The Exile’s Last Vigil Beneath the Mourning Star
A soldier treads, his boots with battle’s mire,
His heart a drum still throbbing from the fight,
Now choked by thorns of unquenched, smoldering fire.
The forest breathes—a spectral, clawèd sigh—
As moonlight bleeds through branches’ twisted veins,
And every step disturbs some latent cry,
A dirge for souls bound to eternal chains.
“O hollow grove,” he rasps, “what lawless wraith
Would claim these paths where mortal feet dare stray?
What ghostly sentinel, with breath of faith,
Commands the roots to clutch, the stars to fray?”
No answer stirs but leaves that hiss and coil,
As mist, like memory, coils round his throat—
Yet deeper still he ventures, though the soil
Grows thick with frost, and silence chills his coat.
There, through the veil of night’s unyielding shroud,
A glimmer trembles—pale, yet fiercely true—
A single star, though tempests scream aloud,
Defies the dark with argent tears of dew.
“Thy light,” he murmurs, “burns as once did thine,
Dear vanished guide, whose voice now haunts the air…”
But lo! The glade, in answer, doth entwine
Its gloom to form a shape—a woman, fair
Yet wan as lilies drowned in winter’s stream,
Her eyes twin pools where sorrow’s tempest swirled.
“Dear wanderer,” she sighs, “thy fate I gleam—
Thou seek’st a hearth, yet frost hath claimed thy world.
Why tread these woods, where shadows feast on pain?
Thy wounds still weep; thy soul, a storm unspent.”
He staggers, for her voice, though soft as rain,
Hath pierced his breast—a blade of bittersweet lament.
“Speak, phantom!” cries he, “Art thou dream or curse?
Some trick of war’s delirium, or true?”
Her laughter, silver-chained, begins to nurse
The ache within—yet deepens sorrow’s hue.
“Dost thou forget,” she breathes, “our vow once sworn
Beneath this star, when life was ripe and sweet?
Thou pledged thy return ere the rose of morn,
But iron bells rang, and war claimed thy feet.”
Then memory, a serpent, strikes its fang—
He sees her face, not specter but his bride,
Her hands once warm, now spectral shadows hang
As ash descends where crimson petals died.
“Thy letters ceased,” she mourns, “thy voice grew dim,
The hearth I tended turned to bitter frost.
They told me thou wert slain—and hope, so slim,
Could not outpace the plague that swept our host.”
“I lived,” he chokes, “though death gnawed at my side,
In trenches where men’s souls seeped through the mud.
Each dawn, I clutched thy locket, starved, denied,
And prayed to carve thy name in shrapnel’s blood.
Yet when the guns fell silent, and I rose,
I found no home, no threshold, nor thy grace—
But rumors of a grave where winter sows
Its grief upon thy name’s erased embrace.”
Her form doth waver, like a tear unshed,
“Thou art too late, my love, too late by years.
The star thou followedst led thee to the dead—
I dwell where neither pulse nor breath appears.
Yet linger here, and I shall weave a song
To bind thy wounds with threads of starlit dust.
Forget the world that wrought thee endless wrong;
In twilight’s arms, let rot and rust adjust.”
Oh, siren’s plea! How sweet the lull of night,
Where pain may drown in Lethe’s numbing stream.
His sword, once loyal, gleams with treacherous light—
“To rest,” he sighs, “how pure the promise seems…”
But as he nears, the star above doth pulse,
A heartbeat throbbing in the vast, black sea.
Her hands, outstretched, like ivy, twine, convulse—
“Stay! Let the forest claim what war set free!”
Yet something in that celestial, steadfast glow
Ignites a ember in his ravaged breast.
“I cannot,” he gasps, “though every sinew slow,
Nor join thy shade in undeath’s cold nest.
For though the world hath branded me a ghost,
I yet draw breath—a flicker, frail, but sworn
To bear the scars of all that I have lost,
And guard the living ‘gainst despair’s sharp thorn.”
Her wail then rends the fabric of the wood,
A sound of roots up torn, of skies undone.
“Then go!” she shrieks, “and know that naught is good
Where starless voids consume the wandering one!
But mark this truth, thou fractured, fleeting thing—
No home awaits, no lamp shall guide thy tread.
Thy path ends here, where banshees weep and sing,
And I shall haunt thy shadow till thou’rt dead!”
The earth beneath him splits—a maw of frost—
As pines, like judges, loom with limbs austere.
The star, his compass, dims, forever lost,
And dawn’s first blush seems but another sneer.
He turns, though neither road nor hope remains,
And stumbles toward the void, her curse his creed.
Yet in his wake, a single truth sustains—
That exiles walk where love and death concede.
Three nights hence, woodsmen find a frozen form,
Its eyes still fixed where stars dare not descend.
No mourners come, no rites, no chant to warm—
Just wolves that howl the anthem of the friendless end.
And in the glade, where shadows feast and thrall,
A specter weeps, her vengeance incomplete.
The star, now veiled, forsakes the mortal pall,
While war’s eternal orphans roam, effete.
Thus ends the tale—of loyalty and rue,
Of paths entwined, yet severed by the grave.
The living die twice; exiles, twice untrue,
Are ghosts before the earth claims what it gave.
Beware the woods where star and sorrow meet,
For twilight’s kiss is but a vulture’s breath.
And should you glimpse a soldier, slow of feet,
Know him the twice-condemned: by life, and death.
