The Stygian Enclave

In my footsteps and furtive tread
The galleries awoke with sound
Echoed the unspoken words
Dead litanies drip from the walls
Black language laden with venom
Syllables best left unuttered
They are woven from the marrow of night
Under the monstrous pall of unguessable ages

Weathered and beaten
From aeons long gone
Centuries beyond centuries
They etched into the stone

Voice from the earth
Echo of the depths
In eternal discourse, remains
To abyss, they call

Choked with dust and shadow
Embrasures seethe unseen
Suddenly revealed, visageless effigies
Seemed to shrink from the light

Mouths frozen open, eyes staring blind
Flickering bleeds into the shapes
Wrack the immovable with motion
Thousand arms reach from the darkness
Light-drawn from suggestion
Caught between movement
Resolving after I pass

The light grows dim, the hours late
But the passages before me stretch
I move in naught but intent, reduced to dust
A shadow cast by no light