[Intro]
[Three low brass notes sound over a measured funeral drum.]

[Verse 1]
I keep the hall where colors cease,
Where fever cools and wounds find peace.
Half my face the living know;
Half belongs to roots below.
For ages shut, my iron door
Has counted every mortal war.
Tonight the hinges sweat with rime;
The lock has heard the end of time.

[Pre-Chorus]
The dawn is pale, the dawn is thin.
No warmth comes through its colorless skin.
The buried lift their listening heads;
A road now opens for the dead.

[Chorus]
When the pale gates open, no warm sun will rise;
The frost will wear morning like cloth on its eyes.
Step after step, let the death-road be spoken;
The living will hear when the pale gates open.
No crown bars the grave and no gold buys release;
When the pale gates open, even silence finds feet.

[Verse 2]
We heard her call through packed black clay,
Through root and bone and rusted mail.
The nameless woke beside the kings;
The thrall stood free of earthly rings.
A mother found the son she mourned;
A butcher raised the knife he’d worn.
No joy was there, no sweet return—
Only the road where dead feet turn.

[Pre-Chorus]
The dawn is pale, the fields are bare.
The breath of graves moves through the air.
No rooster calls, no infant wakes;
The boundary bows, the iron breaks.

[Chorus]
When the pale gates open, no warm sun will rise;
The frost will wear morning like cloth on its eyes.
Step after step, let the death-road be spoken;
The living will hear when the pale gates open.
No crown bars the grave and no gold buys release;
When the pale gates open, even silence finds feet.

[Percussion Break]
[Bone clicks and floor toms build a marching cadence without guitars.]

[Bridge]
Do not call this mercy.
Do not call it war.
The dead do not choose
What opens the door.
The living had oaths,
The gods had their token.
We have only the road
When the pale gates open.

[Build-up]
From barrow and ship-mound,
From battlefield stone,
The dead form a river
That runs without foam.
Hel lifts one hand.
The last chain is broken.
The plain holds its breath
As the pale gates open.

[Final Chorus]
When the pale gates open, the cold dawn will rise;
With ash in its mouth and white cloth on its eyes.
Step after step, all the grave-names are spoken;
The gods hear the march when the pale gates open.
No wall holds the underworld, no oath buys release;
When the pale gates open, the dead carry peace.
Not peace born of mercy, nor peace freely chosen—
The stillness beyond when the pale gates open.

[Outro]
The final hinge fell into clay.
The dead marched out beneath no day.
Behind them, Hel’s abandoned throne
Held frost, a crown, and one white bone.