[Progressive metal, one evolving movement, no section is new, each one builds from the last] [Intro | clean arpeggiated guitar alone in a steady unhurried meter] [Verse 1 | measured speaking-into-singing delivery, calm and lucid, ABCBCA] I lift the cup in one unhurried motion, proving the soul will outlive the bone, my students circle me, holding their breath, proof that my calm has always been my own, watching the proof delivered before death, I offer them a death built on devotion. [Pre-Chorus | delivery tightens, naming the actual charges against him, ABAB] They named it a sickness, a plague on the young, called my reason a corrosion, a decay, called it impious, a poison on the tongue, and swore that silence was the only way. [Chorus | rhythm guitar thickens the same figure, full chest voice arrives here for the first time, ABAC] No antidote waits in the cup I drink, for what was never truly a disease. They'll canonize the very thing they sink, and martyr the voice they meant to seize. [Verse 2 | same measured delivery returning, drums begin shifting meter under the vocal, ABCBCA] The numbness climbs my legs, a slow unfolding, precisely the way I always knew it would, Crito, you offered me an open gate, proof that my theory holds, at last, for good, but exile only buries a man's debate, I chose the ending Athens stands beholding. [Pre-Chorus | same as before, word for word] They named it a sickness, a plague on the young, called my reason a corrosion, a decay, called it impious, a poison on the tongue, and swore that silence was the only way. [Chorus | same as before, word for word, full chest voice] No antidote waits in the cup I drink, for what was never truly a disease. They'll canonize the very thing they sink, and martyr the voice they meant to seize. [Instrumental | meter keeps shifting as the same guitar figure erodes, bass carries the only steady pulse left, no new riff introduced] [Verse 3 | delivery thins on purpose, breath control genuinely failing, still clear enough to be understood, ABCBCA] The cold has reached my chest, climbing like a tide, confirming every word I spoke before, Crito, the rooster is owed to the healer, the lightest debt of everything I bore, the smallest debt, and somehow the clearer, I leave as proof of all I testified. [Final Pre-Chorus | delivery at its lowest and weariest point in the song here, same rhyme sounds, new wording] They thought one cup could silence all the young, could bury my reason in the same decay, but a lesson lives longer than a tongue, and silence was never the only way. [Final Chorus | full chest voice returns one last time, one word changes from every prior chorus] No antidote was in the cup I drank, for what was never truly a disease. They'll canonize the very thing they thought they sank, and ordain the voice they meant to seize. [Outro | the intro's clean guitar figure returns stripped to almost nothing, decays into silence, no spoken line]
