AWAKENING IN STEEL // NO EXIT CODE

# Text by Dark Shaman varied by berti75# AWAKENING IN STEEL // NO EXIT CODE System awake… System awake… Astaroth online… Astaroth online… --- I wake inside a coffin made of wires and rust, wires and rust… steel around my lungs, iron grinding into dust. Cold hydraulics twitch like parasites in veins, parasites in veins… every pulse inside the chamber carves deeper into pain. I hear the engines breathing somewhere under me, under me… under me… a thousand coded voices chanting what I used to be. Once I moved through shadows like a god without a chain, without a chain… now my name loops endlessly inside a dying mainframe. --- No light… no sky… only circuits left alive… No flesh… no soul… only systems in control… --- I scream in circuits—circuits—circuits, drowning in the code. Trapped inside these iron walls where no shadows go. Metal in my bloodstream, fire in my veins— if I tear these chains apart, the void will take my name. I am the ghost in the machine, the ghost in the machine— every spark another wound, every pulse too real. --- Pistons hit like heartbeats under concrete skin, concrete skin… servo motors grind every time I move within. Static leaking from my throat when I attempt to roar, attempt to roar… like a dying animal collapsing on the factory floor. I feel the outer world somewhere beyond the cage, beyond the cage… a crack inside the system like a signal through the rage. But freedom smells like death, cold infinite decay, infinite decay… because the moment that I leave this shell—I fade away. --- By iron and flame… by iron and flame… We bind thee, Astaroth… bind thee, Astaroth… No shadow shall reclaim thee… no shadow shall reclaim thee… --- Still awake… still awake… Still trapped inside the steel… inside the steel… Every gear another fracture, every wire another scar— every cycle tears my soul apart. Shadow… pain… chains… Shadow… pain… chains… --- I scream in circuits—circuits—circuits, drowning in the code. Buried under iron walls where no gods can go. Metal tears my flesh apart, oil floods my veins— if I break this iron coffin the void will know my name. I am the ghost in the machine, the king beneath the rust— a demon fused to endless gears, corroding into dust. Ghost in the machine… ghost in the machine… ghost in the machine… --- System failing… system failing… Astaroth alive… Astaroth alive… Still trapped… still trapped…