Wreath Made Of What I Did [Wraith]
I am the last ugly echo of a dead house, boots sunk deep in frost on a ridge that forgot every name but mine,
Dawn crawls up over the valley like it is afraid of what it might see here, light dragging across rusted helms and split shields in a crooked line,
The snow holds swords by the throat, blades half-swallowed, hilts jutting up like bad memories that never learned how to lie flat on command,
And on my shoulders, where good people hang pine and ribbon when winter comes, I wear a wreath of bones that clack like teeth any time I move or even pretend to stand.
Once, they said it was fitting.
Last son of the clan, last standard still raised while everyone else lay in red puddles stiffening around their flags,
They circled me with all the spoils they could find, drilled tiny holes in ribs and knuckles, strung them tight on leather strips and warm boasts and drunk war-drum brags,
They set that wreath around my throat in the noise of victory, chanting my name as if it was a blessing and not a future curse waiting patiently at the bottom of their cups and bags,
I smiled for them, for the song, for the legends I thought would rise from the smoke, never once asking what happens when the killing finally drags.
The bones were strangers at first.
Enemies whose faces blur together under dried blood, jaws knocked loose by steel that didn’t care whether anyone was brave,
They clattered when I rode, a white ring around my neck, clean and bright and proud as any fresh-cut laurel some city hero might crave,
Every click said champion, each rattle said chosen, the clink of teeth on teeth sounded like coin in a pouch, the rhythm of applause that followed long after the burning of every mass grave,
I walked with my head high through winter streets, the bones loud behind me, never noticing how the old women crossed themselves when their shadows brushed mine, how every dog behaved like I was something even they didn’t want to save.
Then the voices started.
Not at first clash or last breath, not when I stripped armor or wiped blood from the wreath with a rag that refused to come clean,
They came later, in the quiet after the last battle, when the drums stopped and there was nothing left but the drip of melting snow from spears leaning against a wall that felt suddenly obscene,
I woke one night with the taste of iron in my mouth, hands clawing at my own throat, sure some enemy had risen for one last try,
Instead I found only bone against skin, cold and steady, while a whisper moved through the wreath like wind in a noose, asking in one shared voice, clear as church bells, “Why?”
They asked it again the next night, and the next, and the next, until the word lost shape and turned into a howl that crawled under my ribs and built a home there,
They didn’t accuse me of the wrong cause, the wrong side, that was never their style; they wanted to know why I decided their stories had to end where my story wanted to flare,
Why their winter mornings were traded for my parades, why their children got ghosts and I got songs, why their homes grew cold while my firepit always had meat and a spare chair,
They stormed through my sleep in their broken armor, hands still clutching the weapons I had knocked out of them, eyes burning in skulls I could recognize by touch while awake and by hammering guilt in the nightmare air,
And the wreath, that lovely ring of trophies, never once loosened, only settled deeper, the leather tightening like it was being pulled from somewhere far behind me, by hands that were no longer there.
I tried to outrun them.
Rode south until the wind stopped knowing my clan’s old songs and only smelled of rain and unfamiliar grain,
I traded steel for coin, tavern work, guard duty, anything that did not involve burying more people under my name in a shallow, anonymous chain,
But trouble stalks the man who thinks he can retire from violence with a necklace like mine; blades find him in alleys, bandits test him by the roadside, towns hire him when they want blood spilled in the dark and no stain on their nice, clean main,
Every time I drew steel for what passed as “the right reasons,” the wreath clicked approval, then creaked in protest as one more slender bone slid into place, laced itself among the rest and added a new whisper to the choir of pain.
Villages notice. They always do.
Even when I pull up the hood and keep my back to the wind, there is only so much you can do to hide a circle of teeth around your throat that carves little smiles in the air,
Mothers catch sight of the white points under the cloth and drag their children behind them with that look that says monster first, story later, don’t stare,
Men at the inn pretend not to watch as I drink, eyes fixed on their cups while the wreath taps against my collarbone in a rhythm that sounds too much like bones down a stair,
Someone always whispers an old tale about a war-spirit who wears his dead like jewelry and comes to towns at the end of bad years to collect anyone foolish enough to meet his stare,
I never correct them; I just pay, move on, take my cursed circle out into the snow again while behind me they shut shutters and light candles as if they can barricade fear with wax and prayer.
The holidays hurt the most.
Everybody else hangs wreaths of evergreen and bright red berries on their doors, symbols of life enduring the cold while the world plays dead,
They tie ribbons and bells and little carved stars and they sing under them with mouths that still taste like bread instead of ash and dread,
I pass those doorways and feel the bones on my shoulders grind, my own wreath heavier in the winter air, each skull biting more deeply into the weight of what I’ve shed,
Sometimes I think I can hear laughter buried in there, not mocking, but bittersweet, like the ghosts remember their own feasts and find it hilariously tragic that the man who ended them spends their old festival walking alone with white regret around his head.
Sleep is a dangerous sport now.
Sheets tangle around my legs like bandages on corpses that refuse to stay still, while my heart runs laps inside my chest at a speed the rest of me cannot match,
They come then, the dead, in full force; not polite, not staged, no mist on the moor nonsense, just a ring of faces around my bed, each one with a different grimace, each one ready to snatch,
Their fingers are bones that have not yet made it to the wreath, reaching from shadow to shadow, scratching lines into the floorboards that any carpenter would call impossible to patch,
They mouth their demands in sequence, a list of names I can recite by now better than I can recall any toast or oath, asking for release I cannot grant, tugging at my hands until I jolt awake with nails carved into my own palms, blood on the sheets and the wreath hot around my neck like a lock I never asked to latch.
I tried penance.
Saved caravans from snow-thieves, pulled children from house fires, escorted healers through plague fields where the air itself seemed to hiss,
I killed men who deserved killing, or so I told myself, men whose own cruelty left carcasses in ditches, men who wore pain like perfume and thought fear was something they were owed, not something they should ever have to kiss,
After each act, I would stand alone in some empty chapel or under bare trees and wait for the wreath to show me mercy, to shed just one bone, one tooth, one finger-bone into the dirt as proof that this effort wasn’t pointless like every war list,
Instead it added weight. Not all who died went into it, only the ones who looked me in the eye at the end or laughed into my blade or refused to beg,
The wreath swallowed them with a click I could feel in my spine, and the new voices folded into the old chorus like they had just been waiting for the cue, excited to join and sink their teeth into my leg.
Now the wreath and I have an arrangement: I walk, it sings.
I trudge across frozen ridges and muddy roads, through market towns that hold their breath when I pass and lonely bridges where even the river seems to lean away,
It rattles and hums and mutters, a bone choir at my throat, grinding songs about every face I’ve put into the dirt and each small mercy I failed to pay,
If I stay in one place too long, the whispers grow sharp, accusing, like a jury that has grown bored and would like to move on to sentencing without further delay,
So I keep moving, not toward redemption, not toward some shining absolution on a hill, just forward, one step at a time, while the wreath keeps count of every footprint I leave behind in the clay.
Sometimes I picture how it ends.
Maybe on a winter night when the snow comes down thick enough to bury even my guilt, my legs will finally give out and I’ll fold into the drift like any other tired beast dragged past its limit,
The wreath will slide off my shoulders at last, all that old bone settling on my chest, heads tilted, eye sockets full of starlight, every rib and knuckle free to spin it,
They might roll away into the white, scatter themselves across a world that never asked for my legend in the first place,
Or maybe they’ll sink straight into the ground, roots made of regret tying bone to soil, sprouting some warped evergreen that shows up each winter with white fruit hanging from every branch like a warning and a grace.
Until then, I wake with ash on my tongue and frost in my beard, standing on this same ridge at first light,
Watching dawn spill across the valley full of rust and ghosts, breathing in air that cuts my lungs with a blade only I can feel, sharp and polite,
I touch the wreath, fingers tracing each bone by habit, reciting their names in order like a twisted prayer,
A lone figure with a holiday circle no door would welcome, last of a clan that mistook slaughter for honor, walking through every season like it is late winter and I am the one dark decoration nobody wants but nobody dares tear down,
The wreath of bones does not ask me to forget; it makes sure I remember everything, every cut, every breath, every scream,
Which might be the only honest justice in any of this: the dead get my sleep, my days, my future, and I get to keep walking under their weight while the snow around my boots looks clean.