Ashes of What We Were

You stand there cloaked in borrowed years,

Calling change a noble name

But I remember what we were,

Before you learned to bend the flame

You let the thunder spill the sky,

You taught the weak to make it burn

Now iron speaks where wings once ruled,

And still you say the world has turned

It isn’t simple, Isolde, no matter what you claim

The world did not stay waiting for us to remain the same

I won’t pretend the tide stood still, or history stood kind

We are what survives the fire… not what we left behind

[Isolde:] This is ruin you are calling change

A world where fire kneels to range

You opened the door, you set it free—

Now don’t you stand here blaming me

[Lim:] It is not ruin, it is truth

A turning age, a sharpened tooth

We cannot stop what has begun

We live beneath the same sun

But Donna…

Donna is different from the rest we knew

A human voice that doesn’t break when we move through

No fear, no blade behind her smile—

Just something neither of us can defile

Then answer me, old brother-ghost,

Who crowned the age of smoke and lead?

You speak like you were forced along—

But you helped build it instead

You could have ended all of this

Before the powder learned to speak

Why didn’t you kill Donna?

You had the chance when she stood alone

Tell me, Isolde of the deep green fire,

Why did your blade turn to stone?

[Isolde:] This is ruin you are calling change

A world where fire kneels to range

You opened the door, you set it free—

Now don’t you stand here blaming me

[Lim:] It is not ruin, it is truth

A turning age, a sharpened tooth

We cannot stop what has begun

We live beneath the same sun

But Donna…

Donna is different from the rest we knew

A human voice that doesn’t break when we move through

No fear, no blade behind her smile—

Just something neither of us can defile

“Vra’ka sorn elith ka’ren…”

“你不是不知道后果。”

(You know the consequences.)

…She is different.

Not carved from fear like the others I’ve known

She speaks to us without bowing

Like she’s never been shown a throne

I should have ended her story

Before it learned to grow

I agree.

Donna is unlike any human I have ever seen

There’s something unarmed in the way she stands

As if she remembers what we used to mean

And I feel it too…

That same unsettling truth—

Like the world cracked open,

And let something new break through

But Donna…

Donna is different from the rest we knew

A human voice that doesn’t break when we move through

No fear, no blade behind her smile—

Just something neither of us can defile

[Lim:] The world changed long before we agreed to it.

[Isolde:] And yet you still call it survival.

[Both:] If the change has a name [pause] it's Donna