The Cathedral’s Whispering Stones

The cathedral’s breath, a hollowed exhalation,
Swept through the nave where no candles wept.
His footsteps, small as psalms half-whispered,
Trembled past the saints whose smiles slept
In marble folds—their grace a sculpted lie,
For none had heard the question in his cry:

*Why did the woman with hair of storm-tossed wheat*
*Leave him wrapped in lamplight on frost-bit stairs?*
*What sin had sealed her lips to silence sweet,*
*Her face now frayed like thread in time’s cold airs?*

Three nights he’d come, drawn by a dream’s command—
A voice that hummed through stones, *Seek where I stand.*
Now, as the moon strained through the transept’s eye,
A figure emerged, cloaked in twilight’s dye.

“Child of the unanswered,” the stranger intoned,
His voice a river of ash, his crown a circlet of bone,
“The walls have kept your mother’s sigh.
Walk where the crypts drink the sun’s last groan.”

No priest, this specter—his cassock bore no cross,
But Lucian, starved for truth, let hope take root,
Clutched the man’s hand (cold as a reliquary’s loss)
And followed where the gloom shook off its mute.

Through archways where the centuries conspired,
Down steps that coiled like a serpent’s spine,
They plunged—the air grew thick with time expired,
And Lucian’s pulse became a frantic rhyme.

“Here,” the guide hissed, “beneath this keystone’s weight,
Lies what the living dare not resurrect.”
His finger traced a name—*Isolde Clare*—
Etched where the mortar bled a violet defect.

“Your mother’s heart, boy, was a vault of thorns.
She sold her silence to spare you the blade.
The lord who claimed these lands forged her sworn
Oath—to vanish, lest his crimes be laid

Bare before the bishop’s wrath. You were the spark
That might have burned his empire of deceit.
Run, little ghost, ere the hounds of midnight bark—
The truth you crave is ash upon your feet.”

But Lucian, mute with grief’s electric storm,
Dug nails into the slab. The stranger smiled,
Then melted into mist, his purpose worn—
A pawn of darker gears, his goading guile

A key to doom. The boy, alone, unbound
The tomb with strength that rivers lend to rain.
Within—no bones, but letters tightly wound
In ribbon, pale as veins. Her hand, her pain,

Unspooled: *Forgive me, son. The night they came*
*With torches clenched like fists, I chose your breath*
*Over my own. He swore no orphan’s name*
*Would haunt his halls… yet here, in this, my death,*

*I carve your lineage. You are Edmond’s heir—*
*The lord who drinks from goblets forged in lies.*
*Seek not his heart; it breathes corruption’s air.*
*Take flight, my Lucian. Let my sacrifice*

*Be your unwritten dawn.* The final word
Dissolved—the script a blur of tears and time.
Above, a hinge screamed. Lucian stirred,
As boots descended, slow as funeral rhyme.

The lord himself, with eyes of Arctic green,
Stood wreathed in velvet dusk. “So,” he breathed,
“The chapel rat has found the vault unclean.
Did you crave a father’s kiss, boy? Here, unearthed—”

He gestured to the tomb. “Your mother’s art
Was weeping prettily. A shame her throat
Choked on its song.” Lucian, a trembling hart,
Backed to the wall where ivy roots wrote

Their slow, green verdicts. “Mercy,” the boy pled,
Though hope had crumbled like the crypt’s old bricks.
The lord knelt, cupped his chin. “Your parents bled
To feed my peace. Shall I let history fix

Its gaze on you?” A blade, unsheathed, caught
The moon’s thin gaze. But as the steel descended,
Lucian lunged—not at the lord, but brought
His weight against a pillar, fissures rended

The ceiling’s groan. The vault, in one vast sigh,
Collapsed. The lord’s cry perished mid-air.
Stones, like judgement, blotted out the sky,
Burying blood and title, truth and heir.

Dawn found the cathedral’s face still grand, unmoved.
Workmen unearthed two forms entwined in dust:
A man of wealth, his grip a child’s hand proved
Too late to loose. Their names, the parish thrust

Into the ledger’s margins—brief, discreet.
No mourners came. The stones, in patient rows,
Shouldered the weight of secrets none repeat.
Only the wind, through cracks the sunset knows,

Sometimes intones a mother’s ageless prayer—
A boy’s lost laugh, the night’s unspoken toll—
While high above, a rose window’s stare
Splinters the light into one fractured soul.