THE LAW OF THE MISTS
THE LAW OF THE MISTS
(for Barovia, where endings rule)
O Barovia, where the mountains kneel in dread,
And mist hath sworn allegiance to the dead;
Where stone remembers sins no priest may clear,
And night stands crowned the monarch of the year.
Above thee towers Ravenloft’s dark throne,
Where grief sits wed to power made of bone;
No torch defies its gaze, no prayer outflies
The patient curse that watches through the skies.
Count not thy tyrant merely flesh or name—
He is the Law that wear’st a man for frame;
For Death here strikes not wild nor swift nor kind,
But learns the pulse and tutors it to bind.
He smites not once, as merciful Law should,
But drains the hours till hope forgets it could;
Thus souls in Barovia do not simply die—
They linger, taught how endlessly to sigh.
O cruel inversion!—for the dead below
Outlive the living by their constant woe;
The grave grants rest the hearth-fire is denied,
And breath itself is but a wound applied.
The mists are faithful; mark how well they keep
Their charge: none flee, though all desire sleep.
They part for none, they yield to no command—
Save his whose will hath signed the mortal land.
Here Fear is fed, and Law is bent to bite;
The end is stolen, stretched to endless night.
What elsewhere kills but once, here kills by art,
By patience hon’d to flay the living heart.
O stranger, pause—if thou would’st judge this place:
Not fang nor throne defines its fell disgrace;
But this: that Death, made servant unto dread,
Is robb’d of mercy—and the Law lies dead.
For know this truth, writ deeper than the stone:
Where ending’s barr’d, no soul may call itself its own.
The worst of hells is not that men must die—
But that they live, and never may comply.
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