The Orphan’s Ashen Quest

Etched deep—a nameless soul, whose eyes hold twilight’s gleam,
Whose tattered cloak still smells of smoke and rotting loam.
No kin but whispered winds that murmur of a dream:
“Beyond the western gate, where truth makes barren home,

There lies the key to what your ravaged heart has sought—
The why of fathers slain, of mothers lost to flame.”
Thus through the ashen waste, by desperation taught,
He ventures, clutching close a locket without name,

Its rusted hinge encloses faces half-erased,
A ghostly man and wife, their smiles effaced by war.
Their silence haunts his steps, their love his only grace,
As crumbling archways loom like ribs of some dead boar.

***

Three nights he walks, each footfall echoing a plea,
Past skeletal markets where the crows hold court,
Through gardens strangled thick by vines of memory,
Where marble nymphs lie cleft, their songs reduced to sport

For rats that gnaw their limbs. At last, a shadowed square
Unfolds—its center crowned by Time’s own fractured shrine.
There, ’neath a sundial’s finger pointing Nowhere,
A crone in rags intones, “What quest, pale child, is thine?”

Her voice, a rasp of leaves in tombs long sealed and still,
Yet kind as earth that waits to cradle fallen bones.
“I seek the ones who forged this locket’s frozen chill—
The truth of why they died, why I was left alone.”

The crone’s milky gaze pierces the veiled despair,
“The west holds answers sharp as winter’s firstborn thorn.
But tread the Path of Echoes—test if thou dost dare—
Where every step reveals what living hearts have borne.”

***

Through gates of splintered oak, where once proud banners waved,
The boy descends to caves where sunlight dares not seep.
The walls, like flesh alive with scars, grotesquely braved,
Begin to pulse and sigh, their whispers dense and deep.

“Behold,” the stones implore, “the tapestry of strife—”
And phantoms coil upward, their forms of smoke and woe:
A soldier clutching dirt, his last breath kissed by life,
A mother’s arms outstretched as cannonfire lays low

Her cottage, child, and all. The boy, transfixed, yet walks,
Each spectral scene a blade that lances through his chest.
Here, lovers torn by swords; there, poison brewed in talks
Of generals who moved pawns on a gilded chess.

“Why show me this?” he cries, his voice a fractured bell.
The caverns answer low, “All truth is built on pain.
The locket’s faces knew these tides—they, too, fell
To war’s eternal hunger, endless and insane.”

***

Dawn’s fifth grim rising finds him at a river’s brink,
Its waters thick with sludge, its banks like rotted teeth.
A bridge of bone arcs high, each plank a soul’s last link
To hopes drowned midstream. There, beneath, a coral wreath

Glares crimson—not from gems, but helmets rusted red.
And on that bridge there stands a figure cloaked in grey,
Its face a shifting mist where features birth and shed.
“Turn back,” it hisses, “lest you rue the price you pay.”

The boy, though trembling, grips his locket to the light,
“I’ll not return a ghost to haunt my own life’s tomb.
Show me the final truth, though it may scorch my sight!”
The specter sweeps its hand—the air itself consumes

The scene, and now revealed: a humble cottage door,
Two parents laughing, pressing gifts into small hands—
The locket, new-forged, with “Forevermore” engraved.
But hark—drums thunder near; the father snuffs the lamp,

His face a mask of dread. “To the root-cellar, swift!”
The mother’s kiss imprinted on the boy’s cold brow.
Above, the boots crash loud, the rafters scream and shift—
A blast. Then silence, save the child’s whispered vow

To never speak again. The vision melts like snow.
The bridge-specter intones, “You see? No grand design,
No traitor’s plot—just chance, where blood and chaos grow.
Your parents’ death? Mere crumbs from war’s insatiable shrine.”

***

The boy stands motionless, his soul a hollowed vault.
The locket slips, is claimed by river’s greedy tongue.
No tears now salt his cheeks—what use are tears for fault
That lies in all and none? The world, too old, too young,

Has sealed its verdict. Back through ruins he retraces
His steps, but heavier, as though each stone he bears.
The crone, the bridge, the cave—all gone. Time’s hand erases
All but the weight now nested where his innocence wears

A shroud. At city’s edge, he climbs a broken tower,
Its height a jagged tooth against the bleeding sky.
Below, the ruins sprawl—a graveyard’s final hour.
He whispers to the wind, “Why let the children die?”

No answer comes but ash, which settles on his hair
Like snow. His fingers brush the tower’s crumbling edge.
A step. A breath. And then—the vacant, waiting air
Embraces him as ground, once distant, pledges

A softer end than truth. The city, watching, sighs,
Its shadows deepening where small bones lightly rest.
No ballads mark his fall, no mourners’ keening cries—
Just war’s old echo, chewing on what’s left.

***

And somewhere, in the west, the crone still chants her lore,
The bridge still lures the lost, the cave still bleeds its past.
While high above the waste, where vultures wheel and soar,
A locket glints, half-buried, catching dusk’s last cast—

Its engravings, worn smooth, now simply read “Forget.”
The river, ever hungry, drags it to the sea.
And war, its feast complete, begins to set
The table anew, where next the orphans flee.