NIHIL

How distance binds a stranger to the void,

A king without a kingdom, without a name,

Only a mangled crown upon his head.

Was it fate or stubbornness that carried me this far?

For the will to live is the will to die.

Fractured beneath a legion of disguises,

Trying to outsmart the loneliness behind these eyes.

Yet behind the shattered mask remains a soul,

buried beneath the sands of time.

The curse of suffering is the gift of bliss.

One is given only for the other to be taken away.

To feel so deeply that feeling itself becomes nothing,

To hold the flame so tightly it disintegrates,

to descend into depths where no one dares to follow.

Here I am, with the deadliest sin of all: 

Hope.

Praying to a candle that has long ceased to burn,

surrounded by fading whispers coiling into silence,

a breath away from the edge of inexistence.

Self-exiled from the world I once sought to conquer. 

I stand uncertain—

whether it is the war that I have lost,

or everything that was worth fighting for.