[Intro][Bass slides downward while toms roll in a 6/8 wave pattern; low male vocal enters after the first swell.]

[Verse 1][Male Vocal: Narrator]
They carried the child where the gulls bit the air,
Scales on his shoulders, brine in his hair.
His tongue was a ribbon, his eyes green coins,
Small as a question in punishment’s coils.
[Male Vocal: Odin]
Odin said, “Ocean will swallow the threat,”
[Male Vocal: Narrator]
The gray water opened its iron net.
Loki cried out, but the wind took the sound,
And the sea closed over what fear had found.

[Pre-Chorus][Male Vocal: Narrator]
Salt in the cradle, salt in the lung,
A child went under, the world grew young.

[Chorus][Gang Vocals]
Serpent in the Salt, coil around the deep,
Breathe beneath the black where the cold gods sleep.
Serpent in the Salt, grow where none can see,
They threw you away—now you circle the sea.

[Verse 2][Male Vocal: Narrator]
Down past the whale-road, down past the wreck,
He learned every anchor and every dead neck.
Fish made a crown of their silvering bones,
Kelp wrote his name on the drowned men’s stones.
Each year he lengthened, each current bent,
A ring made of hunger and banishment.
Thor’s distant hammer rang dull through the foam,
But the sea had become his terrible home.

[Pre-Chorus][Male Vocal: Narrator]
Salt in the wound, salt in the name,
The tide kept feeding the exile’s frame.

[Chorus][Gang Vocals]
Serpent in the Salt, coil around the deep,
Breathe beneath the black where the cold gods sleep.
Serpent in the Salt, grow where none can see,
They threw you away—now you circle the sea.

[Guitar Solo][Lead guitar bends in sliding phrases over the wave rhythm.]

[Bridge][Male Vocal: Narrator]
A thrown-away child does not stay small,
The seabed hears what the heavens call.
Every oar and every keel
Knows the scrape of a hidden scale.

[Breakdown][Gang Vocals]
Round the rock.
Round the wreck.
Round the root.
Round the neck.

[Build-up][Male Vocal: Narrator]
The horizon tightens, the moon pulls thin,
The world feels teeth underneath its skin.

[Final Chorus][Gang Vocals]
Serpent in the Salt, coil around the deep,
Breathe beneath the black where the cold gods sleep.
Serpent in the Salt, grow where none can see,
They threw you away—now you circle the sea.
Serpent in the Salt, ring of living foam,
Exile made the whole world home.

[Outro][Male Vocal: Narrator]
Far below thunder, where no torches burn,
Jörmungandr waits for the tides to turn.
A scale breaks silver, a black wave crawls,
And every shore remembers who falls.