**The Ledger of Watchers** I am the scribe, and I keep the count, Of every name and its full amount. My people are few, and the world has grown wide, And things come down that we cannot guide. I write: *Shemihazah*, the one who binds, The oath that locks all the future's lines. I write: *Azazel*, who bends the ore, Till one man's reach is a hundred more. *Baraqel* hurls what the lightning knows, *Kokhabel* counts where the star-path goes. *Tamiel* comes when the work is done, And eats the memory, one by one. *Chorus:* So I write it down in the old, old tongue, Of a world that ended before I was young. They'll read it as prayer, they'll read it as lore, But I am the one who is keeping the score. Two hundred descended, the number was small, But small was enough to unsettle us all. They taught us the edge and they taught us the flame, And nothing was ever again the same. Then came the giants, and I know their size: Not flesh, but the hunger behind their eyes. A harvest that vanished, a granary bare, An army that eats what the land can spare. I see the wheels, and the eyes on the rim, The river of fire, the council grim. Something is watching, and counting, and wise, And I am the scribe who has learned to disguise. *Chorus:* So I write it down in the old, old tongue, Of a world that ended before I was young. They'll read it as prayer, they'll read it as lore, But I am the one who is keeping the score. The soldiers pass, and they do not see That the angels I name are their own company. My ink is a shield and my roster a wall, A tribe's quiet answer to the weight of it all. So seal up the jars, let the clay keep them dry, For someone will read it by and by. Not myth for the pious, not rockets in flight, But a map of the forces that walk through the night. And if you should hear it, the thunder, the chain, The Watchers are walking the earth once again.
