The Thornbound Vow

Here blooms the rose of memory, its petals wrought in light,
A silvered labyrinth of vines that coil against the night.
He kneels where once an oath was sworn, his gauntlet pressed to stone,
And breathes the scent of jasmine thick—now ash, now ache, now bone.

*“By root and thorn, by star’s decline, I pledge my blade to thee,
Till rivers drown the crescent moon and tempests still the sea.
This sanctuary none shall breach, though hell’s own hounds may bay—
I’ll guard thy verdant sanctum till the stars forget their way.”*

But years have gnawed the knight’s resolve like rust on chainmail bred,
While blight crept soft through sacred soil where lilies once were wed.
The garden’s breath grows labored now, each leaf a withered sigh,
And shadows, thick as vultures, wheel beneath a sickly sky.

He speaks to phantoms in the mist: *“What cure can mend this blight?
What incantation, herb, or charm can resurrect the light?”*
The roses turn their faces down, their crimson tears unshed,
While thorns, like skeletal fingers, clutch the vows he left for dead.

Three nights he paces cobbled paths where fountains now run dry,
Their marble nymphs cracked-lipped and mute, their basins choked with rye.
Three nights he hears the garden’s pulse grow faint as spider’s thread,
Till desperation steels his heart—and hope lies cold and dead.

*“I’ll seek the Witch of Waking Sands beyond the serpent’s pass,
Though prophecies carve warnings deep in every blade of grass.
For what is life without thy bloom? What worth this rusted sword,
If silence claims thy whispered hymns and rot becomes thy lord?”*

He mounts his steed, its coat once white, now stained with time’s disgrace,
And rides through gates where ivy strangles every splintered space.
The garden wails a dirge of wind through branches stripped and bare,
While in his wake, a single petal drifts—a ghost upon the air.

Through wastes where sunlight curdles thick and dunes devour tracks,
Past caves that breathe the void’s own chill, through storms that starve and flay,
He battles wraiths of shifting sand, their teeth like shards of glass,
And drinks from pools that taste of salt and mirrors tarnished fast.

At last, beneath a blackened sun, he finds the crone’s abode—
A hut on chicken legs that groans where twin ravens croak and code.
*“What fool disturbs the Weave’s design?”* her voice like creaking pyres.
*“You trade tomorrow’s breath for dust, and stoke extinct desires.”*

*“Name your price,”* the knight demands, his visor raised to show
The face of one already damned, whose cheeks with grief-storms glow.
She grins, a rictus carved in bark, and spins her spindle’s twine—
*“The garden’s heart for seven years plucked from your mortal line.”*

No pause, no prayer—he seals the pact with blood upon her loom,
Then rides hellbent through realms unseen where poppies chant his doom.
The vial she gave burns fierce and cold, a comet clutched in hand,
Its liquid sharp as shattered vows, as truths too vast to stand.

But oh, the garden’s final gasp when he returns too late—
The roses’ bones in heaps of gray, the gate’s once-proud arch prostrate.
The air hangs thick with nectar spoiled, the soil’s breath a rattle,
While at the core, the sacred tree sheds leaves like cloven cattle.

He pours the draught. The earth convulses. Skies rip wide and wail.
Green tendrils surge from fissures deep, but this rebirth’s a grail
Of venom brewed—for what springs forth are horrors cloaked in bloom,
Thorns sprouting serpents’ tongues that hiss the knight’s own vows as doom.

*“By root and thorn, by star’s decline…* the garden mocks his pain,
*You broke the circle, severed bonds—now feast on my disdain.”*
The vines ensnare his battered limbs, their grip both kiss and curse,
As petals, sharp as scorpion tails, pierce through his splintered purse.

He sees, in death’s approaching veil, the truth he’d dared to blind—
No potion mends a bond betrayed, no spell rewinds resigned.
The garden, nursed on sacrifice, could not outrun decay;
Some oaths, once split, let chaos in, though love begs them to stay.

His helm fills up with crimson dew, his sword dissolves to rust,
While through the mutant blooms there drifts the scent of sacred dust.
The stars, those cold and distant jurors, veil their eyes and turn,
As shadows claim the knight’s last breath—and nightmares feast his urn.

Now travelers who dare that wood hear steel on stone lament,
A clank of armor haunting paths where thorn and bramble vent.
They whisper of a knight’s regret, a garden’s strangled cry—
How dreams, when forced to breathe in flesh, birth realms where hope must die.