[Intro]
[Hurdy-gurdy plays the dice motif backward as war drums approach beneath ruined bells.]
The capital burned without color or heat,
Names peeled from banners and crawled through the street.
Every old casting had gathered below,
Building a body from each altered throw.

[Verse 1]
They entered the throne room through splintered red doors,
Past kings without portraits and maps without shores.
The god sat unfinished on alphabet limbs,
Its ribs made of wagers, its eyes silver rims.
It wore Dorrin’s smile and the blind minstrel’s tone,
Spoke with the children whose ten years were gone:
[Choir]
“Throw me once more and I make all things right.
No river takes nineteen. No valley loses night.”

[Pre-Chorus]
It showed Mara’s crest without fracture or stain,
Showed Brunna embracing her brother again.
Showed Lark true verses, Veyr old and free—
Then gave the young mage the name he could not see.

[Chorus]
The dice remember blood, every finger, every fall,
Every hidden payment made beyond the dungeon wall.
They remember who was rescued, who was priced;
Every stranger on the altar of the dice.
The dice remember blood when the songs forget the names—
But blood can kloze the ledger if it freely feeds the flames.

[Verse 2]
Mara unbuckled shield and crest,
Set the red bones where the shadows pressed.
[Mara]
“Take paladin. Leave choice and blame.”
[Narrator]
Her broken crest fell without a name.
Brunna laid down locket and chain:
[Brunna]
“Take Stonehand. Leave Dorrin true.”
[Narrator]
The mountain forgot which blood placed her there;
One teer reached Brunna before she knew.

[Instrumental]
[Twin guitars state Mara’s, Brunna’s and Lark’s themes over the inverted dice motif.]

[Verse 3]
[Lark]
“Take every song that would mark me as known.
Let taverns keep choruses, never the source.”
[Narrator]
The god stripped his signatures out of time;
No prophecy came to command the rhyme.
[Veyr]
“My future is short, but freely given.
Take every dawn that the second throw spared;
Spend me completely. I come prepared.”
[Narrator]
Blue fire ran clean through horn and vein;
And Veyr joined the chorus with an unowned voice.

[Bridge]
[Tomas]
“I have no title, no lineage, no crown.
Take magic itself—the terror I wore.”
[Narrator]
The fox caught fire, but the paint stayed white;
Five willing losses formed one living seal—
No number between them, no fortune to steal.

[Buildup]
The god raised the dice for a final cast:
[Choir]
“Without what you were, you are nothing but past.”
[Narrator]
Five hands closed over its silver-lit wrist.
[Mara]
“We are what we chose to persist.”

[Climax]
[Low choir sustains the resolved five-note motif as the full band shifts into half-time.]
Mara broke the first die with her oathless blade.
Brunna crushed the second where the throne had decayed.
Lark sang no prophecy; Veyr spent his breath.
The young mage closed his hands on death.
Red bone became powder; silver numbers rain.
The capital remembered every ordinary name.

[Final Chorus]
The dice remember blood, every finger, every fall,
Now the ledger lies in pieces underneath the throne-room wall.
Let the rescued keep their breathing; let the grieving keep their right;
No child will lose a decade for a hero’s cleaner fight.
The dice remember blood, though our former names are gone;
We are not what fate recorded—we are what we carried on.
Roll once for glory, twice for the grave—
We rolled no more, and that is how the kingdom was saved.

[Outro]
At sunrise, five strangers crossed the square.
No herald knew them. No banner was there.
Behind them, red powder darkened the stone—
Ahead lay a country they had saved, but never owned.