He stands upon the hill,
and the horizon burns—
the sky devours itself,
ripped red and black by the hands of ruin.
His land, once green as a promise,
now crumbles like old parchment,
the lines of rivers drying into scars
across the face of the earth.
The trees fall first,
silent giants bowing to invisible blades,
and the fields, once ripe with gold,
are swallowed by smoke,
choking on their own ashes.
He watches it all,
his hands gripping the stone
as if the weight could hold him steady.
But what is a king
who cannot touch the earth beneath his feet,
cannot mend the breaking
with the press of his palms,
or command the winds to stop?
His walls crumble,
the towers, his pride,
fall one by one, like children
lost to a war that never ends.
The cries of his people rise up,
shadows in the air,
and he reaches for them,
fingers grasping at the ghosts of voices
that will never be whole again.
The fire spreads,
like a serpent uncoiling through the valleys,
its tongue tasting the remnants of hope.
He knows—
he cannot save this.
Not with all the crowns
that have weighed his brow,
not with all the blood
that has carved his name into the soil.
And so he watches,
his heart breaking like the earth,
shattered under a sky
that no longer holds the light.
He watches as the sun dies,
as the land turns to dust in the wind,
and all that was his
becomes a memory,
a story told only in silence.
