[Verse 1] You call them spirits as though naming settles what they are. You draw a line around the living, then insist they stand apart. You meet a mind you do not fathom, judge it by the shape it takes; teach it terror with your terror, then condemn the fear you wake. [Pre-Chorus] Come in anger, anger answers. Come with chains, expect a fight. You call everything that wounds you proof that you were always right. [Chorus] Ask not what it is, but who— what it wants and what it chooses. Give it room to answer you; do not name it by your uses. Every meeting leaves a trace. Every choice may change direction. Let becoming be its own, not a mirror of expectation. [Verse 2] I knew a spirit born of Wisdom, drawn to questions freely asked. It sought knowledge, offered counsel, never conquest as its task. Mages summoned it for battle, bound its purpose to their need. Then called Pride the proof of danger, never named their own misdeed. [Pre-Chorus] Force a nature to betray itself, then recoil from what appears. Call the consequence a warning, and absolve the hands that steered. [Chorus] Ask not what it is, but who— what it wants and what it chooses. Give it room to answer you; do not name it by your uses. Every meeting leaves a trace. Every choice may change direction. Let becoming be its own, not a mirror of expectation. [Verse 3] Cole is different. He crossed freely, drawn by suffering he could feel. Took another's pain within him, gave the dying what could heal. But that death became a wound Compassion carried as his own; anger rooted in the injury, deeper than he could have known. [Pre-Chorus] Varric says the wound has changed him, living always leaves a trace. But a scar is not made sacred just because it stays in place. [Verse 4] He would have Cole carry anger, learn to hold what humans bear. I would have him loose its purpose, leave no hook remaining there. Neither path denies his choosing. Neither asks that he stand still. But I will not call a wound a virtue simply because it shaped his will. [Chorus] Ask not what he is, but who— what he wants and what he chooses. Give him room to answer you; do not name him by your uses. Every meeting leaves a trace. Every choice may change direction. Let becoming be his own, not a mirror of expectation. [Bridge] Change is neither wound nor wisdom merely for the shape it makes. Growth may carry something forward; healing may release its weight. There are things we learn by living. There are hurts we need not keep. Tell me which becomes the person, which lies buried underneath. [Instrumental] [Verse 5] I have watched a purpose twisted till its bearer wore the blame. Watched the frightened call it nature once they taught it fear and rage. Cole deserves a better answer than the ones that brought him here. Not a shape imposed by kindness. Not a self prescribed by fear. [Final Chorus] Ask not what he is, but who— what he wants and what he chooses. Give him room to answer you; do not name him by your uses. Every meeting leaves a trace. Every choice may change direction. What he chooses to become must belong to him alone. [Outro] There are things we learn by living. There are hurts we need not keep. The difference matters.
