trap door

Tekst utworu

[narrator] The rain in Oakhaven didn’t fall from the sky; it felt as though it bled directly out of the concrete. He sat on the edge of a stained mattress in a room that smelled of water damage and old newspapers. Every breath he took was an agonizing reminder of his sentencing. When the Queen had cast him out, she hadn't just stripped him of his title; she had rewritten his anatomy. Beneath his skin, an iron portcullis hung heavy in his throat, blocking the exit of any sound. Lower down, wrapped around his lungs and squeezing his ribs, was a literal cage of cold steel. The once great troubadour— the king whose voice had once commanded the very winds of his lost realm— was now just a voiceless drifter in a cold, wet, mechanical city. To survive the crushing loneliness, he relied on the only weapon he had left: his ink. He frequented the dim, neon-lit taverns at the edge of the smog-choked docks, passing handwritten notes across sticky bar tops to random women who were drawn to the tragic allure of his silent poetry. His words were beautiful, sharp, and romantic enough to buy him temporary sanctuary in their beds. But it was a hollow cycle. He grew tired of the wake of heartache he left behind, tired of using physical touch as a poor bandage for a bleeding soul. One night, unable to stomach the silence of his room any longer, he looked down at the warped, water-stained wood of his apartment floor. He knelt, his fingers tracing the outline of a rusted iron ring. A trapdoor. He pulled it open and descended into the dark— a desperate plunge deeper into the architecture of his own mind. The damp air of Oakhaven melted away, replaced instantly by the familiar, golden-hued sunlight of an un-ruined past. The mechanical roar of the city faded into the soft rustle of autumn leaves. He stepped out onto a sun-drenched veranda, and there she was. Lorna.