In the creased shadows—
...tales spun from rust and iron rain, a lone figure draped in whispers.
Resentment teeth gleam, they murmur secrets,
the unclaimed echoes resonating in hollow chambers.
Who devised the tale of the Iron Prince?
Of locks without keys, stern gaze in the perennial dusk.
From the void, voices rise—
"We are the spectral hands, we touch, we remember."
Said not, hence unheard, beneath forgotten crowns.
What language do sighs speak in their decay?
Chains of circumstance weld a room forever unseen...
Tethered by ghosts—
The Iron Prince inspects the fragments of emergence,
not of bronze keys forged in distant heat,
but of possessions absent and forlorn watches...
Light fades into softer echoes, till all is shimmering silence.