[Intro]
[Instrumental Intro: Scraped tagelharpa and wooden clacks establish an uneven 9/8 pattern.]

[Verse 1]
They cut my flesh and called it ground,
They spread it flat and walked around.
They ground my teeth to gravel white,
Then praised the paths beneath their sight.
They raised my bones in broken rows
And named them peaks where icy gales blow.
Each mountain stands because I fell;
Each valley is an emptied shell.

[Chorus]
The dead one builds the world, though no dead hand agreed.
They harvest muscle, marrow, need.
They raise my skull and call its hollow “sky.”
They walk my flesh and teach the stones to lie.

[Verse 2]
They lifted up my opened skull,
Its inner bone was broad and dull.
Four dwarfs were set at cornered strain,
To hold that vault above the plain:
NOR-three, SOO-three, OW-stree, VES-tree,
Bound beneath what once contained me.
My drifting thoughts became the cloud;
My brows were bent into a shroud.

[Chorus]
The dead one builds the world, though no dead hand agreed.
They harvest muscle, marrow, need.
They raise my skull and call its hollow “sky.”
They walk my flesh and teach the stones to lie.

[Verse 3]
My hair was torn and planted deep,
A forest grown where roots would creep.
My lashes curved around a ring,
A wall to guard a weaker thing.
They called that guarded middle land
MID-gard, shaped by a bloody hand.
My brain was thrown through empty air
And broke as weather everywhere.

[Bridge]
Do mountains dream of former bone?
Does soil remember being one?
When rain descends from scattered thought,
Does it mourn the shape it lost?
You cannot cut a life apart
Without dividing more than heart.

[Breakdown - Subterranean Growl]

My flesh—the field.
My blood—the foam.
My bone—the wall.
My skull—the dome.

[Breakdown - Subterranean Response]
My thought—the cloud.
My brow—the ring.
I died—and still make everything.

[Instrumental]
[Instrumental Direction: The inverted three-note motif climbs through tagelharpa, low end and guitar while the 9/8 rhythm gradually straightens.]

[Final Chorus]
The dead one builds the world, and every hand is fed.
The living plant their harvest in the body of the dead.
They raise my skull and kindle sparks for eyes.
You breathe inside of EE-meer; the dead one never dies.

[Coda]
When roots split every mountain and the final seas are swirled,
The dead will take the measure of the gods who built the world.

[Outro]
One wooden strike. One stone laid down.
One tooth became a road to town.
No grave received the giant whole;
Creation was his scattered soul.