Elegy of Shadows: The Forsaken City’s Lament
A spectral figure treads where shattered spires remain,
Its footsteps echo through the labyrinth of stone,
A dirge for realms where life and laughter once were sown.
The city, gaunt and ghostly, wears its wounds unhealed—
A carcass picked by time, its ancient heart congealed,
While ivy, like a thief, ascends the broken walls,
And through the hollow arches, distant twilight calls.
This wanderer, this shadow clad in veils of grey,
Once knew these streets as home in some forgotten day,
When golden domes embraced the sun’s departing flame,
And voices thrummed like strings in love’s sweet, fleeting game.
But now, in silence draped, it roams with purpose grim,
Through courtyards where the fountains’ songs have long gone dim,
Past altars stripped of glory, rusted gates askew,
To seek what binds its soul to dust and morning dew.
A memory, half-erased, yet sharp as winter’s thorn:
A face now veiled by years, a love both forged and torn.
Here, by the crumbled bridge where willows once did weep,
Two hearts had pledged their troth, their vigil sworn to keep.
But war, that ravening beast, had stalked the fertile plain,
And turned the vibrant city to a pyre of pain.
The lover, sworn to shield, had donned the soldier’s crest,
While she, with trembling hands, clasped hope to bleeding breast.
No tombstone marks the plot where valor met its end,
No laurels crown the brow of lover, foe, or friend—
Only this wraith, which yearns to clasp what time denies,
To meet again the light that fled from mortal eyes.
The specter pauses where the western tower leans,
Its fractured stones still scarred by long-forgotten screens.
A whisper stirs the air—not wind, but something more—
A voice that threads the mist from some ethereal shore.
“O thou who tread’st the border where the lost abide,
What dost thou seek amidst the ruins’ somber pride?
No living breath remains to warm this desolate stage,
No script but grief inscribed on time’s unyielding page.”
The wraith turns, phantom hands in suppliance outspread,
“I seek the one whose voice still haunts my soul undead,
Whose laughter once could quell the tempest’s wildest roar—
A spirit bound here, as I am, forevermore.”
The unseen presence sighs, a sound like petals falling,
“Go to the clockless spire where shadows, thick, are crawling.
There, in the deepest vault where mortal chains hold fast,
Lies what thou lov’st—and what thou’lt lose to break the past.”
No moon dares pierce the gloom of that sepulchral keep,
Where darkness clots the air like syrup, thick and deep.
The specter drifts through corridors no light may tame,
Each step a plunge through ice, each breath a whispered name.
At last, a chamber yawns—its center, cold and bare,
Holds but a single shard of crystal, glowing there.
Within that frozen prism, faint as dawn’s first hue,
A figure stirs, its form a breath of morning dew.
“Belov’d!” The wraith’s cry rends the stagnant, heavy air,
As two shades reach across the void in wild despair.
Their fingers brush as whispers through a veil of smoke,
No warmth to grace the touch, no flesh for hope to cloak.
The captive spirit’s voice, a silver thread of pain:
“Why linger here, my soul, in this eternal chain?
The world beyond this ruin teems with life anew—
Go, drink the winds of freedom! Let my memory fade from view.”
“No freedom sings for me,” the wraith’s reply is wrought
With centuries of sorrow, each syllable a draught
Of bitterness distilled. “What sky could rival here
The constellations found in eyes I hold more dear?”
Yet even as they speak, the crystal’s core contracts,
Its light a dying star that flickers, dims, retracts.
“The prison fails,” the captive gasps, “and with it, I—
But you, my heart’s last echo, must not share this sky.
The shard demands a sacrifice to loose its thrall—
One soul to stay, one soul to flee this crumbling wall.
Take thou the gift I stole from death’s unyielding hand:
The dawn’s embrace, the scent of blossoms in the land.
For I, who could not save thee in that final hour,
Shall now atone by yielding to the prison’s power.”
“And think you,” cries the wraith, “that joy could bloom above,
While thou, my only compass, fade from life and love?
What world exists beyond the borders of this pain
That I would walk its paths, and thee not in my train?”
The crystal darkens, pulse like some arrhythmic heart,
As shadows coil like serpents, poised to tear apart.
The chamber shudders, stones emitting ancient groans,
While through the cracks, a spectral wind begins to moan.
The captive’s form grows faint, a sketch in thinning ink,
Yet still, with fading strength, they plead: “O dost thou think
I’d count my fleeting rest worth more than thy release?
Go now! Let not our tragedy compound caprice!”
But wraiths, like mortals, cling to love’s unyielding fire—
The wanderer steps forward, eyes like funeral pyre.
“If choice remains,” it vows, “then let it now be spun:
Thy freedom for my bondage. Take the path I shun.”
Before the shard can drink the offered spirit’s breath,
The wanderer’s hands close round its edges, cold as death.
A howl erupts—not sound, but absence magnified—
As essence pours from veins of mist, denied, untied.
The crystal blazes sudden, cruel, and ravenous,
Its hunger sated by the feast of selfless love.
The captive, now unbound, feels form and voice restored,
Yet turns to see the price exacted by the cord.
The wraith, now barely more than vapor’s faintest trace,
Smiles with lips that stars could outline, just in space.
“Go,” it murmurs, voice the rustle of fallen leaves,
“And let each step thou tak’st my prisoned soul relieve.”
The tower quakes, its stones dissolving into night,
As freedom’s curse consumes the giver of the light.
The captive flees, wings brushed by dawn’s reluctant hue,
While in the dark, the wraith’s last atoms bid adieu.
The city, sensing loss more total than decay,
Sighs through its broken teeth as night concedes to day.
Some say, when autumn’s breath makes ruins sing anew,
Two phantoms meet where bridges span the ethereal blue—
One bearing scars of chains, the other, love’s fierce cost,
Their voices woven through the leaves in first frost.
But truth resides where shadows kiss the crumbling earth:
No freedom blooms unwatered by the tears of worth.
Thus ends the dirge of spirits bound by choice, not fate—
A requiem for love that dared to storm heaven’s gate.
