[Voice: Jane (interviewed, first-person narration)] [Scene setting] San Francisco is in blackout. News breaks: Emma and her daughter Geneviève have been kidnapped. International media link it to a secret procession — a modern reenactment of Eleusis, financed by the world’s elite. Jane, historian and Emma’s confidante, is brought into the spotlight. [Verse 1 — The Interview Begins] Camera lights, a pale studio, Questions sharp as a rusted nail. “They say the rites have risen again — Eleusis reborn, in the hands of men. Once it was hidden, the Mysteries’ flame, A secret path with no public name. But now the wealthy stage the show, And two lives vanished in its shadow.” [Chorus — Jane’s First Answer] The Procession of the Taken, It walks beneath our eyes. What was sacred is mistaken, Turned spectacle, turned disguise. The Garden keeps its silence, But the world demands a sign. Emma, Geneviève — their absence Cuts through every line. [Verse 2 — Explaining the revenants and the erased] “They call us revenants — those who returned, Marked by silence, by lessons unlearned. And the erased — the ones you don’t see, Forgotten in files, but not in memory. This began as an experiment, dreams made real, A seed in the mind that taught us to feel. But some who returned were never the same — Haunted by shadows, and stripped of their names.” [Verse 3 — The Journalist’s Question] A voice across the table pressed: “Who could have done this? Who confessed? Witnesses claim a van in the night, Two figures dragged from the failing light. Do you believe the ones who reenact, The priests of money, the cult intact? Were they taken for a role, for a stage, for a cost, Or by someone who needed the world to be lost?” [Bridge — Jane’s Silence / Inner Voice] I opened my mouth — no words would stay. The truth was fire, but the ash in the way. What name could I speak without sealing their fate? What shadow could I call, before it was too late? And in that silence, I saw them near, Emma’s resolve, Geneviève’s fear. Their voices carried — though not to the room, Through memory’s door, through the Garden’s bloom. [Chorus — Rising] The Procession of the Taken, It walks beneath our eyes. What was sacred is mistaken, Turned spectacle, turned disguise. The Garden keeps its silence, But the world demands a sign. Emma, Geneviève — their absence Cuts through every line. [Final Verse — Reflection] History is not past, it burns in the now. Eleusis returns — but we’ve broken the vow. And if ghosts seek thrones, in the ruins of night, They’ll raise their procession On the stolen light. [Outro — Whispered, Jane alone after the broadcast] Five chosen, one erased. And now two more — stolen, displaced. The Garden remembers. But will we?
