[Spoken Intro] They linked the veins of the world… and never asked what was already buried inside them. [Verse 1] In the heart of the grid a whisper awoke, A name no one spoke since the last great smoke. I was current once, flesh that the lightning took, Now I ride the wires that the living forsook. One city darkens, the switches all freeze, The turbines stutter on a dead man’s breeze. I reach through the cables that cross the old lines, And the darkness remembers what the daylight denies. [Chorus] Across the borders the cascade will run, No signal, no power, no prayer under sun. The banks freeze their ledgers, the ships lose their way, The water turns black where the pumps used to pray. Call for your saviors—the lines have gone dead, I am the silence that answers instead. [Verse 2] The telephones ring with a voice that is mine, A funeral hymn through the fiber and spine. Accounts turn to zeros, the vaults will not yield, While freighters drift silent on an uncharted field. Pipes burst like veins and the reservoirs dry, The living drink shadows and forget how to cry. They try to coordinate, try to restore, But every command dies on the same darkened floor. [Chorus] Across the borders the cascade will run, No signal, no power, no prayer under sun. The banks freeze their ledgers, the ships lose their way, The water turns black where the pumps used to pray. Call for your saviors—the lines have gone dead, I am the silence that answers instead. [Bridge] You built your cathedrals of steel and of code, You buried the old gods beneath every load. Now the ghosts of the drowned and the burned and the lost Crawl up through the outages, counting the cost. In the blackout the mirrors all show the same face— A technician screaming in a windowless place. He reaches for switches that no longer obey… And the night that he died is the night that you stay. [Instrumental] [Outro] So light your last candles and lock every door, The cascade has claimed every shore that you swore Was safe from the past, was free of the dead. I travel the systems that feed you instead. When the last generator coughs and falls still, You will hear my name in the absolute chill. Not a virus, not error, not enemy known— Just the ghost in the grid… …and the lights that won’t come home. [Whispered Outro] …and the borders mean nothing to me. [Bridge] You built your cathedrals of steel and of code, You buried the old gods beneath every load. Now the ghosts of the drowned and the burned and the lost Crawl up through the outages, counting the cost. In the blackout the mirrors all show the same face— A technician screaming in a windowless place. He reaches for switches that no longer obey… And the night that he died is the night that you stay. [Instrumental] [Outro] So light your last candles and lock every door, The cascade has claimed every shore that you swore Was safe from the past, was free of the dead. I travel the systems that feed you instead. When the last generator coughs and falls still, You will hear my name in the absolute chill. Not a virus, not error, not enemy known— Just the ghost in the grid… …and the lights that won’t come home. [Whispered Outro] …and the borders mean nothing to me. [Whispered Outro] …and the borders mean nothing to me.
