MERCY 002 – Ninety-Nine Gone | The Mercy

(Verse 1) They counted empty houses by the silence at each door, And found the same pale answer on the streets and kitchen floor. They thought one town had fallen, then the radios proved them wrong, For every distant broken voice was singing the same song. (Verse 2) They called across the counties and the counties did not call, They climbed the highest water tower and saw the cities fall. The smoke rose up from every road where no reply was drawn, And every map grew wider with the ninety-nine gone. (Chorus) Ninety-nine gone, and the world could not explain, Why one breath still lingered while another turned to stain. Ninety-nine gone, and no chosen mark was shown, They lived without an answer in a graveyard not their own. (Verse 3) They found no holy pattern in the ones who had survived, No worth among the living that the dead had been denied. A child beside a stranger and a thief beside a nun, All stood beneath the mercy that had spared no righteous one. (Verse 4) The hospitals were quiet and the schools were pale with dust, The churches held no judgement that the living dared to trust. Each name became a mountain no human throat could mourn, And every survivor carried more dead than could be borne. (Chorus) Ninety-nine gone, and the world could not explain, Why one breath still lingered while another turned to stain. Ninety-nine gone, and no chosen mark was shown, They lived without an answer in a graveyard not their own. (Bridge) They learned the scale by absence, not by banners or command, By every failed transmission crossing every emptied land. No capital had rescued them, no untouched kingdom shone, Only scattered human voices counting ninety-nine gone. (Outro) So still they wrote the numbers where the witness ledgers lay, And spoke the names they carried through the ash of every day. They were not saved by virtue, they were not spared by dawn, They only learned to breathe inside the ninety-nine gone.