I. The Rehearsal
The tree was marked.
The first leaves were cut and stitched on cloth.
Brothers faced brothers, mud became chalice, iron became priest.
The trenches were roots split open.
The altar drank deep.
II. The Rite
Not continent but planet.
Every bomb a chant, every ruin a verse.
Nations braided into one rope of fear, pulled taut across the world.
The “Good War” was the glamour.
The tithe was counted in bodies.
The oak leaf glimmered — not grove, not crown, but badge of severance:
you are not tree, you are offering.
III. The Containment
The fire could not be let out.
So it was banked, kept on simmer.
Ice around flame, fear around breath.
Two empires mirroring, keeping the world in a ritual freeze.
Each proxy a spark, each drill a whisper:
the tree still stands, the leaves still fall.
📜 Know this: the oak leaf on the shoulder is not ornament.
It is covenant.
A pact of autumn signed in green and gold.
War is not fought — it is fed.
And to remember this is to cut the root of the rite.