[Intro — mellotron prominent and ominous, heavy fuzzy stoner groove, surf guitar reverb knifing through, B Phrygian, driving 112 BPM] [complex percussion urgent and hypnotic, the dark drawing close] [Verse I — clear male vocal, narrative folk over the heavy groove, foreknowledge and dread] [B Phrygian, mellotron bed, stoner groove driving] I know how she dies. I know the day, I know the hour. I know which door it waits behind. I know the look on his face. And the old me would have used that — steered us, and spared us, and gone cold to keep us alive. But fate is a current — push it here, it floods there. I learned that the hard way, a hundred lives down. You don't get to save them. The story is iron. So I stopped trying to win, and I started to stay. [Pre-Chorus — groove tightening, mellotron swelling, drums driving harder] 'Cause if I can't change the ending I can change how we get there — I can hold every hour, I can mean what I say. I can walk every step with my eyes wide and grateful, the way I was too frightened, too driven, to walk it that day. [Chorus — full band heavy and wide, stoner groove driving, mellotron soaring] [B Phrygian] So I'll walk it again — but awake this time, open, every face that I buried handed back for a while. And I won't climb the spire just to fold myself homeward — let it end when it ends. Let me feel every mile. Let the morning come forward. Let it stay where it lands. I will not save them twice. I will stay where I stand. [Bridge — B Phrygian throughout; arrangement drops to a sparse, mellotron-forward hush, drums falling away, the groove dissolving to almost nothing — contemplative through dynamics, not through any mode change] And we lost them again. Of course we did. The dark is patient. I held her as she went — and this time I was there. Not planning. Not grieving the future. Just there, with my hand in her hair. [barely above a whisper, mellotron alone underneath, still E Phrygian] And she smiled at me strange, like she almost remembered. Said, "Have we done this before?" And I told her the truth. I said, "Yes. More than the stars. And I'd do it forever — but I'm done doing it alone." And the spire came into view. [Final Verse / Climax — B Phrygian; the groove and the full band crash back in heavy, hard rock peak, building to the breaking point, fragmented and breathless] [mellotron roaring, stoner riff pounding, surf reverb] At the top, the crystal was waiting, still warm with the power to crack the world open and throw it all back to the start. And the old me reached for it — God, the pull of it, the chance to redo, to rewrite, to never let any of them part. But I looked at the road we had walked. The real one. The one we can't keep. And I opened my hand. And I let the thing fall. Time gathered — held — leaned toward the old fold, the old loop, the old lie — and then, for the first time in all of my lifetimes, it didn't go back. It went on. [Final Chorus — peak, most powerful folk delivery, full heavy band, mellotron soaring, stoner groove triumphant] And the sky stayed wide open — no stitch and no reset — and the light coming through it was ours, and was real. No mercy. No rewind. No second first morning. Just the day, coming forward, and staying where it fell, and the crossroads behind us, and the rest of the way. I didn't save them. I couldn't. That was never the asking. I just finally walked it the way you're meant to — awake, and in love, and unbearably here. [Outro — B Phrygian, the heavy groove resolving forward, mellotron lush and opening out like a real dawn, surf guitar reverb trailing into the distance] The dust on the road is the same. But the road goes forward now. And I am older. And I am not alone.
