[Verse 1] I was the salt before the wound. I was the deep before the map. Before the sky learned my name, I held the dark in my lap. I am Tiamat. Mother of the first ash, mother of the first foam. I made a house of brine and bone, and called the abyss my home. I kept the old births close to me. I kept their crowns in my black tide. Then I breathed a new thing forth— Usumgallu at my side. [Pre-Chorus] Listen. He came up from my mouth. One head for the hunt. One hunger for the south. Not kind. Not tame. A storm with a spine. My dragon-child, my ninth dread sign. [Chorus] Usumgallu, rise Usumgallu, rise My salt-born son Usumgallu, rise Usumgallu, rise The deep takes form [Verse 2] I named him for the ruin he would bear. I named him for the way he bends air. A serpent-body, sure as a vow, with a lion’s jaw where the moon goes down. His scales were dark with drowned moonlight. His eyes were sparks in a cave of flood. When he opened his throat to answer me, the sea itself remembered blood. He was not spouse-bound. He was not made for a cradle. No wife was set beside his flame, no soft law placed on his table. I kept him outside the garden of dust. I kept him where the salt winds bite. He was made to circle the border between my rage and the night. [Pre-Chorus] Hear me. He learned my oldest tongue: breakers, teeth, thunder, the song of being undone. He watched. He waited. He knew my will. My war-made child, my silent chill. [Chorus] Usumgallu, rise Usumgallu, rise My salt-born son Usumgallu, rise Usumgallu, rise The deep takes form [Bridge] Before the names of kings, before their stone thrones, I gave him the eastward shore, the reef of broken bones. Before the false fathers spoke, before their banners flew, he stood with me in the flood-dark and knew what the deep can do. No children clung to his throat. No nursery warmed his fire. Only my breath on his scales, only my endless empire. [Final Chorus] Usumgallu, rise Usumgallu, rise My salt-born son Usumgallu, rise Usumgallu, rise The deep takes form Usumgallu, rise Usumgallu, rise My first fierce law Usumgallu, rise Usumgallu, rise I made you roar
