The Soldier’s Last Vigil Beneath the Shattered Star
A soldier treads, his heart by whispers bowed,
Through archways cracked with centuries’ disdain,
Where ivy claws the stones that gods ordained.
The temple breathes—a spectral, gasping thing—
Its pillars lean like mourners murmuring,
And every step disturbs the dust of years,
Each mote a ghost of unremembered tears.
He bears a pledge, half-tarnished by the night,
A vow once forged in fire, now starved of light:
“When Mars relents and blood’s grim tide withdraws,
We’ll meet where heaven’s eye alone shall pause.”
That celestial orb, now dimmed by time’s deceit,
Once vowed to guard their souls’ clandestine beat.
But war, that ravening beast with jaws unkind,
Had stripped his hands of all but scars entwined.
Three cycles past, her voice had trembled low
(Beneath this very dome’s moon-silvered glow),
“Though trumpets scream and dirge-drums choke the air,
Return, my heart, or let the void claim care.”
Her palm had pressed a locket to his breast—
Two faces fused where love and sorrow rest—
“While Sirius burns, though continents divide,
This temple’s bones shall house our tethered guide.”
Now Sirius bleeds—a ruby struck by dread—
Its light now threads the path her silence led.
He waits, as marble saints with chiseled sighs
Observe the clockwork crawl of clouded skies.
The soldier’s cloak, once dyed in valor’s hue,
Hangs limp as moss the monsoons have imbued.
What rustle stirs? Not footfalls, but the wind
That parts the veil where hope and doubt have sinned.
“Ellara!” Echoes taunt the hollow nave,
Her name reborn as whispers from the grave.
A shape emerges—not the form he knew,
But Time’s cruel jest in ink and ashen hue.
A stranger’s eyes, yet kindred in their pain,
Steps forward, clutching truths that poison veins.
“Dear friend,” she breathes (O, how that word doth maim!),
“The stars are liars; love survives but name.”
Her hand extends—a parchment, cracked with years—
The soldier’s script, now drowned in salted spheres.
“This reached me not when winter’s frostbite spread,
But bloomed too late where vows lay cold and dead.
They swore you slain where cannons rend the ground,
And I… ah, wretch!… let duty’s chain be bound.
Another hearth now claims these widowed hands—
Not by desire, but death’s unseen commands.”
The locket glints—her thumb caresses twinned—
A stranger’s face where once his smile had grinned.
The soldier’s tongue, lead-heavy with the curse
That gods allot to souls born to coerce,
Falls silent. What rebuke could treason mend?
Her choice, like his, was fate’s unpitying end.
She turns—the stars invert their cruel display—
And dawn’s first blade dissects the ashen gray.
But hark! What steel-song chimes the chancel’s air?
Not memory’s phantom, but betrayal’s snare.
Three shadows loom, their blades like vipers bared—
Old comrades, forged in trenches brother-squared.
“The general’s gold outshines a dead man’s vow,”
Their captain sneers, “and traitors kneel ere now.”
The soldier smiles, his heart a pyre’s core—
To perish here, where love and lies both tore.
He falls, not to the knife’s contemptuous sting,
But to the locket’s weight—that shattered thing—
As Sirius winks, its vigil finally done,
And temple stones embrace the silenced sun.
Her footsteps fade where pity dares not tread,
While war’s eternal jest reclaims its dead.
Thus ends the tale where vows and stars aligned—
A soldier’s truth, by treachery’s dark, entwined.
