Part A – https://youtu.be/wg-dXsSXHbU
Part B – https://youtu.be/S3eVHa_S1yQ
Part C – This Video
[Intro]
You have heard how the banners drowned. Now hear how one did not. Sing the two the world cast out, the shield, the mercy, and the city that remains.
[Verse 1]
“Let them rot,” the Council said, and not one lord said no, and shipped us to Ar-Numath, where the salt and silence grow: two disgraces at the world’s end, in a harbor left to rot; the house that named the Deceiver, and a priest the temples forgot. Kaelen kept the scorched black banner; Oreleth kept the elder dead. The flag the fire could not finish, and the faith no temple read. They meant it for forgetting. They meant it for a headstone. They did not care what died out there. They left us all alone.
[Pre-Chorus]
Remember every hand that signed. Remember every lie. Remember they sent the best of us to the far shore to die.
[Chorus]
We were sent here to die forgotten
we remain here to remember!
The grave they gave us holds a city,
and the drowned world’s only ember.
[Verse 2]
Then the far white flash at midday, and the sea drew back its breath, and the horizon rose to take us — a wall of water, crowned with death. No sea-wall stops what swallowed mountains. The garrison turned to flee. But Oreleth walked the rampart out — alone — to face the sea.
[Verse 3]
He was a blind man cast from Numinar for the truth he would not hide: he had stood in the great sanctuary and named the omens lies when every priest who had his sight believed them with his eyes. They stripped his rank, they stripped his rites, they took his name and creed, and shipped him to the exiles’ harbor, where no man paid him heed. He could not see the wave that came — and still he did not flee. He raised his hands against the dark and faced the rising sea.
[Verse 4]
No god of Numinar would answer — not one voice, not one sign — so he called the elder powers, the first and eldest line. He spoke no name we knew, in words no living tongue had heard, and the old forgotten godhead woke, and answered to his word.
[Verse 5]
Then light leapt from the water’s edge and braced across the bay — a tower shield of burning dawn that would not break away. Three times the sea came down like hammers. Three times the great light rang like a struck blade over the harbor — and the old, old power sang. And the third wave broke, and slid away, and the ash came down like snow, and the light stood watch above the bay until the sea lay low.
[Verse 6]
The last light guttered out. And then the blind man sank to knee, and then to stone, and then no more. He had given all to the sea. They ran to lift him from the wall; they called him, and they prayed — and all he said, and all he’d say, was only: “A fair trade.”
[Verse 7]
Then sails came crawling from the dark, for the land-roads ran to sea: the broken banner-companies, with nowhere left to be, and — strangest sail in all the world — the Numinarian poor, who trusted the one house of Ar that never marched to war.
[Verse 8]
Old Kaelen at the harbor-chain gave the order they still keep: he lowered it for every sail, for every soul upon the deep. “The Deceiver made us enemies” — hear the Mercy of Arn — “we will not do his work for him one hour past this dawn.”
[Verse 9]
They raised a city up the cliffs, half banner-tower, half dome, and gave it one name with two hearts, for the two who called it home: Ar’num — “New Ar” to the scholar — but the harbor knows its own: Ar and Num. The sword, the psalm. The fist that learned to stay. Two nations that the Deceiver drowned — one people to this day.
[Refrain]
The sword-arm of the drowned world lives, but lives now by the tide, and the praying hands of Numinar pray on at the soldier’s side.
[Chorus]
We were sent here to die forgotten
we remain here to remember!
The grave they gave us holds a city,
and the drowned world’s only ember.
[Bridge]
On the Warden’s wall two things are hung, for every child to know: the one banner that did not drown, and an empty frame below. The frame is bare so none forget; the name is ash so none may call. And over the harbor gate, the shrine of Oreleth guards it all.
[Outro]
They sent us here to die forgotten. We remain. We remember. We are the last home of Ar. We are the last home of Numinar, the two the Deceiver could not drown, standing where the world was brought down. And the banner stands upon the wall, and does not fall.
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