Pathways to Annihilation

(Death metal – vague, metaphorical, non-descriptive)

Intro

(Low, distant growls, dissonant riffs building)

Beneath the veil...

The weight shifts.

Something stirs

In the space between.

Verse 1

Footsteps without feet

Trace the lines that never held.

What was upright bends

Toward the pull that has no name.

A breath drawn inward

Folds the edges of the frame.

Nothing answers back—

Only the sound of its own refrain.

Chorus

Pathways to annihilation

Open without doors.

Every step confirms

What the silence already knows.

No return is written

In the marks that fade as they form.

We walk the narrowing

Until the walk becomes the form.

Verse 2

The center does not hold

Because it was never placed.

What gathers gathers

Until gathering is the weight.

A thread pulled taut

Unravels the hand that pulls.

All directions lead

To the same unfinished fall.

Chorus

Pathways to annihilation

Widen as they close.

Every turning reveals

The turning was the road.

No witness remains

To measure what has passed.

The path consumes its walker

And the walking does not last.

Verse 3

Names dissolve before they land

On the surface they were meant to mark.

What circles circles

Until the circle is the only mark.

A shadow cast by nothing

Still darkens what it does not touch.

The measure of the measure

Is measured by its own unmeasured loss.

Verse 4

Between the held and the holding

A gap opens that was always there.

What ends continues

In the form of its own forgetting.

No voice remains to name it

When the naming is the thing that fades.

The path remembers nothing

Of the ones who thought they made it.

Chorus

Pathways to annihilation

Open without doors.

Every step confirms

What the silence already knows.

No return is written

In the marks that fade as they form.

We walk the narrowing

Until the walk becomes the form.

Bridge / Breakdown

(Slow, crushing, low growls)

No origin.

No terminus.

Only the motion

That forgets itself.

What ends

Was already ending.

What remains

Is the remainder of the end.

Outro

(Influenced by ancient Indian concepts – abstract, metaphorical)

Kala turns without turning.

Maya folds into its own reflection.

Shunya swallows the names that tried to fill it.

Pralaya without sound.

The yuga closes

On the absence of a witness.

Tamas settles

Where the light forgot its edge.

Nothing is released.

Nothing is held.

Only the path

That was never walked

Remains.

(Final riff collapses into low drone and silence)