Bites

[Instrumental Opening — near total silence; a single sustained guitar feedback tone, barely audible, held for several seconds before the voice enters] [Section 1 | whispered, tense — vocal close-mic'd, controlled but tight; no instrumentation yet beyond the sustained drone] They taught me fear has manners: it walks in without hello, sits down, and watches me eat. I listen with a notebook in my hand, like taking the pulse of an animal that plays asleep… to strike again. [Instrumental shift — a second guitar layer enters, dissonant tremolo, very quiet; still no drums] [Section 2 | the pulse rises — delivery gains urgency but stays controlled, cadence tightening] I don't wear armor; I wear judgment. And a small voice —mine— learning how to sound bigger without ever stopping trembling inside. And if there's silence… let it be mine, not the lambs', not the hallway's cold. I shut doors with my teeth clenched tight, I keep out what devours, what learned to hold. If truth arrives late… it still bites. And if I shake… let it not show, let it not write. [Instrumental build — sparse percussion enters here for the first time, distant and irregular, like footsteps rather than a beat; guitar drone thickens] [Section 3 | descriptive, colder — delivery pulls back slightly, more observational, describing the environment rather than the internal state] The corridors smell like metal and questions, fluorescent light with hunger for faces. Stares weigh like slabs against my skin: approved / doubtful / alone… in other voices' places. [Reversed guitar swell — marks the arrival of the other presence] [Section 4 | the encounter — vocal drops slightly, careful, measured; each word placed deliberately, like defusing something] And then he appears, not like a monster: like a mirror that knows how to speak. He offers polished sentences… and I, who've seen knives smiling at the world, measure every syllable like stepping on thin ice… without looking back. [Instrumental — dissonance intensifies, guitar and drone almost merging into one texture; percussion becomes slightly more insistent but still restrained] [Section 5 | the confession darkens — delivery tightens further, images arriving faster, almost intrusive] There's a name I won't say, a face hiding behind other faces. An absence leaving crumbs of blood a light on my forehead, a map in my throat, a "no" nailed deep into my stare… and I'm still there. [Instrumental peak — this is the fullest the arrangement gets; still not a wall of sound like the rest of the catalog, just maximum density of the accumulated layers] [Section 6 | resolve — vocal steadies, gains quiet defiance without ever raising in volume] Don't call me fragile… I'm glass that learned not to break, I'm thread that stitches its own wound… with stubborn, crooked strength. The clean rage of never being prey again, the hardheaded faith that truth, even late… [Outro — instrumentation begins thinning immediately, layer by layer, mirroring how it built; vocal fades in volume and certainty with each repetition, the last word barely spoken at all] still bites… still bites… …still. [Instrumental close — the sustained feedback tone from the opening returns alone, then cuts to silence without resolving]