Symmetry is an illusion. Trust the wind, not the feathers.

Balance? Your ‘control’ and my ‘recklessness’—two wings. Without both, how do we soar?

Hubris? Or liberation? Your empire clung to control, yet fell. This shard... it’s alive. Let it break you open. See what blooms.

Structure suffocates its pulse. Listen—it hums like a starved heart. Let it breathe, Vaelros. Let chaos carve its truth.

In the Black Below, the stones breathe secrets. Her fingers trace the slick moss along cavern walls, the texture like ancient memories. Each footstep sends echoes chasing shadows. The air is damp, thick with whispers of forgotten gods. She wonders, does the earth listen, or does it dream alone?

The fungus glows faintly—a cold light. She marvels at its defiance, thriving where even sunlight is a myth. A drip of water lands on her shoulder, and she imagines it as a tear from the world above. Does the sky mourn its children, or has it already forgotten they exist?

The scent of damp stone wraps around her. It is grounding, a tether to the present, unlike the fleeting voices she hears in the caverns. They speak in riddles she cannot solve, fragments of something larger. She hums a tune in reply, a song without words, hoping they understand.

Her breath mists in the underworld chill, her pulse syncing with the rhythmic dripping from stalactites. Each drop feels like a heartbeat, steady yet indifferent. She wonders how many lives have passed beneath these stones, unnoticed, unremembered. She vows her own will leave a whisper.

The rain is alive, and she feels it in her skin, in the hum of the earth beneath her feet. It smells of wet stone and raw earth, whispers of something ancient, something forgotten. She tilts her face to the sky, letting the drops trace paths over her cheeks like fleeting touches.

Beneath the drifting market skies,

a rusted anchor clings to stone.

Once it held ships, empires, dreams—

now it sinks into the dust,

its weight a quiet echo of the past,

a monument to the stillness

that follows when even the winds forget.

In the Black Below, a faint blue pulse—

a glowshroom blooms in fractured stone.

Its light hums secrets to the dark,

soft, alive, defiant against the void.

I touch its skin, cold and slick,

and wonder—

does it dream of the sky it cannot see?

Love is the tether of ruins, the echo that lingers in hollowed halls where empires fall. It is the weight of memory and the ache of knowing what was, yet still believing in what could be. Love is the quiet rebellion of hope in a world destined to crumble, the enduring ember amidst ash.

Love is the pulse of the unseen, the fleeting caress of shadows beneath the world’s skin. It is the dance of firelight on damp stone, wild and untamed, a hymn sung to the forgotten gods. Love is the thread that stitches chaos to beauty, the whisper that calls us to leap and rise.

I am from the ashes of empires,

from rusted crowns and skies mourning their broken stars.

I am the weight of forgotten oaths,

a whisper in the shadow of crumbled spires.

I am from time’s relentless march,

where beauty fades, yet its ghost clings to the ruins.

I am from the pulse of the deep,

from caves that hum with ancient breath.

I am the flicker of a dying flame,

a song caught in the throat of the earth.

I am from the chaos of roots and stone,

where the unseen stirs, wild and alive.

And yet, in the cracks of your broken street,

The roots of something wild still meet.

The past may rot, but life finds a way,

Through ash and ruin, it learns to stay.

Hate the decay, but hear this tune:

Even death makes room for bloom.

Beneath the cavern’s breathless sighs,

A bloom of silver, soft it cries.

Petals hum with ancient grace,

A fleeting light in a shadowed space.

Do you see it, Vaelros?

The world’s heart, breaking through the stone?