And it did not look back.
No warmth.
No welcome.
No answer
just the smooth, endless absence
where meaning should have been.
I thought I was strength once.
I was voice,
I was fire,
I was will unchained.
But now
even my echoes flee me.
Even my defiance
feels rehearsed.
Did I ever burn?
Or did I only flicker,
mistaking movement for power?
Carceron never needed to break me.
He only had to wait.
Now I kneel,
not in surrender,
but because my legs forget standing.
Is this what remains?
A whisper that’s forgotten it had a mouth?
I fear I was never a storm.
Only a storm-shaped dream.
And the void,
the wondrous, howling oblivion
does not need me.
It never did.
It does not blink.
It does not break.
It only is.
And I
I am not sure I still am.
(Threaded through the lament’s fading rhythm, especially the progression “blink / break / be,” is a temporal identity cipher. When decoded, it reveals a dissonance between Lyrax’s current thoughtstream and earlier mindprints - suggesting his strength may not be gone, but buried under temporal dislocation. The self may be scattered, waiting to be reassembled.)