The Living Nightmare

[Intro]
Shadows stitch the ceiling
Clock hands carve the dark
Breathing feels like drowning
Eyes are open
World is warped
[Verse 1]
Footsteps in the hallway
But the house is made of stone
Pictures turn and face me
Every silence overgrown
Names I have forgotten
Scratch like branches in my head
I am walking
I am falling
Through a maze beneath my bed
[Chorus]
In the living nightmare
I’m awake inside the wound
Every whispered warning
Is a sermon from the tomb
If I tear my eyes wide
Still the walls begin to bend
In this living nightmare
Where the night will never end
[Verse 2]
Stairways loop in circles
Every doorway just repeats
Friends wear borrowed faces
Speaking lines between their teeth
Time dissolves in spirals
Clocks collapse and melt away
I am running
I am rooted
To the echo of today
[Chorus]
In the living nightmare
I’m awake inside the wound
Every whispered warning
Is a sermon from the tomb
If I tear my eyes wide
Still the walls begin to bend
In this living nightmare
Where the night will never end
[Bridge]
[Half-time
Choirs rising]
I see a child with my own eyes
Reaching out from shattered glass (shattered glass)
All the futures I denied
Crawl like serpents through the past
Will I ever find the doorway
Not a circle
But a line?
Or am I the ghost that’s haunting
Every version of my life? (of my life)
[Chorus]
In the living nightmare
I’m the question
I’m the blade
Every chosen silence
Built the prison that I made
If I face the horror
Will the waking world descend?
In this living nightmare
I will learn to be the end
[Outro]
Heart like ringing iron
Breath like breaking stone
If I must sleep in terror
I will carve a throne
From the living nightmare
I will rise
Alone (woah)

metal, Epic power / symphonic / progressive metal ballad; intro of clean guitars and piano under soaring male vocals, then a mid-tempo double-kick groove with choirs and string swells. Verses stay moody with tom-heavy drums and brooding orchestration; chorus explodes with big major-minor shifts, layered harmonies, and tremolo-picked leads. Middle section flips to odd-meter riffs and a shreddy guitar-keyboard duel, then returns to a final, higher key chorus and sustained, ringing outro chords., symphonic metal, progressive metal, power metal