[Intro]
[Fingerpicked twelve-string guitar reshapes the album's descending motif into a quiet ascending melody.]

[Verse 1]
We landed three mornings beyond the black cape
In boats built for herring, too small for escape.
Their hulls leaked at every old peg in the grain;
We bailed with our helmets through salt wind and rain.

[Verse 2]
She opened the bundle the dead carried on:
A bead, broken buckle, a whetstone worn,
A pouch holding barley, a waterskin torn,
A smoke-darkened comb and one drinking-horn.

[Chorus]
Let the Ravens Carry Our Names
Over the water, over the flames.
Not only kings, not only the brave:
Carry the hands that planted and gave.
When Midgard burned and no answer came,
The wind learned the shape of every name.

[Verse 3]
We built no great hall in the first hungry year,
Just turf against weather and fences for deer.
We planted the barley from one leather seed,
Too little for feasting, but plenty for need.
The first crop bent low in a salt-bitter field.
Its heads bowed to wind, but refused not to yield.

[Verse 4]
The coal from the shrine slept in clay through the rain,
A dull piece of black with one red living vein.
Not holy, not promised, just fire brought from home.
We fed it dry moss in a hearth built of stone.
The first flame was kindled without priest or throne.

[Bridge]
"He chose that the children should live," the healer said.
"Remember the choice, not the crown of the dead."

[Instrumental Break]
[Bowed lyre, clean guitar and bass repeat the ascending form of the motif before warm distorted guitars enter.]

[Verse 5]
When I had grown older, I cut a new stone,
Not tall for a ruler, not marked for one throne.
I copied the fragment he carried out west,
Including the error his dead wife loved best.
Below it, I carved every name we had learned,
The farmers and healers, the drowned and the burned.
I left one line open beneath all the rest
For names still remembered when stone has confessed.

[Final Chorus]
Let the Ravens Carry Our Names
Over the water, beyond the flames.
Not only kings, not only the brave:
Carry the hands that harvested, gave.
When Midgard burned and the high gods withdrew,
The wind bore the old world into the new.

[Outro]
Two ravens came down to the new-carved stone.
One pecked at barley; one called out alone.
The last coal glowed and the first bread was warm.
Outside, a new winter gathered its storm.

[Final Coda]
Raise no crown above the dead.
Set bread and names in place instead.
The gods were silent. We remained.
Each child could speak a living name.