Climb now, before the dawn’s iron fingers clamp the stars shut, before the bones of the night rattle their last warning. The ladder waits, rung by rung, nailed into the wind and the whispering void, where the weight of your name is lighter than dust.
Step from the tar-pit streets, the cities with their coughing veins, the wire and the screen that feast on your waking breath. Leave the clock’s cold teeth behind, gnashing at time, grinding your minutes to powder.
Upward, through the ruins of your yesterdays, past the ghosts that crowd the threshold, hands outstretched with unsung songs. Do not listen. Their sorrow is a chain, their longing an echo trapped in stone.
Higher still, where the rivers of the sky coil like silver serpents, where the wind no longer carries the grief of men. The ladder sways, a spine of light against the black tide, and yet it holds, bending but never breaking, a bridge between the undone and the never-was.
At the top, the mouth of the world unhinges. The sky is an open lung, breathing new names, new shapes, new ways to be. Step through. Let go. Be unmade and remade, no longer a man of shadows but a flame that does not burn, a word that does not fade.
