Green Rift Vigil

Wind surges first, snapping cloaks and wings, and the horned figure steps to the cliff lip as if answering a summons written in weather. Below him the chasm exhales acid-green light, cutting heat into the cold air, and above him a whole sky migrates—bat-winged shapes spiraling out of the storm, their cadence urgent, practiced, hungry. I arrive late, reading the ground: splintered spears, a lion-faced shield thrown aside, blades abandoned mid-decision. This was not a retreat; it was a pause torn open. The impossible detail refuses to stay quiet. On the rock face, glowing letters burn through stone—Where Vojta?—not painted but revealed, as if the cliff remembered a question older than the castle spires crouched in the fog. The standing warrior does not look back. He watches the sky-army cross the rift, calculating, solitary, sworn. Lightning stitches the green clouds. Heat licks up from fissures. Somewhere beyond the wings and the towers, Vojta fails to answer, and the search tightens rather than ends.