The Pilgrim of Shadows
A traveler trod the path that winds through centuries of fears,
His boots kissed dust from ancient roads where no man dares to roam,
And shadows trailed his weary form, like specters steering home.
The village loomed—a sepulcher of stone and splintered beams,
Its chimneys clawed the heavy air, exhaling ghostly steams.
No lanterns glowed in windowsills, no voices filled the square,
Yet something hummed beneath the soil—a dirge too faint to bear.
He sought the myth of fountains deep, where memories might rise,
To drink the waters whispered of in widows’ lullabies.
For in his chest, a hollow beat, a name he could not claim,
A face that fled his midnight thoughts, half-kindled like a flame.
The gate lay choked with ivy’s grasp, its iron groans profound,
Each step awoke the slumbering earth, a thunderous, cursed sound.
Through alleys draped in cobweb lace, past doors that stared, unhinged,
He traced the scent of rusted rain, where hope and dread were twined.
A figure emerged—a wraith of mist with eyes like dying coals,
Her tattered shroud embraced the wind, her voice a chime of souls:
“What pilgrim dares to walk the veins of this forgotten heart?
The well you seek holds draughts of truth, but truth shall rend apart.”
Unmoved, he pressed through crumbling archways, drawn by siren cries,
While echoes of the village’s breath rehearsed their old goodbyes.
At last, the square—a gaping maw where once the vibrant thrived,
The well’s black throat yawned wide beneath the moon’s pale, jagged knife.
He lowered forth the rotted rope, the bucket cracked with years,
And from the depths, a liquid chill crept upward, drenched in tears.
One sip—a rush of visions blurred, a life not his, yet known:
A hearth’s embrace, a lover’s vow, a child’s first stepping stone.
“Mine own?” he gasped, as shadows swarmed to siphon forth his breath,
The village sighed, its cobblestone exhaling him to death.
For every memory reclaimed exacted flesh as toll,
And stone by stone, the pilgrim’s frame became the village’s soul.
His hands, now lichen-crusted, gripped the well’s unyielding rim,
His voice, the wind that mourned through doors where light had dwindled dim.
The name he sought, the face he craved, dissolved like morning frost—
The price of piercing veils no soul should dare to venture cross.
The dawn, when next she stretched her rays o’er silent, moss-kissed walls,
Found but a statue, kneeling where the well’s dark whisper calls,
His eyes two pools of rain that wept the dreams he could not keep,
While far above, the village slept, its sorrows buried deep.
And still, when wanderers lose their way where time’s own threads unravel,
They hear his stone-cracked whisper weave through leaves that never travel:
“Beware the truths that thirst beneath, the past’s addictive lie—
For every ghost you resurrect, a part of you must die.”
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