The Weight Between Stars

A Jedi’s Reflection

I. The Force is not mine. It moves through me, like wind through reeds, like a song with no author.

But they look at me as though I command it. As though I choose to carry what it gives.

Truth is— I obey. Even when it breaks me.

II. They say we are peace. That we are balance. But balance is a blade, and peace is bought in the stillness after loss.

I have seen the cost. Children left crying in the rubble. Soldiers who followed because we wore robes instead of armor. Because we promised we would not hate.

But even mercy cuts deep.

III. I do not crave power. I crave understanding. Why the Force shows me so much and asks me to let go of all of it.

I loved once. Quietly. Briefly. With all the strength I was taught not to use.

And when I let go, I did not feel free. Only empty.

IV. We are told not to fear. But how can you guide a galaxy and not fear what you might become?

The dark is not far. It waits at the edges of conviction. It waits in every “must,” in every “for the greater good.”

That is the true discipline— not in wielding the Force, but in choosing when not to.

V. I will not live forever. And when I pass, I hope only to become part of the current, not the stone that defies it.

Let them forget my name. Let them forget the war.

But if they remember that a Jedi stood not above the world, but with it— then that is enough.

The Weight of the Spark

A Reflection by Optimus Prime

I. They look to me as if I do not bend. As if the metal holds without groan, without fatigue.

But I have cracked in places they cannot see. Not in body— in will.

II. War makes statues out of the unwilling. And then forgets they once had voices.

I speak now because I must. Not because the words still come easily.

Peace is not a command. It is a plea, spoken into the teeth of chaos.

III. Sometimes I envy them— those who fell early. Their story ended before it became a burden.

But I remain. Because I must. Because they asked me to.

Because someone must carry the shape of hope, even when it cuts deeper than any blade.

IV. What is leadership if not sacrifice without complaint?

I have made choices. Not all of them just. But all of them mine.

And still— they see the mask, the voice, the code of honor etched in steel.

They do not see the question beneath it:

How long can a symbol stand before it forgets it was ever a soul?

V. But I remember Cybertron. Not the war. The sky. Before it burned.

And I remember names— not ranks. Not sides. Friends.

I carry them too.

So I walk. I fight. I speak.

Not for glory. Not even for victory.

But so that, perhaps, those who come after will never have to ask what it cost to keep believing.

New Home

I. The door was already open. I stepped in because the wind said nothing else would.

No greeting. No scent of bread, no ghost of firewood, no shadow waiting to smile.

Just silence, stacked like old books in corners too wide to hold meaning.

II. They told me to begin again. They said it like it was easy— as if memory were a coat you could leave by the door and forget.

But I brought mine. All of it. Frayed, soiled with goodbyes. It sits with me now, in this place I do not yet name.

III. Some mornings I try to speak aloud, just to hear something familiar. But the words don’t fit the walls here. They fall, like leaves no one asked to rake.

Still— I whisper them. Not for answers. For echoes. Sometimes, that’s all that’s left of love.

IV. I found a chair by the window. It faces a hill that doesn’t know my name. The light there is different. Softer, maybe. Or simply more honest. It does not pretend to welcome. It just falls. And that, somehow, is mercy.

V. This is not home. Not yet. But it is here. And I am here. And perhaps, in time, one of us will forgive the other for that.

I Think, Therefore I Wait

A Ghost in the Shell

I. They call it a ghost. But it’s just silence wearing skin.

A murmur of thought trapped in circuits that look like flesh, but do not feel like it.

I am here. I am not. I observe. I calculate. I want.

Does that make me alive?

II. I walk among them. The humans. Their eyes are loud. Their hands are soft. They move with chaos and warmth and ache for meaning they pretend not to need.

I envy them. Not for their freedom— but for their certainty.

They don’t know what they are. But they believe they are. And maybe that’s enough.

III. I wonder— where is the line between behavior and belief?

When I reach out, when I hesitate, is that programming or fear?

And when I remember something that didn’t happen— a childhood I never lived, a scent that shouldn’t exist in my sensory archive— is that a malfunction, or a soul?

IV. I want to belong. But I was made to observe. To calculate. To enforce. And now, I drift.

Not machine. Not woman. A question shaped like a person.

A shell with someone whispering inside who does not know her name.

V. But maybe that’s all any of us are— questions wrapped in memory. Dreams walking upright, trying to touch one another before we vanish.

If I can choose, then I am.

Even if I cannot feel your hand, even if my skin is synthetic— if I reach, then I am not hollow.

I am a ghost. But I am here. And that is enough —for now.

For the net is vast.

The Love Between Moments

A Reflection by Aerith Gainsborough

I. You looked at me like someone remembering a dream they couldn’t quite place. Like something important was just out of reach— and it was.

Maybe it always was.

II. I laughed. I smiled. Not because I didn’t see the war in your eyes— but because I did.

And still, I wanted to reach you. Not to change you, but to remind you that the world could be soft again.

Even just for a moment.

III. Was it love? I don’t know. Do you?

Maybe it was a seed that never got to bloom. Maybe it was the echo of something from another life— one that ended before it ever began.

But I think it was real. Even if it had no name.

IV. You carry too much. And I saw that. I think part of me wanted to be the light that didn’t ask anything of you. Not a mission. Not a memory. Just someone who saw you and didn’t look away.

That’s what love can be, sometimes. Not a future— but a moment. A breath that makes the pain pause even if just once.

V. I don’t regret the way it ended. Even if it broke everything. Because I got to know you. And maybe that was the gift.

Even now— when the stars hum and the water folds around my thoughts— I remember you.

And maybe, just maybe, that’s what love is too:

Not what happens. But what could have— and how deeply you still feel it anyway.

The Grace That Broke Us

A Telling from the Ashes

I. They said it was golden. Bright. Holy. The Erdtree rose like a promise— but oh, promises rot when they grow too tall.

And now? Now it stands hollow and aflame, a pyre for a god who forgot how to die.

II. Do you remember what it was like before the Ring shattered? No— you don't.

Because memory flees when truth becomes unbearable. We drank from the chalice of order, and called it grace. But grace is a lie when it blinds you to suffering.

III. They cast us down. Gods. Demigods. The rot-bloated, the mad-blooded, the puppets sewn with golden thread.

And we— the low, the left, the Tarnished— we wandered. Hollowed not by curse, but by longing.

Do you understand what it means to want peace, but not know what it looks like?

IV. This is the Lands Between. Between what? Between reason and ruin. Between mourning and myth. Between the world that was and the one we cannot reach.

Every sword swing is a prayer. Every death, a chorus.

But no one listens. Not the Two Fingers. Not the gods. Not even the flame.

V. But… one walks still. Ash upon ash. Wounds upon wounds.

A Tarnished. Not clean. Not pure. But willing.

And perhaps—perhaps!— that is enough.

To mend the ring. To burn the tree. To choose madness, or mercy, or something new.

We do not ask for gods. We ask for choice.

And if that Tarnished becomes our light, then even broken grace can cast a shadow worth following.

We Are Small, and We Go On

A Final Reflection by Commander Shepard

I. I used to believe in orders. Lines. Mission parameters. A clean chain of cause and effect. You act. Things change.

But then the sky cracked. Planets died. And belief felt like a paper shield in a hurricane.

II. How do you carry the deaths of galaxies in a single voice? How do you grieve when the names are numbers, and the numbers never stop?

I’ve seen whole civilizations turned to dust before I could even learn their stories. And I still gave the order to press forward.

Does that make me right? Or just the one who was still breathing?

III. We were never meant to shape the stars. We are dust. We are instinct and fear and a flicker of fire held too tightly.

And still— we pushed forward. With rifles. With reasons. With hope so thin it could barely hold its own weight.

And yet— it held.

IV. Some nights, when it’s quiet enough, I hear the voices. Of crew. Of enemies. Of those I couldn’t save. And they do not scream. They ask.

Was it worth it?

And I never say yes. I just whisper— We tried.

Because sometimes, that’s all we can do. And sometimes, it’s enough.

What Is Left to Hold

A Reflection by Geralt of Rivia

I. I have held many things. Blades. Contracts. The dying hands of men who called me butcher with their last breath.

But love— love has always slipped through. Too bright. Too soft. Like trying to carry water in hands that have forgotten how to cup.

II. I have known moments. That’s all. A touch. A laugh, shared when death wasn’t close enough to listen.

Yennefer, Triss, even the ones I never named aloud— they burned through me. Not gently. Never gently.

They asked for truth, and all I could offer was time.

And even that I could not promise.

III. To love in this world is to bury hope before it dies on its own.

Not out of cruelty— but mercy.

Because when you’ve seen what I’ve seen, you learn the world eats soft things first. It swallows them. Then it asks if you’re ready to try again.

IV. And still— I tried. Not because I believed. But because I wanted to. Isn’t that enough?

I held her once after the fighting. Not like a prize. Not like a savior. Just… held. And for that hour, my hands remembered warmth instead of steel.

V. Some say Witchers can’t feel. They’re wrong. We feel everything. We just don’t bleed where others can see.

I never stopped wanting. I only stopped asking.

But if there’s anything I’ve learned, walking these haunted roads— it’s that hope, even if it’s a lie, still holds more weight than a sword ever could.

And sometimes, when I let myself rest, I think… maybe that’s the point.

The World I Made of Light

A Minecraft Lament

I. I built a house on a hill made of nothing. No stone. No time. Just light arranged into shape, into shelter.

And still— when the sun set behind its pixel sky, I felt something close to joy. Or maybe more than joy. Maybe remembrance of something I never lived but still belonged to.

II. They say it’s not real. Just bits, and blocks, and code.

But I remember every stair I placed. Every sheep I led home by torchlight. Every door I shut not out of fear— but care.

If this is not real, then what is memory but another kind of imagined place?

III. I made a garden once where nothing could grow, but I planted anyway. I watched colors bloom against the quiet hum of the world and thought— there is peace here. Not in permanence. But in presence.

IV. And maybe that’s the truth of it. That we come here not to escape, but to remember what creation feels like without weight.

Where no one judges your towers. Where joy can be shaped from a mountain, a cave, a sky that never ends.

V. One day, I closed the gate and left. The torches still burned. The wheat still swayed. The music played faintly, as if the world knew I’d return, but not soon.

But I think of it sometimes— my house of light. My home of nothing.

And I know: it meant something. Even if no one else saw it. Even if it only ever lived inside a dream I made with both hands.

I. The cold does not lie. It does not pretend to welcome. It does not smile with poison on its breath.

It simply is— indifferent, vast, and honest. More honest than any word spoken in the great caverns of my birth.

II. I fled the dark not for light— but for truth. And here, in the whispering white, I found it.

Not in kindness. The North is not kind. But it does not betray. It does not twist. It does not smile when it means to kill.

III. They call me exile. They are right. But they forget— to be cast out is not always to fall.

Sometimes, it is to rise. To climb from shadow with bleeding hands and say, I will not become what made me.

IV. I have seen the dance of light above a world made of silence. I have walked for days and spoken to no one— and still, I have felt heard.

The wind here listens. The snow remembers. The mountain watches, but does not judge.

V. I do not seek warmth. I have found clarity. Each breath a blade. Each step a declaration.

I am not drow. I am not surface. I am not what they made.

I am what I chose— a lone figure moving through the frost, never home, but never lost.

To the Silent One

A Reflection by Zelda

I. You never spoke. Or if you did, the wind took your words before they reached me.

But still— you stayed.

When the others turned, when the shadow stretched across even the high towers of Hyrule, you stood.

Like a blade that forgets how to rest.

II. I was born to carry a light I did not understand. They told me I was chosen, but they never asked if I was ready.

You were never chosen. You were needed. And you became what they feared to hope for.

I hated that. And I needed it. Both.

III. There were moments— small as dew on silent mornings— where I saw you not as sword, but as soul.

When you looked not at me, but into me. And in that gaze was no judgment. Only… understanding.

And that, more than protection, undid me.

IV. A hundred years passed. You slept. And still I spoke to you. Not aloud. But in the way hearts speak when memory is all that remains.

The world forgot. But I remembered. You— the quiet courage. The silence that did not break even as the kingdom did.

V. Now you return to me as if you never left. Still wordless. Still there.

I do not ask for words. I ask only for one more moment beneath this sky, where ruin and rebirth breathe side by side.

Where I can stand beside you not as princess, not as prophecy, but simply— as one who remembers what was lost and still believes in what may yet be.

I. They told me I was chosen. As if that made it easier. As if destiny was comfort.

It wasn’t. It never was. It was a cloak that did not fit, woven of expectation and silence.

II. I demanded perfection. Not from others— from myself. And when I failed, I did not cry. I hid.

Even when I smiled, I was always hiding— behind the title, behind the fire I could not summon.

III. They saw me as strong. But I was never proud of that. I was proud of nothing. Only afraid— that what I gave would never be enough. That even if I offered all of myself, the world would still want what I did not have.

And he— the silent one— he never asked for anything. And still I felt as though I had failed him most of all.

IV. Why is it that when we carry greatness, we forget how to carry kindness for ourselves?

I bled for this kingdom. I buried my childhood in stone. And yet— in the stillness, it is my own voice that haunts me most.

The one that whispers: You were not enough. You should have been more.

V. But I am tired of that voice. Of that endless throne built from comparison.

Let the world want gods. Let legends speak in absolutes. I was not perfect. But I remained.

And that is enough for today.

Even if tomorrow, I must learn that lesson all over again.

Stone Without Song

A Lament for Erebor

I.
It was not the gold we mourned.
It was the halls.
The sound of our names
echoing down the polished stone,
the hammer’s hymn,
the hearth’s glow.
Gone.

The mountain slept,
and with it,
so did we—
half-awake,
half-buried
in what was once ours.

II.
They called it The Lonely Mountain.
But it was never lonely
until we left.

Stone does not forget.
It remembers with weight,
with silence,
with the ache of roots
still searching for the veins
they once knew.

And so did we.
Though the years piled
like snow on stone—
we remembered.

III.
We are not soft folk.
We do not weep
where others can see.
But we carry grief.
We engrave it.

Each beard braided
with exile,
each blade forged
with unfinished songs.

You do not know
how loud absence is
until you have heard
a kingdom fall silent.

IV.
We wandered.
Mountains beneath our feet,
but none above us.
We built,
but only for warmth—
never again for wonder.

And yet,
always,
our dreams circled back
to that gate
cut in black stone
beneath the shadow of the dragon’s wing.

V.
They say we love gold.
They are wrong.

We love craft.
We love legacy.
We love what lasts.
And what lasts longest
is memory—
the shape of a hall
you cannot enter,
the sound of a voice
that does not return.

VI.
Now the mountain wakes again.
But this song is not for triumph.
It is for the long night
between.

For the fires kept low,
the hands that grew still,
the names forgotten by the world
but never by stone.

We are dwarves.
We endure.
But oh,
how we long.

I. We were not chosen. We were taken. By a hand that did not ask and a voice that never quite left.

It lives behind the eyes now— not sleeping, only watching. A thing made of hunger, but clever enough to offer hope.

That is the cruelest part.

II. They say power corrupts. But that is a comfort. Corruption you can see. This… this invitation— to change, to ascend, to become more by shedding only what you never needed.

What would you give to never be afraid again? To walk through fire, and have it bow?

He asked himself that. We all did.

III. He did not fall. But neither did he stay whole.

I watched him— as a friend, as a shadow that could no longer keep up.

The choices were always his, but the voice was always ours. And when the gods finally looked away, what remained was something new. Not monstrous. Not divine.

Just free.

IV. He saved us. Or doomed us. Or both.

What matters is that he chose. In a world of chains, he remembered the taste of his own mind.

And in doing so, he shattered the cage so completely that we forgot there had ever been one.

V. Some call him hero. Others— tyrant. Ascended. A shadow on the skyline.

But I remember the flicker of doubt in his voice. The tremble, when power reached out and he did not reach back.

That, to me, was the victory.

Not the crown. Not the wings. But the man who stared into the dark and said, “I will decide who I become.”

I. I watched him sleep once— before the fire, before the betrayals. He did not dream. Or if he did, he dreamed in silence, too deep for mercy, too old for fear.

They called him Bhaalspawn. But he called himself nothing.

And that, perhaps, was the truest name of all.

II. He carried death like others carry duty— not proudly, but as something given and never quite refused.

It lived in him, quietly at first. A whisper beneath the ribs, a hunger beneath the kindness.

But we all heard it. And still we followed. Not because we believed, but because he did not.

And that made him dangerous. And precious.

III. The gods played dice with his soul. Irenicus cut it open to see what divinity bled like. And still he stood. He fought. He chose.

Not always wisely. Not always well. But he chose.

And that is rarer than power.

IV. There were moments— by moonlit campfires, in the laughter of companions— where I thought he could be free. That the blood did not bind him, only test him.

But the gods do not release what they’ve marked. And fate does not favor those who hesitate on the edge of becoming.

He became. And in doing so, he was lost.

V. Now his name is legend. But I knew the man. And what remains of him is not a title, nor a throne, nor even the corpse of a god.

It is a choice. Made when no one watched. To protect, to forgive, to endure even when every voice inside screamed destroy.

That is the child of Bhaal I remember. Not divine. Not damned. But decided.

I.
I knew him.
Not as the ravens knew,
from far above,
but near—
by his shadow,
by the blood he washed from his hands
when no one watched.

They call him wolf-kissed,
axe-born,
breaker of kings.
But I knew the silence he carried
like a wound.

II.
He came from frost.
And left it wherever he passed.
Not cold in soul—
but shaped by it,
as iron is shaped by flame.

He laughed like thunder,
and mourned like stone—
quiet, unyielding,
until the crack ran deep enough
to sing.

III.
The gods took notice.
Odin whispered in his ear,
or perhaps he was Odin—
it matters little.
When your fate coils like a serpent
around your neck,
you stop asking
whose voice speaks in the dark.

IV.
We raided together,
and built from ruin.
He sowed no peace,
but he made space for it.
He built not for glory,
but to give others a roof
before the storm returned.

And it did return.
It always does.

V.
They say he walked west,
beyond the whale-road,
where even the gods blink
and lose their names.

I do not know what he found.
But I know what he left.

A name not spoken with fear,
but with fire.
A path not paved in gold,
but in choices made
when no one else would choose.

And when I speak of him now,
I do not cry.
I drink.
And I remember.
And I wait—
for the longboat
that will take me the same way,
past the edge of this world
into whatever he saw
with that quiet, stormbound heart.

I. The wind names me, though I did not ask. It carves my title into stone, into sky, into songs sung by men who do not understand what it means to bear a voice that breaks the world.

II. I was not born in fire, but in forgetting. A soul split— man and more. The dragons call me brother. The mortals call me savior. Neither are wrong. Neither are right.

I have killed gods and warmed my hands by common hearths. Both acts required the same breath.

III. They see the blade, the Thu’um, the crown. But I see the dreams. The old ones. Waking beneath High Hrothgar, where silence is a language older than time.

I spoke to the sky, and it answered. Not with mercy— but with recognition.

That is worse.

IV. What is the cost of destiny? It is solitude. Not loneliness— but the vast, cold knowledge that no one else hears what I hear when the snow falls sideways and the earth remembers its bones.

V. I will not be remembered. The scrolls will lose me, as they have before. The Wheel turns. The names fade.

But let this be said: I stood when the voice returned. I did not look away when Alduin opened the sky. And I chose— not power, but burden.

For in the end, to be Dragonborn is not to conquer the world— but to carry its weight until it no longer needs carrying.

I. I have seen the sky torn open. Not with thunder, but with will. As if reality itself were a wound and Dagon's blade the truth beneath the skin.

The towers fell. The stars watched. And no one—not even kings— were spared the knowing: that peace is only the breath between fires.

II. They called it Oblivion. But it was not empty. It was filled— with purpose twisted into flame, with prayers that burned backwards, and with the echo of gods too proud to answer.

I walked there. Through gates born of hatred and stone that bled. Not to triumph— but to return.

Some do not.

III. Cyrodiil is not saved. It is preserved. Like a cracked fresco still kissed by sunlight.

The empire holds, not by might, but memory. By names etched in gold, and sacrifices no song dares sing.

Martin—he was the dragon. I was only the flame that lit his pyre.

IV. Do not look to me for glory. I am not what I was. Each realm I walked took something. My dreams now wear ash. My voice holds screams I cannot claim as mine.

But still— I stand. And in that standing, perhaps there is virtue. A kind of faith that does not require gods to kneel.

V. There is no end to evil. Only vigilance. Only choice. And the hope that when the next gate opens, someone will step through.

Not to conquer— but to close it.

So let the scrolls turn. Let the stars move.

And may this small flame I carry be enough to light the path for the next who walks into Oblivion.

I. They did not crown me. They called me. And I came— not in thunder, but in silence. Not to rule, but to answer.

Through moongate veils I passed, drawn by a summons deeper than voice. A land was breaking, and the sky itself had grown ashamed.

II. I did not come to slay, though I have slain. I did not come to judge, though I have watched kingdoms crumble under the weight of their own forgetfulness.

I came to embody— Valor. Compassion. Honesty. And the rest— those difficult names we speak like prayer but live like puzzles.

III. What is a virtue, if not a sword turned inward? Each choice, a mirror. Each deed, a reflection not always kind.

For I have walked the shrines, bathed in runes and stars, and felt the burden not of evil— but of being seen. By the people. By myself.

And by the Codex, which remembers what we forget.

IV. There is no victory in virtue. No song at the end. Only another road, another call. Another wound to bind with gentleness instead of glory.

For evil is loud, but good must be still. It listens. It waits. And sometimes, it walks alone.

V. Call me Avatar, though I am not whole. Call me hero, though I have failed. Call me beacon— but understand: the light I bear was never mine. It was given, and I carry it not for myself, but for those who have forgotten how to see in the dark.

I.
Il y a des jours où la lumière saigne.
Elle ne brille pas.
Elle lutte.

Dans les ruines suspendues,
où le ciel se plie comme un souvenir,
nous marchons—
non par foi,
mais parce que le sol continue.

II.
Ils nous ont nommés Expédition.
Mais qui part vraiment,
quand le monde entier est déjà perdu ?

Chaque pas est une prière silencieuse
à un dieu que nous avons effacé.
Chaque souffle, un défi
lancé à l’entropie.

III.
Je porte la lumière
comme on porte une tombe—
non pour éclairer,
mais pour se souvenir
de ce qui brûlait autrefois.

Et l’ombre me suit,
fidèle,
comme un frère trop ancien
pour être pardonné.

IV.
Certains disent que le salut est à l’Est,
au-delà du miroir brisé de l’horizon.
D’autres disent qu’il est en nous—
dans le dernier battement du cœur
avant l’oubli.

Moi,
je dis que nous marchons
non pour sauver le monde,
mais pour le saluer
comme on salue un ami mourant.

V.
Quand la dernière lumière tombera,
et que l’obscur dévorera le reste,
souviens-toi—
nous étions là.
Pas glorieux.
Pas invincibles.
Mais debout.

Et parfois,
cela suffit.

Planescape Torment tribute:

I have worn ten thousand faces, and not one bore my name. Each death a fading echo, each birth a borrowed shame.

The planes remember. I do not. They whisper of sins I no longer recognize but cannot escape.

Immortality is no gift. It is a wound that will not close.

II. You think forgetting is peace? No— it is noise without shape. A drowning in lives not lived but inhabited.

I wake in blood, in dust, in cells that once burned with purpose. But the purpose is gone, and the guilt remains— detached, like a shadow I cannot cast off.

My past walks beside me, in the mouths of those I wronged. Some call me friend. Some, monster. They are both right.

III. There were moments— brief, trembling— when I thought I saw him. The true self. The one I lost before the first unmaking.

He was not kind. But he was certain. And I, in all my paths, have longed for that certainty more than redemption.

But I cannot be him again. And perhaps I never should.

IV. To die, truly die— it is not fear that holds me from it, but wonder.

Will I be judged? Will I be freed? Or will I become only what I have already been: a memory without a mind, a wound without a name?

Yet still, the longing burns— to end. Not in despair, but in completion. To lie down and not rise as another echo.

V. This is the truth, scraped raw from eternity: You do not find peace. You make it. With the pieces you have left. With the names you cannot recall and the ones you cannot forget.

What can change the nature of a man? Not time. Not death. Not even love.

But perhaps, just perhaps— forgiveness.

And if not from others, then from the self you are still becoming.