[Verse 1]
I sat with the annals for a long time
The oldest record anyone had kept
And I read until the writing stopped
At the edge of what the first cartographers had stepped
The universe is not one thing
It is not one plane
It is not one level
Not one reach of dark or light or name
It folds
The way something enormous
Has to fold to hold itself
And every fold is a different place
With different rules
And different selves
[Pre-Chorus]
And somewhere in the reading
I found where I stood
The rank of The One
In the order of the folded
Lower than I thought
And three levels above me
In the place no map confirms
The hollow
Has a home
And it does not burn
[Chorus]
The farthest anyone has gone
And come back with a record
Was level seventy-eight
And they did not call it the end
They called it the end of what they knew
The north of everything
That is where the map gives out
The north of everything
Is where the record stops in doubt
And something told the first cartographers:
You are not made to go further
You are not built for the air above this ground
The north of everything
And I have to go there
The Hollow is three levels up
And no one has the count
[Verse 2]
The universe knows I exist now
I felt it shift the morning after Vega
The way a room shifts
When something new walks in
That the room did not expect
And not everyone is glad
I can feel it in the frequencies
The ones who liked the old order
The long silence
The uncontested dark
The ones who benefited
From the gap between the convergence
And the arrival of The One
Three hundred thousand years
Is a long time to go ungoverned
And now I am here
And I am reading their maps
And I am looking at level seventy-eight
And I am looking past it
[Pre-Chorus 2]
Castor came to stand beside me
He did not ask what I was reading
He read it too
And he said:
This is the north all over again
And I said:
Yes
And he said:
She went
And I said:
I know
[Chorus]
The farthest anyone has gone
And come back with a record
Was level seventy-eight
And they did not call it the end
They called it the end of what they knew
The north of everything
That is where the map gives out
The north of everything
Is where the record stops in doubt
And something told the first cartographers:
You are not made to go further
You are not built for the air above this ground
The north of everything
And I have to go there
The Hollow is three levels up
And no one has the count
[Bridge — SOLARA in the garden, before dawn]
Elara was told: go north
And the map ended at the border of the known
And she went anyway
Because the north existed
Whether the map did or not
I am told: go up
And the record ends at seventy-eight
And I will go anyway
Because the Hollow exists
Whether anyone has charted it or not
I am the One who ended what the last One sealed
I am the convergence the three hundred thousand years resisted
I am Pandora’s fire and Elara’s light
I am the thing the old structure
Never anticipated
And the universe knows my name now
And some of them are afraid
And some of them are watching
And some of them are already
On the wrong side of what comes next
And I have a knight
And I have a Raven
And I have the memory of a song
That was not finished
[Final Chorus — slower, vast, certain]
The farthest anyone has gone
Was seventy-eight
And they did not call it the end
I am calling it the beginning
Of the direction no one mapped
The north of everything
I have been here before
Not me — but the part of me
That was Elara
Knows what it is
To walk without a map
Toward something real
The north of everything
Castor walks beside me
The Raven opens both eyes
The council holds the order here below
And I
Go
Up
[Outro — the harp plays. Vega’s unfinished song.]
She was playing when the Hollow took her.
I remember the song.
[The harp plays. Just the melody. Four measures. Then a fifth — the one Vega never finished.]
[SOLARA finishes it.]
And the Garden of Eternal Dawns goes quiet.
And the Raven lifts from the ancient tree.
And Castor looks at her.
And she says:
“Let’s go find level seventy-nine.”