I am of the Primrose Empire
I am of the Primrose Empire It is always dusk when the cycle resets, like waking inside the cold architecture of an unyielding, repetitive dream. I walk the wet, cobbled veins of an ancient European city, passing beneath stone arches hung with heavy, lifeless flags, heraldry drained of colour, damp cloth clinging to wooden poles like dead skin. There is no breath of wind, only the low, humming pressure of an era turning in its sleep. I reach into an iron sconce and tear loose a torch of roaring, ragged fire. The flame casts jittering amber shadows against the masonry as I plunge down the same discrepant corridor, a passage that bends against geometry, narrowing and widening like an inhaling throat. Past the broken gargoyles. Into the moss-eaten ruins of a seated angel whose stone wings have sheared away to jagged stubs. And onwards, deeper into the vaulted hush, drawn by an old, fevered pull toward the temple of the sacred primrose. Here, in the forgotten transept of empire, stands the...
