[Intro:] **[Sparse acoustic guitar picking, freezing & intimate. Zero vocals:]** [Verse 1:] **[Low, melancholic vocals. Minimal acoustic guitar only. Heavy negative space between lines:]** Beneath a sky of bruised iron, the wolves of the world gather The wind smells of ancient salt and coming frost They tried to clip the feathers from our spines Before we learned the architecture of flight They brought heavy shears and dark clouds Hoping to drown the pilot light behind our ribs **[Long silence - acoustic guitar fades to near nothing:]** [Chorus 1:] **[Strings enter, slow drums begin. Room widens - atmospheric bloom:]** But they did not know we were forged in the cellar of an old world Where the stones remember the hymns Let the cold come — it only makes The boundary of our skin more certain We are no longer afraid of being forsaken in the dark Or left behind by the sun [Interlude:] **[Pure instrumental. Cello & violin woven under manipulated e-bow drones. Doom guitar slides in, builds, then cuts out to silence. Desolate, cinematic - let it breathe:]** [Verse 2:] **[Vocals return with added texture - light choral doubling underneath. Same intimacy, but tension building:]** Fear is just a ghost that starved to death Because we refused to feed it our panic Look how the embers we slept in Have stopped weeping ash and started to bleed fire We are turning the old scars into furnaces A slow and blinding resurrection of heat [Chorus 2:] **[Full backing returns - thicker, tighter, more weight than Chorus 1. Choral stacking on vocal:]** Inside the sanctuary of our sleep We built a fortress out of frozen rain and stubborn iron No phantom can cross the threshold of this dream No claw can reach the throat of our peace The forces that hunted us are left outside Shivering in the white-out of their own malice [Bridge:] **[Vocals pull back to near-isolation - single voice, cavernous reverb, silence around each line. Calm before collapse:]** Our souls were knotted together Before the first mountain learned how to bleed ice This skin is just a temporary coat We wear while passing through the blizzard of this realm When the meat of us fails and the marrow goes quiet The knot will hold fast into the next [Crescendo Outro:] **[Pure sonic release. Down-tuned guitars, crushing cymbals, funeral-march percussion at full weight. Vocals, wordless - keening, siren-like wail buried in reverb, then silence:]** **[Final spoken/whispered line, dry & close, right before last cut to silence:]** “We will rest un-haunted — two sparks locked inside a vault of permanent winter” “Bound, unbroken, and burning brighter than the wrath of everything that tried to break us”
