Alco once watched from the cathedral spine,
A gargoyle carved to guard the runesa"Old sigils etched in bone-cold stone,
Quiet vows beneath twin moons.

He was not born of gentle things.
His wings were weather, claw and slate,
His eyes held centuries of frost
And patient, granite-heavy fate.

The runes he kept were older stilla"Curled letters cut with sacred knives,
Spells that hummed like buried thunder
Through a thousand human lives.

But murder does not ask permission.
One night it crept through candle smoke:
A blade, a whisper, treacherya"And Alcoa ancient vigil broke.

No bells were rung. No justice came.
The sigils dimmed, the night grew wide.
They left him shattered on the stones,
A guardian who had died.

Yet death, for things like him, is crooked.
Stone remembers how to hate.
When moonlight strikes the broken runes,
Alco wakes beside the gate.

His wings drag shadows through the streets,
His claws scrape sparks from cobbled ground.
He hunts for ghosts that wear a face
He cannot quite pin down.

A baker locking up at dusk.
A child who lingers in the square.
A drunk who sings off-key to starsa"Alco sees a killer there.

He tells himself they wear a mask.
He tells himself the murderer hides.
But rage is fog in marble lungs,
And grief is iron in his eyes.

So innocence becomes a blur.
A heartbeat sounds like guilty breath.
And every stranger passing by
Feels the wing-shadow of death.

Sometimes, though, when dawn grows pale
And bells begin their trembling song,
Alco pauses on the steeple edge
And wonders where it all went wrong.

The runes still glow beneath his skin.
They whisper truth he will not hear:
The blade that struck him in the dark
Is long since dusta but rage is near.

And so he guards what is not there,
A vengeance shapeless, cold, and vasta"A murdered gargoyle searching streets
For a killer in the past.

Penned by my hand on the 19th of Artificium, in the year 391 AM.