Lyric

I watched the harbor turn to fire before I learned what mercy meant

The night they came my mother screamed my father vanished in the smoke

The shelters cracked the prayer flags burned the streets became a grave of ash

A child crawled out with empty hands and nowhere left to place his heart or name

They told me time would heal the wound but time just taught me how to hate

I wore the dark because the dark was all that answered when I called at night

The cockpit sealed around my grief and every lesson sharpened loss to flight

Until my name became a warning whispered through the enemy sky at dawn

Black wings over empty skies

I fly where all my yesterdays were buried without graves or songs or mercy

I tear through steel and fire and still no silence lets me rest at all tonight

They call me savior call me death but neither name can save me now from myself

The higher that I climb the less of home remains below the clouds and smoke

No dawn returns no wound forgives no victory brings me peace or sleep or warmth

Only black wings over empty skies still carrying a child who never escaped the fire

My comrades raise their fists and cheer the trails I carve across the storm

They see a hero in the climb a blade that never breaks or pleads for mercy

But every landing feels the same cold runway under colorless dawn and static

I count the living count the dead and never find myself among them at all

The enemy now turns in fear before my shadow cuts the cloud in silence

One burst of light one falling star and all their perfect lines collapse below

Yet every burning wreck reflects the child I could not save from fire

If justice lives in what I do then why does every night stay black and hollow

Black wings over empty skies

I fly where all my yesterdays were buried without graves or songs or mercy

I tear through steel and fire and still no silence lets me rest at all tonight

They call me savior call me death but neither name can save me now from myself

The higher that I climb the less of home remains below the clouds and smoke

No dawn returns no wound forgives no victory brings me peace or sleep or warmth

Only black wings over empty skies still carrying a child who never escaped the fire

I did not fall because I loved the dark

I fell because the light was taken first from me

And when the world refused to name my pain

I made a throne from ruin just to breathe and keep from breaking every night

Black wings over empty skies

Hear the loneliest cry beneath the triumph and the flame tonight forever

I won the right to haunt the air but never learned to live again below the noise

No hand can reach the shattered child still kneeling in the smoke and ruin there

No medal warms the frozen room no cheering drowns the names I lost or loved

So I keep rising through the dark because the dark still speaks my name with truth

Black wings over empty skies

And nothing waits for me below except the echo of what home once was before it burned away