An Elegy for Stone and Silence
There lies, beneath the cliffs where lantern-light dies,
a gate not carved by mortal hand.
Two silent guardians, statues wrought of marble and forgotten magic
Watch the water’s edge with a sightless gaze,
as though still bound by oath to a king whose name the wind no longer speaks.
Above the threshold, words endure the centuries, etched in trembling stone:
Kneel not in fear, but in awe
Here lie the halls of the King Below.
It was no common keep, no mere seat of power
But a place of reverence, wisdom, and dangerous dreams.
The archway opens into a hall of ghost-lit grace,
where cold blue fire still burns in hanging chains,
And pillars rise like giants in prayer.
This was the throne room, heart of the once-great realm
where the King Below held court beneath the mountain’s bones.
His throne, they say, was shaped from storm-dark ore and bone-pale quartz,
flanked by runes that shimmered when he spoke.
A ruler crowned in lapis thought.
Deep beneath the throne, hidden past vines and old copper patches,
The explorers found it:
a stairway to the void.
There lies the Violet Gate.
A portal, pulsing softly like a wound that will not close.
Some say it led to another world of fire and soul-sick air.
Some say it was a mistake the king could not unmake.
Others claim he walked through it willingly,
seeking truth in the shadows beyond the gods.
But the ruin speaks of yet another secret,
buried deeper still.
Below the portal, carved into the living bedrock,
lies a mine, no, a tomb.
A place where torches die and footsteps echo too long.
There, the last explorers heard something move beneath the moss.
A groan of ancient lungs.
A heartbeat of the Deep Dark.
It is said the Warden sleeps there still,
a creature not made, but grown from the silence,
born of the world’s forgotten sins.
No one who entered that pit has ever returned unchanged.
Now, the halls breathe a different rhythm.
The explorers, brave or foolish, patched the broken walls with stone and copper.
They lit new lanterns, warm and flickering,
where the cold blue ones remain untouched.
They sleep where kings once walked.
They whisper jokes where angels may have wept.
But they do not touch the throne.
They dare not.
For even now, the ancient lanterns sway when no wind stirs,
and the portal hums in its violet hush,
waiting
as if the King Below might one day return,
and ask what was done in his name.