The Knight of Twilight’s Broken Vow

He recalls eyes—two embers, warm, divine—
That melted frost from veins in youth’s design.
A vow he carved in oak (now splintered, gray):
“To return ere the solstice fades away.”
But war’s cruel waltz devoured days and nights,
And glory’s thirst eclipsed her whispered rites.
Her final plea, a leaf in storm’s command,
Still haunts his helm—a ghost of trembling hand.

The path now writhes, a serpent’s coiled deceit,
As bracken claws his greaves with slow defeat.
A brook weeps silver through the rotted glen,
Reflecting not the face of living men,
But specters draped in mist’s ethereal gauze,
Who dance the steps of time’s forgotten laws.
Their voices rise, a chorus raw and thin:
“What knight art thou, who bears the mark within?”

He stumbles where the pines in judgment loom,
Their bark etched deep with tales of mortal doom.
A chapel, cracked by ivy’s green despair,
Emerges pale—a skull midst flowing hair.
Its altar bears no cross, no saintly grace,
But thorns that twine a locket’s tarnished face.
Within, a curl of chestnut, soft, unspoiled,
Still fragrant with the spring their hearts once foiled.

The air grows thick with sighs that sting like sleet,
As shadows coalesce to form her feet—
A figure clad in dusk’s own mourning dress,
Her lips a rose that trembles to confess.
“Thy oath,” she breathes, “was writ on shifting sand,
Yet deeper than the sea, I held thy hand.
Thou promised dawn would find thee at my door…
What tempest drowned the love thou swore to pour?”

His tongue, a stone; his voice, the wind’s low groan—
“I rode through realms where bones of empires groan,
Where banners feast on valor’s brief perfume,
And honor’s but a mask for glory’s tomb.
Each battle won but sharpened time’s cruel shears,
Till all our yesterdays dissolved to tears.
Forgive, my soul—though mercy’s hour is late,
Nor heaven nor hell can alter fate’s dead weight.”

Her laughter, frost that splits the willow’s core:
“The heart thou broke hath sealed thy evermore.
Behold, the wood that drinks thy hollow tread—
Each leaf a clock, each branch the loom’s dread thread.
Thou shalt not die, nor yet embrace the grave,
But walk, a wraith, through thorns none may engrave.
For love betrayed builds labyrinths of thorns,
And every dusk shall mourn what pride hath torn.”

The locket dims; her form dissolves to air,
Leaving but echoes of a severed prayer.
His gauntlets claw the earth where once she stood,
Yet grasp no shred of flesh, no splintered wood.
The trees, like judges robed in moss and time,
Repeat the curse in tongues of ash and rime.
The brook’s lament grows loud, a liquid knell—
Its waters now reflect an empty shell.

No seasons touch the curse that chains his feet,
No sun may warm the ice where heartbeats meet.
He wanders, tracing paths that twist and lie,
A moth ensnared in night’s unblinking eye.
The villagers, when harvest moons hang low,
Hear steel’s faint wail through cedars’ spectral glow—
A dirge that mingles with the owlet’s cry,
Of love become a forest’s endless sigh.

Centuries blur like ink in storm’s embrace,
Yet still he treads the maze without a trace.
The locket’s thorns now bind his ancient chest,
Their roots entwined with ribs where hope once dressed.
And children, wide-eyed, hush when elders tell
Of shadows where a knight and specter dwell—
Two souls ensnared in twilight’s cold duet,
Whose cadence none who hear it e’er forget.

So tread thou soft where twilight’s fingers creep,
For vows unmade are sown where demons reap.
Each rustling leaf, each shadow’s fleeting dart,
Whispers of knights who lost their mortal heart.
And in the gloom, where silent sorrows breed,
Beware the eyes that glow with unshed need—
A knight, a vow, a love the stars withdrew…
The forest drinks the tears it bends to brew.