[Intro]
[The Frostheart motif begins twice but stops before its third note.]

[Verse 1]
[Female Lead]
The message arrived with a fisherman’s seal:
“Three prison carts cross the ravine after meal.”
We entered at dusk where the stone walls lean,
Thirty-eight people and wolves unseen.
No cart tracks marked the new-fallen white,
No raven lifted, no owl took flight.
The scar-eyed wolf froze and flattened her ear—
Then iron bolts fell from the ridge above.

[Pre-Chorus]
[Female Lead]
The first struck the smith through his leather coat,
The next took the scout with the red wool throat.
I shouted retreat, but the rear path closed;
Oil-fire bloomed where the north gale rose.

[Chorus]
[Female Lead]
Frostheart broken on the black ravine,
One half in the snow, one beneath the machine.
Frostheart broken where my people bled,
An axe cannot answer for the choices of the dead.
I swung for a rescue; I shattered the blade—
Now every bright promise lies split where it was made.

[Verse 2]
[Female Lead]
Siv held the left wall with a farmer’s shield,
The miners cut footholds that would not yield.
I saw young Arven beneath falling stone,
His leg trapped fast and his bowstring gone.
I drove Frostheart under the granite weight,
Pushed with my shoulder, one second too late.
The axe-head cracked with a sound like a bell;
The stone shifted free as the upper wall fell.

[Pre-Chorus]
[Female Lead]
Arven crawled clear, but six could not rise,
Smoke closed the path and the snow burned their eyes.
The Iron King’s captain called down from the height,
“Your wolves cannot save every fool in your fight.”

[Chorus]
[Female Lead]
Frostheart broken on the black ravine,
One half in the snow, one beneath the machine.
Frostheart broken where my people bled,
An axe cannot answer for the choices of the dead.
I swung for a rescue; I shattered the blade—
Now every bright promise lies split where it was made.

[Instrumental Break]
[Low guitar and cello repeat an incomplete five-beat figure interrupted by hard silences.]

[Verse 3]
[Female Lead]
The wolves found a goat path behind sheets of ice,
We carried the wounded and paid for it twice.
The smith died laughing at some private thought,
Still gripping the chain from the fjord where he fought.
Siv counted survivors, then counted once more;
Eleven were missing, and three made it four.
She looked at the haft in my blood-covered hand:
“You led us through rumour. You broke your command.”

[Bridge]
[Female Lead]
She did not say traitor, and did not say queen;
She named what had happened without making it clean.
I chose the ravine when the signs were unclear;
I hurried from anger and dressed it as care.

[Breakdown]
[Only floor toms and low voice remain.]

[Female Lead]
Eleven missing.
Four of them dead.
Two wolves limping.
One council misled.

[Build-up]
[The incomplete motif is slowly restored by different instruments, but the axe sound remains absent.]

[Female Lead]
I lifted the pieces where everyone stood:
“The fault is not iron. The fault is my blood
Running too quickly, mistaking speed
For duty, for courage, for what you might need.”

[Final Chorus]
[Female Lead]
Frostheart broken in the black ravine,
One half in the snow, one beneath the machine.
Frostheart broken—and the truth must be said:
A leader’s haste can number the dead.
Frostheart broken, but no lie will be laid
Across the cold bodies of the price that we paid.

[Outro]
[The final beat remains empty after each slow drum phrase.]

[Female Lead]
I wrapped both pieces
In the torn wolf flag.
Behind us, the ravine
Burned red, then black.