[Verse 1] I woke and reached without thinking for what had always answered me. Found a silence stretched between us where no silence ought to be. Earth beneath me, sky above me, every shape where it belonged— yet the world I knew was missing from the world that carried on. I remembered one last working, will against a greater will: close the door and hold the danger, bind what could not be left free. I had known the cost of failure. I had spent all I could spend. But this was not the world I left. This was not what I had meant. [Chorus] This was not what I had meant. Not this silence. Not this distance. Not a world cut from the dream till the wound became existence. I can trace it. I can feel it. Every answer leads me back to the moment something widened far beyond the path I planned. This was not what I had meant. But this was mine. [Verse 2] I went looking for the old roads. Some had vanished into stone. Some still led where I remembered to a place no longer known. Magic lingered there in fragments, notes without the harmony; works begun to last for ages ended where they should have breathed. Then an elven voice behind me. Then another. For one moment— something lived. But their faces carried seasons far too quickly to forgive. Years devoured them. Generations passed where none should have been lost. Every life became a measure of the reach of what I'd wrought. [Chorus] This was not what I had meant. Not these brief and hurried lifetimes, not the People counting decades where we once had counted time. I can trace it. I can feel it. Every answer leads the same: I had risen up to free them. I had changed what freedom meant. This was not what I had meant. But this was mine. [Verse 3] Still they kept the ancient language, broken, altered, handed down; names of gods and names of places, Arlathan without its crown. They had guarded scraps through ages. For one moment I could see something reaching through the ruin, something that remembered me. Then they praised the ones who bound them. Then they cursed the rebel's name. On their skin, the old allegiance lived, transformed and worn with pride. So I gave them truth unguarded: what their gods had done and why. I told them I was Fen'Hah-rel. They believed me. Then they struck. [intense instrumental break] [Verse 4] And afterward, the silence felt more absolute than before. Not one voice remained that knew me. Not one memory was whole. I had crossed an age to find them, found the blood but lost the thread; all the ones who might have blamed me, all the ones I might have answered— gone. There was no one left to tell me what I already knew was true: every absence had my fingerprints. Every loss led back to me. I had freed them from their masters. I had sworn to break their chains. Then I broke the world beneath them and left no one but myself to blame. [Chorus] This was not what I had meant. Not this silence. Not this distance. Not the People born inside a world diminished by my choices. I can trace it. I can feel it. Every answer leads me back. There is pattern in the damage. There is structure in the crack. This was not what I had meant. But this was mine. [Bridge] Mine in every shortened lifetime. Mine in every silent place. Mine in every broken memory time could neither keep nor save. I can rage against the ages. I can curse what they became. But the ages did not make this. I did. [brief suspension] And I know how magic answers. I know how a working holds. Every boundary has a tension. Every joining can unfold. There is pattern in the damage. There is structure in the scar. I know the hand that made it. I know where to start. [Final Chorus] This was not what I had meant. But this was mine. I had meant to build a prison. I had broken more besides. No one living can remember what was severed from their lives. But I remember. I am awake. And I will put it right.
