Eclipse of the Guardians

Torches guttered low as the crimson sky pressed against the valley’s stone flanks, and on those dust-risen steps the guardians pounded their drums like iron hearts calling for judgment. Each beat leapt across centuries, shaking loose fragments of a vow first struck when these pillars were young. Masks carved into feral grimaces stared outward, their shadows writhing along the temple mouth as if to seal whatever power had once whispered from its throat. Hyenas zigzagged through ringing echoes, muscle taut with some shared purpose older than memory. In the foreground, the chiseled slab bore a plea no wind could erode: *KWEN Vojta?* The words hissed like a challenge, a ritual query etched to anchor duty in place. There are whispers that the proverb holds—“The one who guards the name guards the world”—yet even under this avalanche of sound and sunset flame, no trace of Vojta coils from the silence he abandoned. His absence stretches long, coiling deeper than the chasm’s roots.