The King Unhorsed
February 13th, 2026A crown is not undone by fire alone,
nor kingdom lost where swordmen fell at last;
the deeper ruin works through marrow-bone
when hope, long-treasured, falters and is past.
He kept no hall. The hearthlight that he knew
was borrowed from the bramble and the briar.
Grey vapours clung where kingly banners flew,
and all the land lay hidden, low, and dire.
No thane now brought him counsel or his mead.
He moved as one whom living men forget—
a shape among the sedges and the reed,
his cloak the colour of the coming wet.
The bread he watched went black beneath the flame.
He did not stir. What stewardship was this,
who could not guard a poor man's loaf from shame
nor keep his people whole from the abyss?
Yet somewhere in the dark behind his eyes,
where older fires than hearthflames faintly burned,
he felt the turning world beneath him rise—
the way a tide, long-fallen, moves, returned.
For those whom fate has hammered on the stone
are either shattered there or shaped anew.
He rose. He set his jaw. He stood alone.
The grey world waited, and the grey wind blew.
No trumpet called him. No bright star appeared.
He was a man with nothing but his name—
and something in him, unabased, unseared,
that would not bow before the creeping flame.
The darkness does not conquer those who keep
one ember sheltered from the wind and rain.
He bore it forward, waking and in sleep,
until the world was made to burn again.