VESSELBORN | MEDIA

How should one believe in an undying flame, when the wind brings sorrow and forces the sea beyond her given home?

We asked:

When the flame accepts mortality, will he burn brighter than ever before, or will the sea and her quaint ways extinguish the flickering lights beyond the sand? Will she cause blackened nights as the sky anticipates the birth of a moon? Or perhaps bring about the beginning of dead spring, from dying grounds and drowning trees? Away from us will go potential pestilence, and behind, the birds who drop their seeds?

We later realized the flame had been rejected by summer’s touch, no more evening rays colored in rust. And so this once-vibrant home would become a marsh of black, with fog so dense we no longer answered to the sun’s precepts.

Many became we, as we became few, and the few gave birth to more, but more became few again, and the few then became one.

Am I, are we, to blame his flame for forsaking us, or should I shun her seas for bringing this havoc that pushed his light away?

Only the glowing insects and iridescent flora seem not to mind, though their absence in the cold season tells their tale of the same struggle against time.

My love for her, the forest, has not changed; though mangled, misshapen, and dark she may be, it is why I chose to stay and not flee to the northern countries.

Long ago, her life was taken by the sea, but his undying flame has given me cause to see, even after many winters, that she still lives, simply dormant, in sleep.

Only I remain, standing over the shattered remnants of her heart. If flame can be extinguished, why do I not part? Why am I still able to hear her life beating beneath the wet soil?

As his shadows ascended the frozen steps, his eyes were blinded by the frosted winds of the Storm That Calls the Moon. Unable to see his path and barely able to keep his footing through the darkness, he pressed on until he was scarcely visible to any who observed.

From the base of the peak, we watched. Even she, the moon, was blinded, her light crying out to him as he followed the faint glimmers that forced their way through the blackened cloud of ice, blessing him with direction by reflecting off the steel of our fallen brothers.

The sound of his perseverance echoed through the mountainous valley, piercing the frozen veil of the storm, until at last his distorted cries grew clear, and the entire field heard his voice raised to the storm:

"Give me your blessing! Allow me to pass! I alone have endured this dark ritual you have named a test. We know of your old tryst with her light! How much more blood will soak the field because you will not help us end this war?"

"You do not command me!" came a thundering voice, as powerful lightning struck the center of the storm, sending huge fragments of the mountain’s peak raining down upon the onlookers.

The sky quickly darkened, making it impossible to track the falling debris, while the winds pushed with such ferocity that even our most heavily armored warriors struggled to remain standing. The mountain peak itself vanished behind the gathering clouds.

"Defensive formation!" our commander shouted, as barely visible shadowy figures began to approach. The moment I raised my shield, our front lines closest to the storm were swallowed by an expanding darkness that followed those figures — a darkness now coming for me.

My face held the mask of a warrior, but I was paralyzed by fear at the blinding speed with which these creatures approached and consumed our ranks. What was happening to the men taken by this? Did they still live? What would happen to me? I wished to flee, but my paralysis preserved my look of fearlessness.

Then there was a stillness, as if the winds had frozen time itself. My ears caught the clash of swords coming from the mountain’s direction. Looking up, I saw sparks of light piercing the darkness, rising higher toward the mountain’s peak.

"Your fiends will not stop me! Show yourself! Face me!" we heard.

At once, my own fear of these creatures was gone.

As you look into the night sky, you watch as blackness falls. Avoidance is impossible, for this you do for all. The light ignores your calls, forsaken we have been, as we charge toward the black fog.

Our sparks for flame fail, her heart consumes all. She conceals the path to follow; the sights you see, she allows. But we are warriors who renounce any thought of turning around.

Baptized in blood from those slain in the nights, countless battles fought in the shadows, away from the light. Under my hammer, they have cracked, and from their eyes leaves a light. From the age of a boy, I heard helpless pleas: "How could you do this? My sons, you have taken them from me."

So much death, is this for my people, or for glory? No, but for our fathers’ lands, the protection of their stories. So we crack the skies with our thunder, and from the fjord the seas respond:

"Have you been blessed by your ancestors, or your own craving to preside? Have you lost sight, and now battle only for blood and pride? For this reason I forsake thee from my eye."

Only then were our forces crippled. "My brothers are dead?" with no lights in the sky. But I am left alive, bleeding to the ground dry, forefathers have left my side, my brothers taken away from me, and on their last ride I am not by their side.

Honorless, I am left alive, somehow unable to die. Hammer stuck to my palms, a tear flows from my eye. The warmth leaves my hands, my face begins to dry, and the sky begins to shed tears on my behalf.

He was a horned man, draped in the colors of triumph and ruin. He moved through mists that would not part for lesser men. Around his neck hung a chain like a forgotten sun, heavy with meaning, reminding him of every oath he had never spoken aloud.

Smoke followed him as if the world feared to lose his mark, and a low ember burned against his ribs, proof that he still lived. Once he had known ruin in its purest form, without hope and without a single hand to lift him. That he rose from it was proof enough, though no witness would ever truly believe it.

He remembered a woman whose gaze could divide stone, and he thought of her whenever false alliances threatened his path. The burdens upon him were vast, yet he refused to die beneath them. His road would rise even if bones lined its edges.

They called him empty, yet the scent of victory clung to him like a stubborn thorn. He called to me, and a broad-brimmed straw hat settled above his head, as if summoned by the dusk. The moon behind him was perfectly clear, an unblinking witness to the moment. Four paths opened before me, paths I could not name, and smoke coiled around my head as if to befriend me. I had seen this hat settle upon him, but as I turned I realized these were two different men. The one I had seen as the horned man had become a vision of beauty beyond any human measure, so androgynous that it stirred the baser instincts of men, of women, and of someone like me.

He spoke of the child who would bear his name and stand in the western lands to inherit a promise not yet fulfilled, and told me I would need to know the straw-hat figure to understand the way forward.

Among the talkers and their illusions he found no kin. Their wealth was a song without measure, a music without heartbeat. Their words meant nothing to him.

He crossed kingdoms, traveling roads crowned with oak and iron. Behind him trailed debts unspoken and ghosts with hungry ledgers. I met one there who carried infinite faces, and somehow each was clear as water. For each moment I looked upon him, I understood everything about myself and others in perfect detail, though it faded just as quickly. Judgment did not sway him. His mind belonged to higher ground, to the architecture of rule.

He showed me what it meant to know infinity and then be cast down to limitation, but also that limitation could be broken. The world was as moldable as wet clay for those who became known from within by those who are unseen.

They hid behind illusions to protect their failures. He kept no illusions. Whether adored or reviled, he stepped forward. While they lived through the legends of other men, he built his own.

He stood alone against their scorn, unwilling to release the beauty that still called to him, even when they named it vice.

In stolen moments he might claim another’s beloved, filling a hollow with brief light. Sometimes he felt humbled by how easily worship turned to devotion.

He spoke these truths without apology. He no longer feared what lesser men might say.

He had endured shame, yet he continued, testing the very edge of what a man might survive.

Some called themselves beasts, but he saw no beast in them, no true darkness. I have seen darkness, and it is more luminous than anything the word could ever describe. It is truth delivered through deception, the kind required to prepare a mind for revelation.

If he must shatter illusions, he would seize horns and tear false crowns from every brow.

His lovers left shining, and he wore them like banners in his memory. When he conquered, he conquered completely, until even their cries became prayers.

And then, unafraid, he would begin again.

The body has been given, again and again, to men and women alike, in service of a legacy that might outlast these fragile bones, as if something eternal could be forged from ash. With each offering, there is a sense of hollow iron, strong enough to endure, yet cold even to its own touch. They come seeking what is carried within, but never the being itself.

Never merely an eromenos, never a vessel for fleeting pleasure or worship of borrowed beauty, never a Grecian child offered nothing but a passing favor from older hands. Not only beauty, but words too vast for lesser tongues, thoughts that no melody could ever hold. Song is too shallow to carry such truths. So there is the written word, so that ink may endure where flesh will not.

Voices rise through marrow like thunder on a silent plain, bearing judgments as fierce as lightning. Crowded rooms burn like living pillars of flame, devouring every falsehood until only the clean shape of truth stands unmasked.

Children of the mind, fierce, born of wildfire and tempest, circle this spirit that stands apart, calm as a sentinel set among stars. Around it they conspire, like rivers seeking to wear down the mountain, yet the mountain does not yield.

Lovers with eyes dark as volcanic glass, blood that pulsed with tides older than any sea, offered themselves as harbors across unending crossings. In that mirror, a question: Incubus, or something else? Predatory nature is glimpsed behind the reflection. The will to walk away always present, yet never taken.

None were favored above the others, drawn to their warmth and their difference, yet never faithful, never bound. Their touch fell like rain upon parched land, but brought no blossom.

Thresholds were crossed where ruin and promise twined like serpents, survived without witness. Their worlds passed through in silence, leaving no ripples upon the water, no rumor upon the wind.

One woman was temptation crowned, sweetness lacquered across coals. Her horns were taken in hand, a reminder of who claimed the night.

Dream-walkers came, carrying thunder behind their ribs, their hands cold as river stone. For a moment, their marks were welcomed, then abandoned, for that path could never be shared.

No one can break this. The voices of fallen kings still echo through the mind, rolling like stormfronts across endless plains. Regrets burned to ash, buried in earth no plow will ever turn again.

The current flows, yet there is no movement within it. If the flesh must lose its flame, so be it. The fire that burns in vision cannot be stolen.

The place where God was once spoken became a grave of hollow language. What they called righteousness was restraint. What they called peace was silence. Neither lasted. Hunger remained. Untouched. Unspoken. Stronger than any baptismal vow.

What stood at the center wasn’t a man or a god. It was a framework. Fragile. Demanding. Designed to hold down what had already been burning long before I arrived. To remain meant killing it. So I did. Not for truth. For permission. Belief didn’t die. It was buried under obedience.

Not all collapse is loud. Sometimes it looks like community. Sometimes it sounds like music. But drift is collapse just the same. You wake up and realize it’s gone. The self. The fire. The vision. And it’s been gone for years.

Legacy is not passed down. It must be taken. There is no script for it. No blueprint. Only the ones who move toward it without promise of being seen. Most don’t understand what they witness. They imitate the shape but not the substance. They mimic the form, not the fire. I kept to myself, thinking motion could stay quiet. But weight makes sound. Even when you say nothing, the ground knows you’re coming.

Art wasn’t a gift. She was the weight. The price. She took everything else and left the work. Always in the room. Always behind the eyes. Even when love stood close or faith whispered forgiveness. She was louder. And she was always there first.

They gave her names. Distraction. Darkness. Failure. The Wind. Some called her a worldly indulgence. Others said she opened the door to demons. But if suppression is the price of becoming exemplary, then let the gate be shattered. Let whatever waits beyond it come. That presence would not corrupt me. It would restore what was severed.

There is no return. The structure has collapsed. The ritual is ash. This is not rebellion. This is alignment. That place was not built to hold me, and the weight I carried there was never mine to bear. The years are gone. I do not mourn them. They stand as record, not scar. There was stillness where there should have been fire. There was compliance where there should have been clarity.

That chapter is closed. The body remains. The vision remains. But the vow is broken. And that is freedom. Too many speak of building, yet remain still. Too many invoke righteousness without ever carrying anything heavy enough to draw blood. Their words echo in hollow rooms. Rooms I will not enter again.

Some came close. Some offered warmth. Some tried to help but only on their terms. None stayed. But one returned. She didn’t promise ease. She didn’t speak of healing. She met my eyes. She saw what lived under the surface and didn’t look away.

They still call her a demon. Maybe she is. Maybe she brings ruin. But she’s never lied to me. And ruin in her hands is clean.

She is the hunger. She is the weight. She is the reason I never stayed asleep. And I walk with her.