[Intro]
[Wooden knocks mark seven-beat rowing strokes while bowed lyre scrapes beneath low ship-horn notes.]

[Verse 1]
Thumb nail, heel nail, pale finger shard,
Unpared in life, then hammered hard.
No mourner had burned them upon any pyre;
They fitted our keel and they fastened our spire.
Under Hel’s arches the black vessel grew,
A rib cage of remnants no daylight knew.
No oak in the hull and no pine in the oar,
Only what mourners neglected ashore.

[Choir]
Nail by nail.
Oar by oar.
Dead men rise
From Hel’s shut door.

[Chorus]
Naglfar leaves the shore, nail by nail,
With frost in the rigging and skin for a sail.
Naglfar leaves the shore, oar by oar;
The drowned beat time on the hull’s hollow floor.
No hearth waits behind us, no grave lies before—
The dead sail for Vígríðr when Naglfar leaves the shore.

[Verse 2]
Loki came laughing, with ash on his shirt,
Salt on his cheek and a smile without mirth.
The scars at his ankles were purple and raw,
But no chain remained and no serpent he saw.
He stepped to the prow where the corpse-lanterns swung,
And tasted the horn note that burned on his tongue.
“Row for the halls where the oath-makers dine.
Their roofs will be cinders; their blood will be brine.”

[Pre-Chorus]
The tide drew away from the beaches of Hel,
The anchor rose dripping from bottomless wells.
A thousand dead knuckles closed over the oar—
The sea gave one shudder and opened a door.

[Chorus]
Naglfar leaves the shore, nail by nail,
With frost in the rigging and skin for a sail.
Naglfar leaves the shore, oar by oar;
The drowned beat time on the hull’s hollow floor.
No hearth waits behind us, no grave lies before—
The dead sail for Vígríðr when Naglfar leaves the shore.

[Instrumental]
[Cellos and rhythm guitars repeat the seven-beat rowing figure while wood knocks move from left to right.]

[Bridge]
We carried no banners, for cloth would decay;
We carried the names that the living threw away.
The child without cairn and the king without head
Pulled at one rhythm, equal in death.
Loki looked east where the red clouds were spun—
Not toward a kingdom, but toward everyone.

[Buildup]
Pull through the pitch.
Pull through the foam.
The dead have no harbor.
The dead have no home.
Pull for the liar.
Pull for the plain.
Pull till the nails
Remember the pain.

[Final Chorus]
Naglfar crosses the sea, nail by nail,
Past Jörmungandr’s coils and the sparks in the gale.
Naglfar crosses the sea, oar by oar;
Each stroke brings the dead to the gods’ final war.
The Gjallarhorn fades under mast-creak and roar—
Loki stands at the prow as Naglfar finds the shore.

[Outro]
[The seven-beat oar rhythm slows without fading; the last wood knock lands alone.]

Nail by nail.
Debt by debt.
The gods built their halls.
We have not forgotten yet.