Between my doubt and my defiance,

I lingered beneath a crimson bloom.

Its petals wept in shapes of violence, scarlet drops descending toward a silent doom.

I watched them drift. I watched them sway.

Their fall grew faint. Their flow grew thin.

As though the world itself had folded in.

Who am I to still the law of physics?

Who am I to question such mechanics?

What force unseen, what hidden hand, could halt the heavens at my command?

I remember nothing.

Nothing but walking beneath that bloom, beneath its shade, beneath its gloom.

Its roots drank deep from crimson ground.

Its boughs held secrets never found.

There was a memory once.

My first. My last.

A fading whisper, fading fast.

A name.

A face.

A place unknown.

Now all are ashes. All have flown.

Again, I do not know myself.

Again, I wake as someone else.

Yet still a purpose pulls me near,

through loss, through rain, through doubt and fear.

So from the bloom,

as hard as it is,

I pull myself away and step into the weeping gray.

Through streets where torrents lashed and poured,

I walked a road no map recorded.

No crossroads called.

No appeal was seen.

No voice disturbed the space between.

Only a mountain, dark and grand,

rose like a scar upon the land.

And at its peak, against the rain,

a lonely tower crowned the plain.

Distant.

Silent.

Stark.

And tall.

As though it stood before it all.

As though it knew, before my birth,

the measure of my wandering worth.

I do not know my name

or station.

But I know,

with dreadful certainty,

my destination.