Lightning Remembers

Where empires sleep, and the outsiders who wake them.

They say every empire carries its own echo.

Rome called it law. Others called it sleep.

But on the far edge of the Black Sea,

a man taught himself to drink poisons

until his veins forgot fear.

He learned languages the way soldiers learn exits.

He walked with exiles, and they followed.

Rome had legions.

He had rumors.

And rumors, fed correctly,

grow teeth.

They named him Mithridates…

spawn of comets, sworn to knives,

the king who refused assimilation.

While legions advanced, he vanished like a riddle.

When they slept, he struck like a migraine.

He built armies from strangers, fleets from frost,

and a kingdom from the one element

an empire cannot tax…

the unbroken will of an outsider.

Every age has its Rome.

Every age has its lightning.

And somewhere between them

stands the one who refuses to bow,

marked not by birthright,

but by the spark that does not die.

Lightning remembers.

- Joe Garvey