[Intro]
[Clean guitar plays the descending three-note motif, then answers it in reverse.]

[Verse 1]
I spread the hidden papers on the archive floor at dawn:
Mara’s wax, the parcel maps, each altered line redrawn.
Peter’s true denial lived in memory, not ink;
Elsbeth’s flour print returned whenever I would blink.
I copied every altered phrase and named the hand beside,
The clerk who changed the dates, the judge who parcelled land outside.
The evidence could fill a chest and still the court endure;
A system does not fear one fact while all its seals remain secure.

[Pre-Chorus]
One page can be corrected.
One witness can be heard.
But every page behind it
Repeats the poisoned word.

[Chorus]
Cut the crimson cord; let every captive page divide.
Cut the crimson cord that keeps their ordered crimes inside.
Cut the crimson cord; no seal can make the stolen pure.
A record built to manufacture guilt must not endure.
Cut the crimson cord—not to hide the harm they made,
But to break the instrument that turns a rumour into blade.

[Verse 2]
I went beneath the courthouse where the confiscations lay,
And found new lists of fourteen names prepared for market day.
The innkeeper stood second; Mara’s sister followed third;
A childless midwife headed one column marked “property secured.”
The trials would cross the river farms and reach the northern street;
The witchfinder had hired more guards and ordered chains and peat.
No argument inside the court could halt the widening course—
The seal had made the fraud seem law, the ledger gave it force.

[Pre-Chorus]
One judge can be replaced;
Another takes the seal.
The book did not create the lie,
But made the false look real.

[Chorus]
Cut the crimson cord; let every captive page divide.
Cut the crimson cord that keeps their ordered crimes inside.
Cut the crimson cord; no seal can make the stolen pure.
A record built to manufacture guilt must not endure.
Cut the crimson cord—not to hide the harm they made,
But to break the instrument that turns a rumour into blade.

[Instrumental Break]
[The descending judgment motif is inverted and passed between harmonized guitars.]

[Bridge]
I will not call this innocence;
My hand supplied their evidence.
I cannot raise the numbered dead,
But I can stop what comes ahead.

[Build-up]
I wrapped the true accounts in cloth
And hid them in the chapel loft.
I placed dry tinder near the shelf,
Then wrote one final note myself:
“These names were made by fear and gain.
The court deceived. The record’s plain.
I served the lie. I bear my blame.”
Then set the sharpened edge against the frame.

[Final Chorus]
Cut the crimson cord; let every numbered page divide.
Cut the crimson cord that bound my cowardice inside.
Cut the crimson cord; the seal will never make them pure.
A record built to manufacture death must not endure.
Cut the crimson cord—the bells may call me traitor yet;
But no new name will enter through this instrument of debt.

[Outro]
[The inverted motif ends on a firm ascending interval.]
The ribbon fell in two.
The ledger opened wide.
For the first time,
No red cord held its lies inside.