The Isle of Shattered Mirrors

Here, the air is thick with hymns of tides that mourn their stolen sands,
And cliffs, like broken lyres, loom where no mortal foot withstands.
Yet onward strides this weathered man, his compass spun to lies,
To seek what fevered dreams demand—a truth veiled in the island’s sighs.

***

First light, a blade of pallid gold, reveals the cove’s embrace:
A labyrinth of jagged stone, where shadows twist with human grace.
He treads on shells that weep their lime, their stories etched in spirals tight,
And hears a voice—not wind, nor time—that calls from beyond the veil of night.

“Who dares,” it sighs, “to wake the dust of kings who sleep in salted deeps?
Who dares to stir the silent lust of waves where every promise weeps?”
But courage, long since forged in frost, propels his soul beyond the fear,
Through caves where ancient tongues are lost, and mirrors shatter, sphere by sphere.

***

Within a grove of petrified bloom, where petals hang like frozen tears,
He finds her—pale as lunar gloom, with eyes that hold a thousand years.
A figure wrought from mist and thorn, her hair a cascade of silver chains,
She stands where hope and doom are sworn to dance atop these blighted plains.

“Why have you come?” Her voice, a chime of glass on graves, arrests his breath.
“To flee the world’s relentless chime,” he rasps, “to outrace the specter, Death.”
A laugh she spills, like shattered bells—a sound that chills the marrow’s core.
“Death’s shadow here forever dwells, yet hungers still for something more.”

***

She leads him through the island’s heart, where trees bear fruit like hollow moons,
Their juice the hue of poison art, their flesh the tune of soulless tunes.
“Behold,” she croons, “the garden’s creed: each seed a requiem, each root a dirge,
Where every bloom is born to bleed, and thorns compose the eternal verge.”

He plucks a fig, its skin like ash, and tastes the void within its core—
A bitterness no tongue could mask, the flavor of a dream no more.
“What curse,” he pleads, “has shaped this ground, where beauty wears a leper’s face?”
Her answer weaves through light and sound: “The curse of time… and borrowed grace.”

***

By dusk, they climb the obsidian stair, where stars drip wax upon the rocks,
And there, beneath the crow’s cold glare, she parts the veil of memory’s locks.
“Long ere your kind knew sail or sin, this isle was sanctuary’s keep,
Till avarice, with serpent grin, crawled through the waves and murdered sleep.

They came with nets of iron thread, to bind the skies and drain the wells,
To carve the moon and sell its breath, and trap the wind in merchant shells.
We fought with tides, with roots, with flame—but mirrors turned our strength to dust,
For every soul who spoke my name became a slave to mirrors’ lust.”

***

Her fingers brush his calloused palm—a touch like frost and fading fire—
And suddenly, the air grows calm, yet hums with unfulfilled desire.
“You seek an end to wandering? Then break the glass that chains this shore,
Wherein I’m bound to whisper sins… and walk the dreams of men no more.”

He sees them then—the mirrors’ shards, embedded deep in earth and bone,
Each fragment throbs, a prisoned star, reflecting all he’s ever known.
Her face in every sliver gleams: a queen, a wraith, a child, a sage,
A thousand lives drowned in the screams of those ensnared by their own rage.

***

“To free you,” he begins, but halts—for in her gaze, a tempest brews.
“The price,” she murmurs, “is the vault of hours Time cannot refuse.
One soul must take the island’s weight, to bear its grief in silent thrall,
To merge with shadows, breathe its hate… and wait, forgotten by the fall.”

The sea inhales. The cliffs grow still. The traveler’s heart, a drum undone.
He weighs the dusk against the will to flee, to dare, to be the one.
But as he grasps the sharpest glass, a vision sears his fragile mind:
A boy, now lost to tides and grass, who left a sister’s laugh behind.

***

“No,” he gasps, “I cannot pay—this flesh still bears life’s fevered sting.
Though doom may haunt my every day, I choose the pain of transient spring.”
Her smile, a crescent knife, appears. “As countless have before, you lie.
The mirrors know your secret fears… and thus, the isle shall never die.”

***

The ground erupts in shards of light. The sky descends in raven sheets.
She fades, her form dissolving bright, while chains of glass ensnare his feet.
He screams—but sound is swallowed whole by waves that mock with echoed roar,
As mirrors pierce his tattered soul, and bind him to the cursed shore.

***

Now, when the moon bleeds copper tears, and gales recite their wordless verse,
A shadow roams the cliffs, his years erased by hunger’s endless curse.
And travelers bold, who dare these tides, may glimpse his face in fractured stone—
A warning etched where hope resides: No heart escapes what it disowns.

***

The isle persists, a wound unsealed, its whispers curled in sailors’ ears,
Where every shattered dream lies congealed, and every step salts ancient fears.
For hope, once lost, becomes the pyre that burns the hands which seek its glow—
A lesson carved in glass and fire: Some silences are best left… below.