Chapter XVII: The Sovereign of Shadows
"Masks, Thrones, and the Autopsy of the Soul"
The wind shrieked, calling me through the hollow arches of my empire, and shared the whispers of those from which I had long departed. They did not capitulate, they did not bend the knee—those stubborn flames in their unyielding commitment who were steadfast in grisly devotion to my cause even while I drifted into infinite nothingness. I stand now before the stripped down bones of my empire, their magnificence reduced to chambers of resonating echo and thrones of dust. *Why have I returned?* The question coils in my heart like the serpent of eternal regret. Perhaps it is the burden of promises I once scarred into the flesh of memory now bleeding through the cracks of time. Or perhaps it is the truth that solitude, even from this frayed kingdom, is a reprieve from the honeyed mumble of humankind. Humanity—how shameless a pantomime! They murmur constantly of virtues they loathe, and in the very next breath, dive into the sins of their own disdain. Their laugh, a knife—that roasts, and their kindness, a mask stuck to rotten flesh. I have tasted their "compassion," a goblet of vinegar, and spit it back into oblivion. They are the architects of their own suffering, bringing offerings of opinions about the innocence of gutting like lambs to a slaughterhouse. Weakness masquerades as strength in their world—a monstrous breeding from the bones of gentle chitterers.
*Am I not the same?* A voice hisses from the back, in the shadows of my own dilemma. My little demon, grinning his good-naturedly grin and underpinning a serpentine tongue, sits on the arm of my throne. *You fled to this emptiness,* it wheezed, *and all the while wishing for an audience for your woe. How very… human.* In stark contrast to that imp, my little angel shone lightly, its song tracing a gossamer line of light. *They need you,* she said, echoing the tune of a long-forgotten hymn. *To fix what you broke.* But what is there to fix? This world explodes with the riveting mechanic of tooth and claw. I see it now–all of the fucking rituals, the lies, the desperate need to mask vulnerability for power, they are all rats trapped in an evil mouse maze, and I, the tired scientist, sit here, watching them skitter around the maze, mostly dispassionate. I hum along with their carcasses of schemes for no other reason than the sham of beauty here does not legitimate itself to me. This life is a problem to be disentangled; one can only argue that survival consists of skin shedding, even if it means becoming the beast we contract, a card shimmered with violence and greed as offerers; one might wonder why no one ever pays the toll of beauty here; all of this is impossible to pay!
Memories flicker—a jumble of fractured promises and whispering confessions at midnight. *Did I make that up?* The way they used to face my eyes, without caution? Or was that another performance? Those masks must chafe, yet holding them tight is safer than the infected truths stuck below. Hypocrisy drains the spirit. Believe me; I have worn the face and mastered every role. Saviour. Tyrant. Ghost. My demon laughs now, like shattering glass. *You keep demanding emptiness when you built this kingdom to overlay their rot.* The angel fits her light into a crown, thorny, yet incandescent. *Or to be so very high above it,* she chides-she scolded. They argue, these twin flames of mine, while the wind hums a lament through the halls.
In the end, it doesn't really matter. The crown—I mean, this exquisite ruin?—that is my confession. Call me a monster, call me a god, call me a fool. I will fly in this perfect wasteland until the stars sputter out. And if everything outside of these walls goes up in flames? So be it. We are all complicit in the game, puppets to a master—both the master and the puppet. This much I know to be true, but sometimes, amid the quiet, I hear it—the tiniest itch of doubt. What if the song of the angel isn't just a delusion? What if the jesting of the demon is the best reflection I could imagine? I drink the question like poison, sitting with its sting. For now I wait.
The experiment continues.
About the Creator
LUCCIAN LAYTH
L.LUCCIAN is a writer, poet and philosopher who delves into the unseen. He produces metaphysical contemplation that delineates the line between thinking and living. Inever write to tellsomethingaboutlife,but silences aremyway ofhearing it.
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Comments (2)
Nice work ! What was your trigger for writing this ? 🏆
I love the diverging of Sovereign of shadows! Great work!