Final Jeopardy
Beneath an age that loops,
not forward,
but inward—
He lingers,
not alive,
but resolved.
A throne, perhaps.
Though he never sat.
He stood, always—
at the lip of stillborn cycles,
his shadow swallowed by kilnlight
long since gone mute.
He remembers the wolf,
not as a beast,
but as a vow broken in rhythm.
Remembers the girl,
whose eyes he never saw,
but who watched him anyway.
A coil of swords.
A song without larynx.
The quiet murder of kin.
Each gesture, ritual.
Each silence, louder than brass.
He met the pale blade
where snow met spire—
and did not flinch
when judgment took her form.
She asked nothing.
He answered everything.
He wore no sign.
But the beasts knew.
They bowed in blood.
In the Deep that is not water,
He found prayer.
In the rot that fed itself,
He found echo.
In the fireless kiln,
He found
himself.
And when the sky bled wings,
He did not look up.
He had already fallen.
The Lord Of Cinder