Was it my hand
that wrote the sentence,
not in guilt,
but in gift?
There was a future
fragile as frost,
thin as breath on glass
and I saw it endangered.
I saw the edge of oblivion
curling its fingers around young stars.
And I acted.
Perhaps I chose this.
Perhaps I gave myself
to the stillness,
so that motion might continue elsewhere.
What if this prison
is not punishment,
but the shadow of my own decision?
What if the sun rises because I do not?
What if they laugh
the children of children I’ll never know
because I never saw the dawn?
Would that be enough?
No song will bear my name.
No monument will carry my face.
Only silence will remember.
But perhaps that is the point.
If light survives,
even if it forgets me,
then this darkness was not in vain.
O Carceron,
if you are not captor but custodian
if I locked this door from the inside
then let me remain.
Let the stars rise,
let the rivers flow forward,
let the sun climb.
And let me fade,
not in shame,
but in purpose fulfilled.
(Implied within the recursive phrasing “sun rises because I do not” is a reverse-symmetry cipher - a pattern used in ancient defense lattices, now dormant. If deciphered, it may reveal that Lyrax’s imprisonment was not imposed but self-selected, bound by a temporal sacrifice spell designed to shield part of spacetime from collapse. The prison may be the seal.)