[Intro]
[Iron strikes answer a single muted guitar note in seven-beat intervals.]

[Verse 1]
[Gungnir]
You held me level over fields
Where ash fell hot on painted shields.
Your fingers never felt the chest
That stopped my flight and gave me rest.
You named the dead a measured cost,
A tally won, a border lost.
Tonight my point has turned within;
Tonight you learn where wounds begin.

[Chorus]
Gungnir knows my name.
I gave it law; it gave me pain.
It entered where my oath was sworn
And found a god already torn.
A weapon never bears the blame—
Gungnir knows my name.

[Verse 2]
[Male Vocal: Odin]
I shaped no coward’s hidden knife.
I bore you openly in strife.
[Gungnir]
You stood behind the chosen line
And called their opened bodies mine.
[Male Vocal: Odin]
A ruler spends what war demands.
[Gungnir]
A ruler rarely feels my hands.
[Male Vocal: Odin]
I bear the wound I made them take.
[Gungnir]
One wound cannot repay their wake.

[Chorus]
Gungnir knows my name.
I gave it law; it gave me pain.
It entered where my oath was sworn
And found a god already torn.
A weapon never bears the blame—
Gungnir knows my name.

[Instrumental]
[Muted guitar, struck iron and spear-shaft knocks repeat an asymmetric seven-beat stabbing pattern.]

[Verse 3]
[Gungnir]
I remember every layer crossed—
Wool and leather, rib and frost.
The farmer armed for borrowed land,
The youngest son with shaking hand.
The guard who saw your banner rise,
The old man struck between the eyes.
You never learned their final breath.
I carried each from you to death.

[Bridge]
[Male Vocal: Odin]
Then speak their names into my blood.
[Gungnir]
You drowned their names beneath the mud.
[Male Vocal: Odin]
Then carve them where the runes may form.
[Gungnir]
A list is not a life reborn.
[Breakdown]
[Gungnir]
I am not cruel.
I do not choose.
I take the path the hand will use.
[Male Vocal: Odin]
Then what am I?
[Gungnir]
The hand, the claim,
The mouth that gives the wound a name.

[Climax]
The spear turned hot inside my side.
The tree drew near; the worlds grew wide.
Each battlefield became one room;
Each order ripened into doom.

[Climax II]
I sought the laws beneath all pain—
The weapon gave the law my name.

[Final Chorus]
Gungnir knows my name.
I forged its purpose, fed its fame.
It entered where command was born
And found the throne already torn.
The wielder, not the steel, bears blame—
Gungnir knows my name.

[Outro]
[One iron strike rings; the tagelharpa answers with the descending motif.]

[Gungnir]
Remember the hand.
Not only the blade.
