The Knight of Forgotten Ashes

The cobblestones, once trod by joyous feet,
Now cradle only echoes of defeat.
A clock tower, skeletal, claws the sky,
Its hands stilled in a gasp of old goodbye.
Here, memory dissolves like autumn’s breath,
And time itself succumbs to living death.
The knight, with purpose forged in honor’s flame,
Steps forth to carve his mark on fate’s cold frame.

A figure parts the fog—a wraith-like maid,
Her eyes two voids where light once danced and played.
“Turn back,” she breathes, “for truth here wears a crown
Of thorns that bleed the seeker till he drowns.
What lingers in this realm is but a ghost,
A dream that fled when hope deserved it most.”
Yet steel within his soul rejects her plea,
He strides where dread and longing merge as one,
To trace the thread none else dare seize or see.

Through lanes where wilted roses cling to stone,
Their petals whispering secrets overblown,
He finds an elder, bent by years unseen,
Whose sightless gaze pierces what lies between.
“You chase a phantom,” croaks the ancient one,
“The truth you crave was buried with the sun.
We drank oblivion from a silver spring,
To flee the weight that truth’s sharp claws would bring.”

But deep within the knight’s unyielding core,
A vow resounds: *I’ll know, or be no more.*
He bears a locket, tarnished, sealed with rust,
A woman’s face erased by time’s unjust
And merciless decay—his driving force,
A love dissolved, yet charting still his course.
“Where lies the well,” he demands, “that steals the past?
What pact with shadows made this blight amass?”

The elder’s laugh, a rattling, hollow sound,
Unspools like thread from fate’s unyielding spool.
“You are the answer to the curse you seek—
A knight who’ll rend the veil, yet stay too weak
To bear the void where certainty once stood.
Go, break the seal that drowns us in this brood
Of endless night… and join our spectral reign.”
The challenge hangs, a blade poised at his throat,
Yet honor’s fire compels him to the task.

Beneath the clock tower’s crumbling embrace,
A staircase spirals to a blackened space.
Each step resonates with muffled cries,
The wails of those whose truth became their pyre.
He descends, guided by his lance’s glow,
To where the village’s black heart lies low:
A mirror, vast and cold, its surface still,
Reflects not flesh, but shadows of his will.

“What are you?” breathes the knight, his voice a blade.
The glass replies, “The truth you’ve nightly prayed.
I am the sum of all you dare not name—
The love you lost, the guilt that feeds your shame.
Gaze deep, and know the price of piercing night:
To see your soul unmasked, bereft of light.”
Yet though his pulse rebels, his hand extends—
A touch, and suddenly the mirror rends.

A gasp—the locket burns against his chest,
Its latent image stirring from unrest.
The woman’s face emerges, gaunt and pale,
Her lips a wound, her story etched in bale.
*Remember,* pleads her ghost within his mind,
*The oath you swore when love and truth were twined.*
He reels—for in her eyes, he sees the lie:
*She* was the truth he let oblivion steal,
Her death the wound no valor could anneal.

The village shudders, mist dissolving fast,
As long-suppressed realities amass.
The wraiths regain the forms they once forsook,
Their voices swelling like a brook unblocked.
But horror dawns as bodies, once ethereal,
Now crumble into dust—the final trial.
For truth, when barred too long from light’s repair,
Corrodes the soul beyond all hope to spare.

The knight falls prostrate, clutching empty air,
The locket’s chain now links to nowhere.
Above, the clock tower tolls a hollow chime,
Its hands resuming conquest over time.
The villagers, now freed from cursed sleep,
Dissolve like smoke, their anguish sown too deep.
And he, who sought to rend the veil apart,
Discovers truth’s a blade through his own heart.

The moon withdraws her gaze, the stars retreat,
As dawn bestows her kiss of bleak defeat.
Where once stood homes, now ash on wind is borne,
The knight, last relic of that grief-shorn morn,
Stands rigid, armor fused to flesh below,
A statue to the truths he dared to know.
The locket, open, rests beneath his hand,
Its portrait blank—as none now understand
The name he bore, the love he fought to save…
For even memory sinks to time’s dark wave.

Thus ends the tale of valor’s fruitless chase—
A knight, a truth, erased without a trace.
Let wanderers who tread this spectral ground
Beware the peace in what is never found.
For some quests lead not home, but to the brink
Where light and shadow merge… and cease to think.