INTRO (Low bass drones. Water sounds. Distant thunder.) Black river without reflection Current made of whispered names Cold fog crawling across the surface Like breath from a sleeping god A lantern swung beside the shore Its light too weak to touch the water And somewhere in the endless dark Wood creaked. VERSE I The banks were crowded shoulder to shoulder Thousands waiting without speech Faces pale as drowned photographs Eyes erased by sleepless reach Coins sewn into frozen eyelids Hands clutching rusted charms Every soul bent toward the river Like iron filings toward a star The water moved against itself Backward tides and spinning depths Every ripple carried voices Speaking in unfinished breaths PRE-CHORUS Then through the mist A shape emerged slow A vessel stitched from bone and smoke CHORUS River Acheron Carry me below Past the ruins of memory Past everything I know River Acheron Black vein of the dead Every wave erases Another living thread VERSE II The ferryman stood wrapped in shadows Eyes like dying furnaces Skin cracked open by the centuries Voice reduced to gravel and hiss He held a pole of splintered iron Marked with ancient flood-born scars And when he spoke the silence shattered Like collapsing cathedral glass “PAYMENT ACCEPTED IN MEMORY.” The passengers climbed without resistance Chains dragging softly through the rain One by one they crossed the threshold And left their names upon the wake INSTRUMENTAL SECTION (Long atmospheric prog passage) [Bass and drums pulse like distant engines beneath water] [Clean guitar melodies drift in and out of dissonant chords] [Whispers layered underneath]: “Forget...” “Release...” “No shore remains...” VERSE III Midway through the crossing The stars dissolved completely The sky became a giant wound Bleeding static silently Shapes moved beneath the surface Too enormous to define Cities drowned in older ages Turning slowly in the tide Then I saw myself reflected Not as man but fractured signal A ghost encoded into currents Pulled toward an endless spiral PRE-CHORUS The ferryman turned his burning gaze As if he’d rowed me here before CHORUS River Acheron Take the weight of breath Wash away the architecture Of everyone I’ve left River Acheron Endless undertow The farther that I travel The less of me I know BRIDGE Storms erupted overhead Lightning forked in violent red The vessel groaned like wounded steel As unseen hands dragged at the keel The dead began to sing as one Low and ancient as the sun A hymn without a final word A language never meant for Earth And there beyond the shattered rain I saw the distant gates again FINAL CHORUS River Acheron Open up the deep Where all forgotten empires Lie beneath the sleep River Acheron No return remains Only darkness flowing onward Through the veins of human pain OUTRO (Oceanic ambience) The sound of the pole striking water Again Again Again A final whispered transmission: “THE CROSSING NEVER ENDS.”
