Rivers are running red With scores of those I’ve led To the place where their lives met their end Never prepared To comprehend the Weight I’d bear The time that I would spare The guilt that We would share Never to know the impact my mistakes would have Over the ones I guided to the promised lands Never content to be counted among their mass To be less than a god among my fellow man I bow to none I bow to none Rivers are running red With scores of those I’ve led To the place where their lives met their end I walk among the dead Forsaken and misled In my efforts to arise while the world would descend Never to know Remorse for the Place I’d go Just to be On the throne The fear of Overthrow Never to shudder at the thought of corpses piled Upon the steps to domination that I climb Never hesitating to replace another life With whatever ambitions to which I am then inclined BOTH RYAN & NICK I will bow down to none Until the day I am undone I will be their god above They will suffer, every one Every single one NICK Clinging to me as I rise from the darkness Failing always, recognize my intent Failing always, to see the signs that are handed to me As my greed, it leads each one to welcome their own deaths The rivers running red now flow beyond their beds Let this bloodflow rise, drowning the earth Submerge all the sinners that dwell and roam RYAN Rivers are running red With scores of those I’ve led To the place where their lives met their end I walk among the dead Forsaken and misled In my efforts to arise while the world would descend

Within the withered womb of all by which I am defined, A frail and absent recollection of myself is derived. As I am lulled to sleep by the echoes of thought from my hollow insides. A once-proud nation reduced to a monolith, Where life was once abundant now remains a myth. While I struggle to carry forth my legacy, I fail to find a reason that I should exist. A pitiful pawn, a puppet of all that reaches my ears, Unwilling to think for myself throughout the passing years. The sky has opened in the shadow of a god Who looks on his creation without an empathetic thought. The darkness cast will keep me blinded, keep me lost, As I am left to wander through the dark amid the frost. Shaped by the avaricious will of tyrants so long dead, I was reduced to slavery by my own dread. Held captive by the thoughts ringing inside my head, I walked a weary Earth, by our will, it slowly bled. Prayer falls upon the ears of the deaf As I'm sustained only by hope from fantasies they left. My predecessors, fathers of all my regrets, Casting their bastard spawn back to the lands they left. The sun will never set upon what they have built, And yet it can't escape the shade cast by the weakest willed We are the sons of those whose blood was never spilled In the name of their causes by which we are killed. Left to our own devices, we wallow in the filth That washes down from the temples settled in the hills We cast our eyes upward, upon their gleaming crowns, Anathema to all that seek the gift of sight and sound. Within the perspective to which I am confined, A dying iteration of myself is derived. An empty shell of misery, from this world now resigned, As I am left to break beneath the shame of their design. Blindly, we stumble and we crawl across the sacred grounds Of gods of their own imagining, watching us seek what they've already found. I hope only for silence as the echoes inside resound.

Each bated breath is frozen in time among the frost Beneath the morning star that guides the lost Each star reveals suspended prayers in the names of fallen gods Who’d have us bow to them Each breath an effigy of fears never expelled Hung in the air like shrines to glorify the unknown The gods to which we bow are the ones who already fell Hung by the noose of shortcomings that were their own Guided by hatred instilled within us since our birth We race the rising sun to where the sky opens first We are the offspring of a masochistic Mother Earth Resigned always to hunger, and always to thirst We are inheritors of a kingdom never earned The bastard sons of the unholy and the cursed Whether our sustenance is found in man or child, It never seems to be enough. We accept each gift granted to us by their tithes To an indifferent world abandoned by the just The memories of their deaths impressed upon our minds We seek to fill the emptiness as only we must Each carcass a frail recollection of the familiar swell Of famine in the stomachs of the ones who still survive To them, the instinct will still serve their needs well Strung from birth through the threads of their minds Guided by the delusions known to us since birth We race the rising sun to where the sky opens first We are the offspring of a masochistic Mother Earth Resigned always to hunger, always to thirst We are the shepherds of a world set to consume The parts of itself that fight for life beneath a sinking moon Whether or not our disciples come willingly We will ensure they know the truth that we have seen We’ll feast upon the fear and faith that keeps them weak And make them know the suffering of which only we can teach We are the primitive thoughts you wish to exhume As, from your empathy, you are further removed We are the constructs of the weak and confused The ones who, in their search for gain, never have anything to lose We are the death of all the peace that you knew Prepared to burn the world if there is something to prove Born of hatred passed Through the generations we’ve abandoned Now unearthed The living hosts of a world once entombed Guided by the delusions known to us since birth We race the rising sun to where the sky opens first We are the offspring of a masochistic Mother Earth Resigned always to hunger, always to thirst We are the bairn of these gods we once knew Made in their image to bring wrath on our brood We are the promise of an Earth soon consumed Suffocated by the weight of the doomed Prepared to burn the world if there is something to prove The living hosts of a world once entombed The living hosts of a world once entombed

I am awakened by the rising of my chest. As, through no choice of mine, I draw my first breath. The air hangs heavy with the woes of those left. To bear the consequence of a life spent awaiting death. This place seems smaller than I thought it would be, Worn at the edges as it wakes from its dream. Our gods laid to rest, While new imaginings of them take place, Pieces of the same mind rearranged in different shapes. Recycled whispers of a time before their world was made. The sky has opened, as Earth offers her womb Spilling reiterations, her failures now exhumed This place seems smaller than I thought it would be, Worn at the edges as it wakes from its dream Carried in the hearts of a civilization bound for death, Their own imaginings are all that they have left. Soil left to wither to ash as the weak are laid to waste, Meant only to feed a hunger that no flesh could sate. With every repetition of the cycle they perpetuate, The gnashing teeth around them grow ever more agape. This place seems frailer than I thought it would be, Prepared to crumble from beneath my tired feet. I am a wanderer of a path unraveling As I seek a destination that the living cannot see.

Cleansed, the sky’s womb Hangs open, empty and bare Atop the shoulders Of an Earth flooded and without air Like ants, it scatters All of this dead world’s bairn Each still convinced they matter In the arrogance they share Bones lean together Forming monuments to myths Vulgar tributes to the life we lived Before the coming of the abyss Cleansed, the chapels loom So vacant, free of life Beneath the silence of Each truth its priests would cry Like lambs to slaughter They sacrifice for nought Drowning their sons and daughters In the ignorance they’ve wrought The acolytes of an unraveled faith will live on And tread in the valleys where their congregants will rot I am but a witness to the undoing of our race Seeking higher ground and the ending of the rain Cleansed, the Earth entombed Sits lowly, empty, bare Beneath the emptiness Of a silent god’s blank stare Cleansed, the chapels loom So vacant, free of life Beneath the silence of Their father’s empty sky Words pour from the lying mouths Of prophets so devout Never again to be shut out They’re the last remaining sound Cleansed, the chapels loom So vacant, free of life Beneath the silence of Each truth its priests would cry Like lambs to slaughter They sacrifice for nought Drowning their sons and daughters In the ignorance they’ve wrought Droning to no one Their words drift through the dark Vulgar iterations of what’s lost In the teachings they impart I am but a worshipper of the void by which we’re graced Seeking higher ground in the sharing of my pain I am but a bard without the voice to recreate The horrors of the answers to the prayers we prayed Those quickest to kill will live that we’re maintained And we’re reborn, inheriting poisonous traits