The Weeping Stones of Eldermoor

Her name? A relic buried under snow,
A syllable the wind once stole and drowned.
Her eyes, twin pools where midnight’s sorrows flow,
Hold maps of roads no pilgrim ever found.
The gate yawns wide, a mouth of rusted teeth,
And whispers through its bars: *What brings you here?*
She answers not, but steps where vines enwreathe
The threshold, thorns embracing like a bier.

***

Within, the air is thick with unborn sighs,
Each corridor a vein of darkened lore.
The walls, once hung with tapestries of skies,
Now bleed their threads across the moldered floor.
A grand stair spirals, choked with ivy’s grip,
Its balustrade a spine of splintered bone.
Her hand, half-raised, yet trembles at the lip
Of memory—this dust was once her throne.

She climbs, each step a dirge for what was lost:
The banquets drowned in candlelight’s gold stream,
The minstrel’s lute (now mute, its silver crossed
By spiderwebs), the mirrors where her dream
Of youth once gazed, unflinching, bold, and bright.
But glass lies shattered, every shard a blade
That shows her now a hundred selves—a blight
Of wrinkled masks where joy’s portrait once played.

***

At twilight’s edge, she finds the western hall,
Its vaulted ribs arching like hands in prayer.
A figure waits, his form both there and not,
A knight in armor tarnished by despair.
*You’ve come to settle debts,* his voice declares,
A sound like swords dragged over ancient graves.
*The castle claims what fragile hope you bear.
No soul departs whole from these shadowed naves.*

*What debt remains when all I loved is ash?*
Her words are frost upon the stagnant air.
*When every vow I swore became a gash
In flesh, in faith? What ledger counts despair?*
The specter lifts his helm—a hollow face,
A gaping maw where once a heart had burned.
*You built your grief where others built a place
To shelter love. Behold what you have earned.*

***

He gestures to a gallery of ghosts—
Each portrait stares with eyes of yew-tree sap.
A child’s laugh, now choked by midnight’s hosts,
Echoes from a door left ajar, a trap
Of longing. *There,* he hisses, *there she sleeps,
The daughter of your negligence, your pride.
You left her cradle where the darkness creeps,
And let the ivy strangle what had died.*

The woman falls, her knees on marble cold,
Her fingers tracing cracks that vein the floor.
*I sought no crown but mercy’s threadbare fold—*
*Yet mercy starves where shame has barred the door,*
The knight intones. *You wandered far, but here
Your footprints circle back to meet their stain.
The castle is your soul, its stones your tear,
Each brick a choice that fed the roots of pain.*

***

Down, down she staggers, through the crypt’s embrace,
Where water weeps from ceilings into pools.
A face looks up—her own, yet not—a trace
Of the girl who once believed in golden rules.
*How frail the bridge between the ‘then’ and ‘now,’*
She murmurs to the ripples, black as sin.
*I’ll burn the past, take back the shattered vow—*
The water laughs. *You’ll only drown within.*

At last, the tower—chamber of the moon,
Where once she watched the stars stitch night’s vast cloak.
A desk of oak, a quill, a parchment strewn
With words unsent, their ink eroded smoke.
*I’ll write the truth,* she vows, but hands betray—
The page drinks tears, each letter blurs and runs.
The past is not a debt that words can pay;
The quill snaps, orphaned by the weight of sons.

***

Dawn gilds the edges of the world in gray,
A thief who strips the night of its disguise.
The woman stands where light and shadow play
Their final game upon the keep’s demise.
The knight returns, his armor now a shroud
Of mist. *It ends as all things must,* he sighs.
*The walls will fade, but you remain enspelled,
A portrait in the gallery of the wise.*

She shakes her head. *Let stone reclaim my breath,
Let ivy bind my limbs, let crows consume
The flesh that failed to outrace time’s slow death.
But leave one shard of glass in this cold room—
A mirror for the next lost soul who dares
To seek what cannot dwell in mortal hands.*
The castle groans, its heart a pulse that bears
Her wish—and so the weeping stone understands.

***

They find her statue by the rotted gate,
A figure carved of sorrow’s purest ore.
Her eyes still hold the night’s unyielding weight,
Her palm outstretched, as though it once implored
The sky for answers. Villagers avert their gaze,
For in her face they see their secret scars.
The castle crumbles, yet its echo stays—
A dirge that hums beneath the trembling stars.

And when the moon is strangled by the cloud,
A whisper threads through Eldermoor’s debris:
*All journeys end where we are first allowed
To meet the ghosts that name us… and are we.*
The thorns grow thick where once a heart had bled.
The world forgets. The stones still weep.