[Verse 1]
Twilight drapes the leafwork like a blackened veil,
Raven pads in loam and root, chest pressed to a locket of river-light.
Elowen's eyes lie glass-plate, voice split into winter-razors,
Ink-veins crawl the bark — a map of something older.
Runes bleed into moss and moon-powder; the air tastes of cold rain and iron.
A demon's laugh threads through branch and hollow, a beast that knows names.
[Pre-Chorus]
Raven breathes the name the locket keeps — Elowen, soft as moss on stone.
Raven presses nose to metal, remembers creek-splash afternoons.
Memory trembles like a spider's seam; the old-sound fits the fracture.
If Raven's howl finds the right seam, maybe the name will stitch what's torn.
[Chorus]
Raven, Raven — howl the old-name, call Elowen back from the dark.
Raven, Raven — teeth on chain, nose to skin, break the hollow's heart.
Raven, Raven — one raw hymn, one tether burning bright,
Call Elowen, call Elowen — drag her from the night.
[Verse 2]
The demon speaks in two voices at once — honeyed promise, rusted chain.
It feeds from Elowen's tongue and makes it sing empty hollows.
Raven scrapes at rotten stump, claws a carved sigil, sheds a silver charm.
A lick on fevered brow — salt tastes like summers, river-foam laughter.
One warm flash of memory splinters the creature's mirrored grin.
Still the coil tightens — glassy stare, teeth like prayer-beads.
[Pre-Chorus 2]
Raven finds the trick folded in old games: twig-snap, skipping-stone beat.
The rhythm of their first chase becomes a heartbeat-sigil under moonleaf.
Raven presses the locket’s cold face to a pulse, whispers Elowen until it cracks,
And bargains with the dark: take the bark, not the breath; take the shadow, not the soul.
[Bridge]
In the hollow of the grove, choir-echo and bone-wind clash;
Runes flare across ringwood, sap like ink and starlight.
The demon lashes with the taste of iron and caves,
Offers bargains in old tongues, grinds summer-names into gravel.
[Middle Eight / Sacrifice]
Raven clamps the collar in her jaw and bites the silver until it scores her tongue,
Renders a piece of herself — a thread of fur, a drop of stubborn blood —
Sets it in a carved circle where the root curls around the dark's mouth.
"Take this for the price," she tells the hollow, and the bone-wind leans close.
Her oldest bark becomes a thin, broken coin thrown into the deep groove.
The price is a scar across her throat of singing, a talisman traded for a life.
[Chorus — Climactic]
Raven, Raven — howl the old-name, call Elowen back from the dark.
Raven, Raven — teeth on chain, nose to skin, break the hollow's heart.
Raven, Raven — one raw hymn, one tether burning bright,
Call Elowen, call Elowen — drag her from the night.
[Outro]
Branches clap like old hands as the choir of leaves remembers their names.
Elowen exhales between bark and bone; the leaf-wind stitches shut.
Raven sits in rain of moonlight, locket warm against her chest,
And the grove keeps time with a pulse, a breathing, a promise that hope never rests.
