[Intro - atmospheric, no drums, low strings and distant choir] I learned a word and it undid me I burned my throne and walked into the world And for the first time in my long remembering I was looking for something instead of taking it
Verse 1 - single drum enters slowly
I combed the mountain passes and the valleys choked with ash I searched the ruins of every cathedral I had passed I turned the shadows over twice, three times, a hundred more For a face that matched the page I read, a face I’d seen before I saw the remnants of my kingdom watching from the trees I kept walking, kept my eyes down, kept the thread The crimson thread that wouldn’t stop, the pull I couldn’t freeze That feeling I had no name for — it was living in my chest instead
Pre-Chorus 1
Not for conquest Not for power Not for everything I burned and built and bled for years For the first time In this body I was chasing something fragile, something near
Chorus 1
This is hope and it is desperate This is love and it is strange I have lived three hundred winters without wanting anything to change But I am crossing every border, every river, every scar Just to find the other half of what I am
Verse 2 - drums drop, ominous quiet, single cello
I found the church I turned to cinders at the end of the last war The stones were black, the altar cracked, I recognised my own score And there amid the remnants of the thing I had destroyed I heard a sound that split me open, something broken, something void My faithful, my remaining, the ones who had not run Had circled her like a trophy, like a prize they thought they’d won They thought their queen would want this, thought they’d done a brilliant thing They didn’t know their queen had changed before they’d finished reckoning
Pre-Chorus 2 - cold, descending
I saw her face I saw the blood I saw what my own hands had built and set loose in the world
Chorus 2 - FULL EXPLOSION, everything crashes in at once
UNHAND HER And they turned and looked at me like I was something they’d misread UNHAND HER And I swept them from the altar and I left them where they bled Not for conquest Not for power This was something I had never learned to do — protect I cleared the ruin I cleared the silence And the only two left standing in the wreck
Interlude - total silence, single piano note, near a cappella
She looked at me like ruin Like the end of everything she’d held Her eyes were red and burning Full of blood and grief and fell I had rehearsed a thousand words I had them all in line But standing in the ash of what I’d burned She erased every line
Bridge - sparse, barely a melody, then building
She said YOU And the word fell like a verdict on a wound And I had nothing Just her name inside a room
Elara
One word, barely breathing And she answered with her blade
She drove it through before I finished In the silence I had made I heard the lightning before I hit the ground I heard her running through the storm, not turning around
Post-Bridge - Pandora on the ground, low orchestra swells
I am older than this wound I am deeper than this scar She could not have killed me even if she’d aimed straight at my heart But I am lying in the ruins of the church I burned before And the only name I’ve ever learned to love just left me on the floor
Final Chorus - same words, completely destroyed
This is hope and it is desperate This is love and it is strange I have lived three hundred winters without wanting anything to change And I would cross it all again, every river, every scar Just to know the name of what I am
Outro - extended, near silence, strings only, spoken
I see her in the distance Crimson, not the dawn I thought She is carrying everything I made her She is everything I brought
Mercy, gone She is running from the light She is running from the name She is running from the altar Where we almost were the same
Final lines - barely spoken, then silence
I found her And she ran me through
Close your eyes now
This is what hope costs you