but a snare where mortal dreams catch death—
And memory, that fickle, fleeting spark,
Grows dimmer than the knight’s erased hallmark.
