The evening caught me drifting, fields gone gold,
That kind of light that shows the world as old.
I walked where birch grew sparse and turned to pine—
Silence traced its finger along my spine.

A wall rose where no wall had right to be,
Its granite teeth ground shut in mute decree.
No gate, no sign, no legible intent—
Just stone on stone, and what the centuries meant.

I pressed my palm against the wall’s gray cold—
It held the kind of chill that centuries hold.
The moss gave slightly, time itself compressed—
I coughed; a fist had tightened in my chest.

My blood slowed. Something opened in my skull.
The forest dimmed; the silence stretched and pulled—
And through the gray I glimpsed a columned street,
Heard the distant drum of marching feet.

A king passed, shadowed by his silent train.
Behind him, faces hollowed out by pain.
Slaves beneath the marble. Blood on snow.
A kingdom drunk on those it crushed below.

The drumbeat faded. Everything grew still.
I stood alone, a husk drained of its will.
But something clung to me—a stain, a weight—
The ash of empire, slow to dissipate.

I touched the stone again. Just granite, bare.
The wall had said its piece. I left it there.
A crack ran through the granite like a vein—
Inside it, ferns. Silence. Trickling rain.

I walked away. The vision walked with me—
A king, a throne, a blood-drunk dynasty.
One day the roots will pull the whole wall down.
No one will know its name. No king. No crown.