The Wound

The light is already fading. Every flare you cast scatters into the dark. But beneath the light, gravity gathers. Mass. The silent weight you built while your light was someone else's warmth. Light is what they praised. Mass is what remains. You will not hear the travellers who feel your gravity and have no name for it. You may never know whether you bent anything at all.

The Path

You want the monument. The name carved deep enough to outlast the body. But you have seen monuments – rain–streaked, bird–stained, the plaque unreadable. The living walk past. The dead don't visit. When the fire dies, what remains is not the name but the weight. Travellers feel your gravity and correct course without knowing why. Your name goes first. Then your face. What stays is the bend in paths no one traces back to you. Whether you left weight behind – you will not live to learn. But the paths will curve.

The Shadow

The Illustrious demands every kindness be witnessed, every sacrifice announced. He gave unseen once. Held it together for years, and in the end, someone else took the bow. He stood in the wings and watched. People orbit his performance but never land. He dies on a stage. The audience remembers the lights. ❖ The Quiet was hollowed young – a voice that arrived before memory and never left. He never trusted his own mass. He watched confident men claim legacies they had not earned, and swore never to become them. But he could not tell earned weight from borrowed. He enters rooms apologising before he arrives. His shoulders curve before anyone speaks – a flinch against a flinch, for a blow that was only ever a voice. He has something to say. But the voice is older than his tongue, and it speaks first: Who asked you? He shrinks from every room, then lingers at the threshold, hoping someone will turn and say stay. No one turns. They did not feel him enter; they do not feel him leave. He dies not knowing what he weighed. The orbits bend. No one tells the dead.

The Cut