﻿[Intro]
(The root motif sounds on horn, tagelharpa and guitar before a galloping twelve-beat rhythm erupts.)

[Verse 1]
The skald reached the cliff as the sea climbed the land,
Arvid’s sword waited, still fixed where it stood.
Above him the branches tore loose from the crown,
Each leaf like a village came smoldering down.
Thor met the serpent where black waters curled,
Their blows drove salt through the lungs of the world.
Odin faced Fenrir beneath a red sun,
Both bound to the ending their choices had spun.

[Pre-Chorus]
No mortal could alter the clash in the sky,
No verse could persuade tooth or thunder to lie.
The skald gripped the sword, but he turned from the war—
And struck at the frozen earth under the ash.

[Chorus]
When gods become weather, take shelter in the ground,
Their thunder is not wisdom, their glory only sound.
When gods become weather and heaven loses form,
Plant something low and living beneath the higher storm.
“GO-thin VER-thah VEH-thur,” let broken kingdoms learn:
What rules from far above us cannot feel the roots that burn.

[Verse 2]
Thor killed the serpent, then staggered nine strides,
Its venom ran black through the cracks in his eyes.
Fenrir closed over the Allfather’s breath,
While VEE-dar brought silence through vengeance and death.
Surtr raised fire where BEEV-rost had been,
The sea took the temples, the roof beams, the kings.
The sword in the skald’s hand grew notched against stone—
A weapon unmaking the purpose it had known.

[Pre-Chorus]
He dug past the frost and the old raven bone,
Past roots burned hollow and roots hard as stone.
The seed in his palm had one leaf, small and white—
Too fragile for legend, still turning toward light.

[Chorus]
When gods become weather, take shelter in the ground,
Their thunder is not wisdom, their glory only sound.
When gods become weather and heaven loses form,
Plant something low and living beneath the higher storm.
“GO-thin VER-thah VEH-thur,” let broken kingdoms learn:
What rules from far above us cannot feel the roots that burn.

[Guitar Solo]
(A long melodic guitar lead follows Thor’s nine final steps, then falls into the three-note root motif.)

[Bridge]
He laid Runa’s harp frame beneath the seed for wood,
Set Heimdall’s shard beside it where the broken rainbow stood.
He tied Midgard’s red wool around the tender root,
And placed the giant child’s stone beneath the pale green shoot.

[Breakdown]
Odin fell.
Thor fell.
Surtr burned; Fenrir bled.
An old man pressed soil round a seed.

[Climax]
The skald drove Arvid’s sword through the last unbroken field.
The blade snapped; the earth received the rain.
“IG-drah-sil LEE-vir.”
Then the fire reached his breath.

[Final Chorus]
When gods become weather, take shelter in the ground,
Their thunder becomes rainfall when no throne remains around.
When gods become weather and heaven sheds its form,
Guard something low and living beneath the final storm.
“GO-thin VER-thah VEH-thur,” now every ruined realm can learn:
The high branch feeds the low root even as the branches burn.

[Coda]
No Valkyrie descended.
No hall threw wide its door.
The ash tree held his body
As it held the worlds before.
