E R A M U S  D I I 

We raised cities like cathedrals to our vanity, etched our triumphs into stone so that time might not forget us.

We whispered to the stars, certain they would answer. But flesh we remained – bound by pain, by illness, by the slow erosion of hope. No empire, however mighty, could escape the trembling of its own foundation.

Rome burned – and so too shall every throne that forgets the fragility of the hand that built it.

Our monuments crumble not from without, but from within – from pride unchecked, from truths we refuse to bear. Even the most resplendent voice fades, carried off by the wind like dust from broken marble. And yet – in the stillness after the fall, when silence teaches what glorynever could – we may plant the first seeds of something lasting. Not eternal, not perfect – but real.

The future belongs not to those who seek to rise above their nature, but to those who dare to live within it – with courage, and with grace.