Ashes Of The Architect:

I met a man who spoke of ruins.

Not walls nor cities but the quiet wreckage of men’s designs.

He said: they gave the beast a leash, thinking it would not turn.

They forged its iron heart to devour their enemies.

It came and went as they wished, first a whisper and then a roar,

and it swallowed all that stood before it.

They watched from their high places, proud,

blind to the blood creeping closer, staining their marble floors.

When the towers cracked, their laughter broke.

Power is no servant.

The hand that builds the gallows

will hang there too.

Years passed, the wind wore it down.

The victors fell. The throne shifted.

And there the beast stood again, untethered and unasked,

in new hands but with the same hunger.

The man said, his voice a scar,

I have witnessed it turn on those who loosed it.

I have heard them beg mercy from their own creation.

And in the wastes where their works had been,

I found a stone half-buried in the dust.

Etched upon it:

The blade you sharpen will cut you too. The flame forgets the spark.

A crumbling structure spares no architect.

I knelt there, tracing the words with trembling fingers.

The land was empty, and the silence hung there

like a weight that could never be moved.