[Intro: sparse clean guitar] Under arches drained of color, where the winter enters stone, I have watched the scales in silence, I have weighed what none would own. Every wound became a witness. Every vow became a stain. Nothing spoken disappears. Nothing broken leaves unchanged. [Full band enters] Bring the measure. Bring the names. Bring the ashes without flame. I will hear them. I will know them. I will never look away. [Verse I] You mistook my silence for mercy, mistook patience for retreat. Yet I followed every fracture to the truth beneath your feet. No angel whispered judgment. No god commanded me. I saw the chain of consequence and named what had to be. [Blast beat] No hatred. No pleasure. No hunger for your fall. Only weight against the balance. Only truth beneath it all. [Refrain] PALE VERDICT written where the last light dies. PALE VERDICT nothing hidden from these eyes. I do not curse you. I do not burn. I simply stand where all roads return. [Extended melodic guitar passage] [Verse II] White gold trembles on the pillars. Violet shadows cross the floor. Every plea has been remembered. Every mercy entered score. Do not call me cold for seeing what your hands refused to see. Compassion without consequence is another form of cruelty. [Fast tremolo section] Law without understanding is violence dressed in white. Mercy without boundary abandons wrong and right. So I carry both together like two edges of a blade— to protect what still may live from the choices that were made. [Refrain] PALE VERDICT carved beneath the dying moon. PALE VERDICT every debt arrives too soon. I do not hate you. Remember this. Judgment is not rage. It is the final shape of consequence. [Clean guitar interlude] For one breath the cathedral is still. No wings. No choir. No command. Only a woman before the balance, and a truth she wishes had been different. [Build] But wishing changes nothing. [Final blast beat / twin-guitar climax] RISE— white fire behind me. RISE— the lines of law ignite. A single pair of radiant forms cuts open the night. The scales descend. The circle closes. Every hidden fracture shines. Not vengeance. Not salvation. Only the end of borrowed time. [Final refrain] PALE VERDICT let the final measure fall. PALE VERDICT I have listened to it all. No hatred in the sentence. No triumph in my breath. Only the quiet certainty— that some doors must close to guard what remains. [Outro: harmonized guitars, gradually slowing] The light remains. The balance rests. And I— remember everything.
