[Intro]
[Pipe organ states the broken-horn motif as three slow voices answer in counterpoint.]

[Verse 1]
At midnight, frost grew inward through the bars,
And formed three crowns beneath the prison stars.
No guards approached, no key disturbed the lock;
Three armoured figures stepped from dripping rock.
The first wore gold corroded green with age,
The second held a bloodless battle page.
The third concealed his face behind a veil,
And all three spoke as one within the jail.

[Choir]
We are the choir of fallen kings,
The rust beneath remembered things.
We built the towers, forged the rings—
Do not unearth what honour hides.

[Verse 2]
[First King]
“I swore to Vaelgrim by the winter sea.
He sealed the Cold and asked no crown of me.”
[Second King]
“We feared his witness more than foreign spears.
A dragon does not die with mortal years.”
[Third King]
“We broke his horn and changed the written role.
A glorious lie preserved the kingdom whole.”

[Chorus]
The choir of fallen kings sings low behind the stone,
Each ruler begs for marble, though his guilt is carved in bone.
The choir of fallen kings wants history for a throne,
But every royal harmony betrays a broken tone.
Sing louder, dead majesties; your splendour cannot hide
The chained and hornless witness you abandoned in your pride.

[Verse 3]
They showed me roads, aqueducts and fields,
The treaties won, the famine stopped by shields.
“Will you reduce our reigns to one old crime?
Must every noble deed be drowned by time?”
I touched the wall where prison water ran:
“No life is only monster, crown or man.
I will record the harvest and the horn—
The good you built, the oath you left forlorn.”

[Choir]
Eldr skal vaka, sannindi skulu standa.
Engin hǫnd konungs má grafa þat er vér vitum.

[Instrumental Break]
[Organ, strings and three lead guitars weave separate versions of the horn motif.]

[Bridge]
The first king lowered slowly to one knee.
The second broke his spectral sword on me.
The third unveiled my father’s eyes instead:
“You bear our blood.” “Then end your rule,” I said.

[Build-up]
Their crowns became three circles made of frost,
Their voices split, their royal cadence lost.
Confession filled the cracks from floor to springs—
The cell became the tomb of fallen kings.

[Final Chorus]
The choir of fallen kings sings truth beneath the stone,
No ruler stands as marble when his hidden debts are known.
The choir of fallen kings has lost its borrowed throne;
Their broken royal harmony becomes my marching tone.
I will write their bridges, harvests, every law they signed—
And write the chained old guardian they mutilated in their pride.

[Outro]
At dawn, the frost had left one final ring:
A crown split through the centre by a wing.