[Cold Ambient Intro] Beneath the pale and pitiless moon The forest holds its breath in blackened silk Roots twist like veins of a dying god And something ancient wakes… [Verse 1] From the crown of the withered oak it descends Black legs like spears of polished night Red crest blazing on a swollen throne of chitin Eyes like dying stars that never learned to close It reaches for the flame that dares to live A solitary spark against the endless web Torchlight trembles, flesh recoils too late Eightfold judgment falls in silence and in silk [Chorus] We are the prey that walks on borrowed ground Caught between the moon and the hungry dark The web remembers every scream it drank Throned in the web of the dead [Verse 2] Deeper still, where stone weeps and light is murdered A crimson god of many mouths unfolds Tentacles of wet muscle and broken bone A choir of eyes that never learned to sleep Three bodies writhe in their living shrouds Faces frozen in the moment they understood Silk thick as regret, tight as the grave The red one feeds on terror before it feeds on me [Guitar Solo – Freezing Lead] [Bridge] And at the heart of every strand… At the root of every scream… He waits. Bald as the moon that watches without pity Ears like blades of ancient winter Clawed hands resting on a throne of strangling roots Yellow robes the color of old betrayal and jaundice He does not speak. He simply *is*. The first spider and the last shadow. The Yellow King of the hollow world. [Climax] Rise, O throned one, rise through the lattice of legs Let the black and the crimson kneel before your stillness We who crawled into your domain uninvited Now hang as offerings in your endless gallery Your silence is louder than any roar Your empty sockets see farther than any living eye The forest and the cave are only rooms in your house And we are the dust that gathers on the floor [Final Chorus] We are the prey that walks on borrowed ground Caught between the moon and the hungry dark The web remembers every scream it drank Throned in the web of the dead Throned in the web of the dead Throned… in the web… of the dead [Outro] (Guitars dissolve into reverb… distant skittering… one final slow drip of water… then nothing but cold wind) The strands still move when no one is left to see them. The Yellow King remains.
