///*****/// [Intro] The first bell shivers over a subterranean throne room filled with clocks and furnaces, And every window hides a listening face. I taste the coming storm in copper air, I hear tomorrow dragging iron chains. [Verse 1] A stranger sells the safety found in silence, A soldier calls obedience a peace. Below the streets a buried engine hammers, Commanding every borrowed fear to cease. I touch the mark that brought me to this hour, I count the cost and do not turn away. The night may own the towers and the banners, It does not own the choice I make today. [Pre-Chorus] Hear the low strings start their thunder, See the watchfires answer red. We are more than fear and hunger, We are all the words unsaid. [Chorus] Time will not kneel to a crown! Let the hammering heavens hear our cry. Time will not kneel to a crown! We were born to stand, not wait to die. Through the smoke, through the wound, through the night that calls us liars, We will carry living iron, we will carry living fires. Time will not kneel to a crown! Raise the truth until it cuts across the sky. [Verse 2] They promised peace, but sent us the ruler’s own future self demanding ever more lives. They dressed the oldest hunger up as law. I watched the faithful trade away their names, Then in the ruin I uncovered an iron hourglass leaking sparks instead of sand; No jeweled relic, only proof made bright. It held the warmth of everyone who fell, And showed my empty hands what they must fight. [Chorus] Time will not kneel to a crown! We were born to stand, not wait to die. Through the smoke and through the wound, carry the living fire. Time will not kneel to a crown! Raise the truth across the sky. [Bridge] If I return alone, remember this: we will break the throne and return death to its natural law. No monument can breathe for those it buries, No sacred word can make a falsehood clean. The future is not granted by the mighty; It starts wherever ordinary hearts convene. [Guitar Solo - a precision solo built on repeating clocklike motifs that gradually break into wild bends as the mechanism fails] [Rhythm guitars hold the central motif while bass and drums widen the battlefield.] [Verse 3] This is the tale of a ruler trying to conquer age through sacrifice and machinery. The weak became a wall around each other, The lost became a road across the rain. We learned that hope is neither soft nor silent, It bites the hand that feeds the world despair. It lifts the fallen standard from the gutter, And makes a kingdom out of those who care. [Final Chorus] Time will not kneel to a crown! Let the last horizon answer to our cry. Time will not kneel to a crown! We have learned the dark can bleed and empires die. Through the smoke, through the wound, through the years that tried to break us, We are neither owned nor ended; every scar will remake us. Time will not kneel to a crown! Raise the truth until it cuts across the sky.
