[Intro — the battle in the final minute] They come through the gate All of them And the five hold For longer than five should hold anything And then they don’t
[Verse 1 — the companions fall, one by one] The formal one goes first She does not go quietly She goes with both hands on something and her eyes still open
The raven goes second She says something at the end No one will ever know what because no one left is listening
The wolf goes third No sound No word Just stops
And the priest
The priest is last
He does not close his eyes
He was already looking at her when the light went out the way he always was
[Pre-Chorus] She watches each of them She cannot stop any of them She is already bleeding from something she will not name
And then she looks for Olan
[Chorus] When the cradle falls She does not let him fall with it When the cradle falls She finds the last thread of the light and she pulls
Go she says Go where I cannot follow Go where this cannot reach you
When the cradle falls She sends him somewhere else When the cradle falls He is the only thing she saves
[Verse 2 — Leara’s wound, the corruption begins] And then Leara is there Right there Close enough to breathe the same air Close enough that magenta is not a color anymore it is just the distance between two women who should never have been on opposite sides of anything
And the blow lands
And something changes
Not in the wound In the light
The light that has always been hers clean and violet and certain turns
Just turns
Like water going wrong
And she can feel it leaving her wrong-shaped into the world into the air into everything that breathes
[Pre-Chorus 2] This is how it begins This is where the Corrupted are born Not from malice Not from choice From a wound in something that was never meant to break
[Chorus] When the cradle falls The light inside it does not die clean When the cradle falls It leaves something behind something unfinished something wrong
When the cradle falls She does not know what she has started When the cradle falls She only knows one thing left to do
[Bridge — the last breath, aimed at Leara] She gathers what is left
It is not much
It is almost nothing
But she shapes it into one last thing one last bright impossible thing and she aims it
At Leara
At the red
At the one who started all of this
And for one moment it is going to work it is going to land it is going to be enough
And then
Adina
[The moment — Adina steps forward] She did not have to No one told her to No order No command No logic in the world that says you step into the last light of a dying woman to save the one who came to destroy her
But she steps
And the light takes her
And Leara lives
[Final Chorus — the silence after] When the cradle falls Adina falls with it When the cradle falls She takes what was meant for someone else
When the cradle falls The south does not remember When the cradle falls The world does not remember
Only Olan somewhere far away somewhere safe somewhere she sent him
feels it
And does not know what he has lost
Or what was saved to carry it
[Outro — the field, after] The companions are gone The light is wrong now Leara is standing Adina is not And in the place where the light went wrong something begins that will not stop for three hundred thousand years
The cradle has fallen
One thread remains
[Coda] Rock-a-bye, Olan, sent from the cradle When the light breaks, the darkness will follow When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall And down come the Lighted, the cradle and all