The Knight’s Vespers in Glass and Ash

The cathedral breathed in moted light, its windows stained with saints long fled,
Their eyes of cobalt, gold, and jade still weeping hues upon the dead.
No choir chanted, no censer swung—only silence, thick as Lenten shroud,
And the knight’s own breath, a ragged hymn, confessed aloud to empty air:

*“I kept the vows etched in my palms, the ones you feared to bear.
Through wars that gnawed the horizon’s rim and plagues that choked the spring,
I carried every whispered charge—the unsung, crumbling thing—
Yet here I kneel, a hollowed husk… The pact we sealed in wine and woe
Has cracked like ice beneath the sun… Forgive me. Now you know.”*

A shadow stirred—not beast nor man—but something wrought of smoke and ache,
Its form a ripple in the gloom where time itself seemed to break.
It spoke without a mouth, its voice a harp’s last fraying thread:
*“What wilt thou pay, O shattered blade, to mend the oath thou’st left unbled?”*

He offered up his sword, its edge dulled by a thousand dawns,
But the specter laughed—a sound like snow dissolving into storms.
*“Not steel, nor blood, nor hollow pride can resurrect what thou hast slain.
Bring me the weight thou’st borne in vain—the hope that drowned in winter’s rain.”*

—

Recall the night they met, her cloak a splash of poppy-red,
Beneath the oak whose branches sketched old secrets overhead.
Her laughter spun a fragile thread through battles yet to come,
A promise wrapped in ivy leaves: *“When peace returns, we’ll build a home.”*

But peace became a fickle ghost, and war a raven grown too fond,
And with each year, her letters faded—ink to ash, wax to pond.
He’d find her words in ravens’ beaks, half-eaten by the wind,
Or etched into the shields of foes he’d carve like harvest sheaves.

One dusk, he glimpsed her face—not hers—but in a refugee’s child’s stare,
A mimicry of almond eyes, of braids once combed with jasmine air.
He froze, his blade mid-arc, and watched the campfire’s choking breath
Consume the scroll she’d never sent… (The child fled. The knight knelt, bereft.)

—

The cathedral’s spine arched colder now, its saints’ gaze sharp as flint,
As the specter coiled around his heart, a viper in the mint.
*“Thou weavest tales of virtue’s cost, yet still thou cling’st to chains
Of ‘duty’—rotten mast that drowns the ship it falsely claims.

Dost thou recall the winter’s eve when fever stole her voice?
Thou chose the crown’s farce o’er her pulse… Now, name that *noble* choice.”*
The knight gripped his surcoat’s threads, once bright as April’s crest,
Now dyed the gray of unwept tears. *“I thought the realm needed rest…”*

*“The realm,”* the wraith sneered, *“is a wheel that grinds its orphans’ bones,
And thou, its loyal hound, still gnaw the scraps it tosses to the stones.
But come—I’ll grant thee one last boon: a glimpse of what’s been lost.
A taste of futures turned to frost… Decide if they’re worth the cost.”*

—

The air congealed to liquid glass; the walls dissolved like salt.
And there she stood—not as she was, but as she might have been—
Hair silvered not by age, but dawn’s first fragile hymn,
Her hands cupping a candle’s bloom, its light a trembling psalm.

A cottage loomed behind her, draped in wisteria’s slow embrace,
Its door ajar, a lute’s faint chord lingering in the space.
She turned, and in her gaze he saw the years he’d bartered cheap—
The mornings missed, the wounds unkissed, the words drowned in sleep.

*“I waited,”* spoke her shadow-voice, *“until the road ate your name.
Our children (never born) still ask why winter lacks a flame.”*
The knight reached out—a crack splintered the vision’s frail film.
Her face became a mosaic of all he’d failed to hold… Then still.

—

The specter’s maw stretched wide, a void where stars go cold.
*“Behold thy life—a wound unstitched, a tale of valor told
To deafened halls. Thy ‘honor’ rests in graves thou’st dug alone.
Now, pay the toll. Thy hope, long dead, shall be my stepping-stone.”*

The knight rose, his armor clanking like a dirge’s final note,
And climbed the altar’s chipped steps, where lilies once had choked
The air with scent. He placed his helm—a vessel for the rain—
Upon the slab, and whispered low: *“Let none retrace this pain.”*

A blade of light pierced the rose window’s eye, igniting ancient dyes,
And as the colors kissed his brow, he breathed his last disguised:
Not as a knight, but as a boy who’d dreamed of saving doves,
Now crumbling into motes of rust, his heart stripped of its gloves.

The cathedral sighed, its arches bending like a mother’s weary spine,
As ash and memory entwined—a sacrament of brine.
Dawn’s fingers pried the vaulted gloom, but found no soul to greet,
Only a sword, its hilt a nest where serpents coiled to sleep.

—

And somewhere, in a world unwrit, a cottage fades to mist,
Its threshold swept by phantom winds, its hearth by shadows kissed.
The lute’s last string snaps in the void, a note too strained to keep,
While saints, in glass, still bleed their light… and the lost knight’s vows lie cheap.