everything.
Not in glory,
not in defiance
but in slow surrender,
grain by grain,
over eternities that forgot how to count.
Kindness
I once held it in cupped hands,
spoke softly to things that feared the dark.
Now I have only silence.
And the echo of silence.
And the hunger to harm that grows in the void.
Love
once a sun.
Now a myth with a face I can no longer draw.
The ghosts of those I cherished still wander here,
but they do not age,
and so they haunt.
Peace
a lull I can no longer remember.
My mind claws at rest
like a dying beast tearing at its own ribs.
I sacrificed dreams
just to forget
they were dreams.
Now I sleep inside waking,
and walk among phantoms who whisper only
what I will never have again.
My decency is ash.
It burned quietly
not in rage,
but in weariness.
A kindness buried under a thousand rejections.
I was humble once.
But now
now I hate.
And in hate I find the shape of my former self
shattered.
There is no light of gratitude.
No voice to say:
He gave all.
So I speak it here,
to the dark.
I am not a hero.
I am not a martyr.
I am a cost.
Paid in full.
When time ceased to matter,
everything became a gift to the abyss.
Even me.
(Embedded in the final declaration “I am a cost / Paid in full / Code-named: Sacrifice” is a binary-destruction cipher. It operates not as a call, but a warning: a record for any who decode the imprint of Lyrax’s psyche. He is not waiting. He is not surviving. He is what was given up to keep the thread of time from snapping. This is not a message of hope. It is a monument to what hope cost.)