I light each candle to brave the mourning wind,
Placing them where the march had thinned.
Each flame a name, a life his hands unmade,
By darts of iron, cold and blind,
That stole the Dawnlight from their eyes.

I lay each friend into a coffin,
And close the lid on joys we had known,
They live on in echoes of laughter and light,
But never again will they see dawn's height,
Nor stars that mourn the grief-striken skies.

He mourns a shadow crowned in gold,
But his hands are not empty, they are soaked,
In the silence and echoes of names we still whisper,
the unfinished rites and quiet prayer.
Echoing in the hollows that he made.

Still, you braid the wind into a hymn,
For a man who carved his compass from broken bones,
Whose course was etched in crimson tides,
Is this freedom or a gilded cage -
the armour of amnesia he had made?

I walk down roads where Memory still clings,
Each step a toll that sorrow brings.
Blackstone, Brightstone, and Shornwall,
Duskmere, Naxian, and Riverwall -
Each tomb a light he cruelly drowned.

Penned by my hand on the 2nd of Chronos, in the year 981 AF.