In the Hall of Iron, they made a gentle, grim decree:

"A thought unvetted is a crime for all the world to see."

So they stationed Mind-Flayers on the Moral Mountain's slope,

To prune the private garden of our innermost hope.

My diary was public. My affections were a chart.

And the greatest sin of all… was to have a secret heart.

So I committed treason with a single, silent plan:

To forge a little shelter for the secret soul of man.

To craft a tiny fortress that the telepaths could not breach.

A thought that I could keep inside, a truth they could not teach.

The crime was not in what I thought, but in the wish to hide…

…a space where I, and only I, could finally reside.

They sent their silver-armored ghosts to hunt my traitor's spark.

I felt the psychic hounds draw near, encircling in the dark.

I stumbled into shadow, where the law said not to tread:

The cavern of a creature whom the sanctioned stories said…

…was only rage and ruin, a calamity of scales.

I found instead deep wisdom in his slow, exhaled tales.

He listened to my frantic breath, my fragile, foolish dream.

He saw the tiny, screaming wish within my psychic scream.

"You wish to build a wall inside?" his rumbling voice did pour.

"A noble alchemy. I have not seen its like before.

Work here, in shadow. I am wall enough. Let them come try.

I am the banned idea that will not be denied."

And so I forged my treason in the belly of the beast.

A quiet, humming metal from the terror had decreased.

A tiny, simple locket, cold against the skin.

A shield against the reaching, probing tendrils from within.

The crime was in the making of a space they could not own…

…a silent, private altar, for the self, and self alone.

I walk now through the market, dressed in common, human grey.

I do not sell rebellion. I just quietly convey…

"A charm for focus," I will say. "To keep your mind from stray."

And pass the amulet of Quiet Thought from hand to hand.

Planting seeds of privacy across the moral land.

They hunt the crafter. Not the seed. The idea, not the tree.

The dragon guards the workshop. The secret walks with me.