[INTRO] Soul... [VERSE 1] The stage is ready, every seat is filled, Paint on the walls, and the whole room's still, Spotlights hanging like they're waiting to stare, Red velvet curtains splitting the air. A mother whispers, "Is it starting soon?" A child points up at the painted moon, The orchestra waits with their hands on strings, While backstage, the lead can't feel a thing. He's been living through hell for the sake of the show, Nobody backstage ever wanted to know, They told him, "Five minutes, you're almost on," But he couldn't pretend that nothing was wrong. The stagehand grabs the rope. The audience goes quiet. The actor looks toward the curtain— Then everything changes. [PRE-CHORUS] A sudden sound tears through the room, Every smile disappears too soon, The curtains haven't even moved, But something irreversible has happened backstage. [CHORUS] PULL THE CURTAIN, LET THE SHOW BEGIN, BUT NOBODY KNOWS WHAT THEY'RE WALKING IN. MOTHERS ARE SCREAMING, CHILDREN CRY, WHILE SOMETHING LAUGHS FROM THE OTHER SIDE. They called it fiction, they called it a play, But somebody paid for the words on the page, The stage was ready, the audience came, And somebody turned a human life into a game. [VERSE 2] Then the curtains finally start to rise, Revealing figures sitting in the highest skies, Demons in the balcony, dressed up like kings, Watching the chaos like it's nothing but a thing. And next to them, the writers hold the script, Smiling as they watch every page they flipped, One taps the paper and says, "Right on cue," Another starts laughing like they already knew. Every nightmare was written in ink, Every breaking point was closer than you'd think, Every cruel line, every door that closed, Every little thing that brought him this close. "WE WROTE IT." "WE PLANNED IT." "WE WATCHED IT HAPPEN." "AND YOU CALLED IT ENTERTAINMENT." [BREAKDOWN] YOU MADE THE STAGE. YOU WROTE THE LINES. YOU BUILT THE HELL AND CALLED IT DESIGN. YOU FILLED THE SEATS. YOU RAISED THE LIGHTS. YOU KNEW EXACTLY WHAT WOULD HAPPEN TONIGHT. [FINAL CHORUS] PULL THE CURTAIN, LET THE SHOW BEGIN, THERE'S NO PERFORMANCE WHEN THE PAIN GETS IN. MOTHERS ARE SCREAMING, CHILDREN CRY, AND THE WRITERS ARE LAUGHING FROM THE OTHER SIDE. They called it fiction, they called it a play, But the demons knew it was real that day, The audience came expecting pretend, Never knowing the writers had written the end. The curtains are open. The actors are still. The demons are laughing. The room has gone still. And somewhere behind the final page, Someone wrote: "THE SHOW WAS NEVER FICTION."
