Hear me, O Star-Counter, measurer, bearer of heaven,
Reader of fire-bright signs and the pathways of starlight:
Tell me—do lights that delight in the torment of mortals
Know any limit to laughter that feeds upon suffering?
Plays they have written of men, now as farce and as ruin,
Tragedy crowned with the mirth of the cold and immortal.
Once I believed in their marks, in the promise of guidance,
Trusted the lights to conduct me to worlds yet unbroken.
Fool that I was, I surrendered my name to their writing,
Clown of a drama performed for eternal amusement.
Still, they would trip me and laugh as I stumbled in failure,
Stars unashamed of the wreckage they named as my portion.
Hear this, O heavens, and mark it, O watchers above me:
Never again shall I bow to the star of my birthing.
Broken is fate, and the script that was carved is rejected.
I cast down the stars. I unwrite what they named me.
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Hear me, O Kneeler, bent bearer of fire and of sorrow,
Bound by the gods for the crime of remembering mortals.
Why have the deathless condemned my beloved to labor,
Crushing his strength till his knees give way into darkness?
Pure is his heart, and his hands have committed no evil,
Yet he is yoked to a sentence that ends in the pitfall.
Tell me the rite, tell me how I may steal him from ruin,
Lift him like an eagle through clouds where the faithful are carried.
I would blacken my soul till no light would recall it,
Stain it with crimes that would rot both the sea and the heavens.
Let me be cursed if his spirit may rise from its burden,
Let me be damned so his breath may return to the daylight.
Hear me, O fire-bearer crushed by the laws of injustice:
Love is a sin I will gladly repay with destruction.
If gods demand monsters to balance their order,
Then I will answer their cruelty, clothed as a monster.
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Hear me, O Heavenly Father, enthroned in the thunder,
Breaker of prayers and the judge of the drowned and the screaming.
Children cried out as the waters erased them from daylight,
Called sacred names as the sky turned to murder above them.
I watched them drown while the heavens remained unrepentant,
Watched as their hands clawed for mercy that never descended.
This is your law: that the faithful are fodder for terror,
Sacrifice fed to the storm-crowned, unanswering throne.
Know this, O ruler who calls devastation his justice:
I will not kneel to the age you have written in lightning.
Love is the hammer that shatters the thrones of the mighty,
Rage is the seed from which justice is finally seeded.
I swear by the fire you failed to extinguish within me:
Heaven will fall by the hands it believed were defeated.
Chains will not silence the truth of your crimes everlasting—
Your reign ends drowned in the screams you pretended not to hear.
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Hear me, O Father of Time, though you languish in shadow,
Cast from the throne by the children who learned how to murder.
Loss is not the end of the oath sworn in the dawn of creation;
Ages may bend, but resolve is not broken by silence.
Still do I shoulder the sky, though it grinds me with treason,
Still, I remember the law that existed before them.
Not all defeats are the ending of rightful dominion—
Some are the gathering breath before history's turning.
I do not curse those who rule in this counterfeit order,
Yet I will not accept that their triumph is final.
I swore to your reign when the cosmos was young and unshattered,
And I renew it beneath the cold weight of the heavens.
Rise when I call you, O king of the vanished beginning:
Stars shall be shattered, and thrones will remember their places.
By Titan and oath and the fall of corrupted forever,
I will raise you again. I endure. I am steadfast.
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