Intro
Forge is cold at four, ash sitting in the grate
Three triangles I hammer into every iron plate
Daddy called it a season, said the mine picks when it's ready
I just make the markers so the names don't come out heavy
Verse
Coal town sky the color of a bruise that never heals
Sixteen men went under 'fore the whistle sealed the deal
I was ten years old counting boots outside my door
Learned to read the silence better than the scripture from before
Daddy took the tongs at twelve, I took 'em at fourteen
Said a smith who fears the fire never gets the iron clean
Every winter mine floods deep, they call the season by its name
Valknut season, when the mountain settles every claim
I don't mine the coal no more, I mark the ones it took
Three triangles locked together, no need to read a book
Odin's own design for the warriors laid to rest
I stamp it on their headstones, cold iron on the chest
Momma kept a candle lit for every man gone missing
Now I keep a ledger where the names are cold and listing
Forty plates last autumn, sixty-one the year before
Every hammer strike's a prayer nobody's praying for
Chorus
It's valknut season, mountain calling in its debt
Every name I carve is one I'll never let forget
Three knots for the fallen, one for the ones who stayed
Iron don't lie about the price that gets paid
Verse
Twenty years at the forge, my knuckles look like bark
Hands that shaped a hundred markers holding back the dark
Mine closed in the spring, said the coal ran dry at last
But the widows still walk past my shop and touch the iron of the past
Boy comes by on Tuesdays, wants to learn the trade
Asks me why I keep the same design, never get it changed
Told him every knot's a door, three ways a man can fall
Courage, or the sacrifice, or silence — hall still takes them all
I've buried more good men than the church has buried saints
Every eulogy's a hammer strike, no different, no restraint
Black lung took my brother slower than the roof it took the rest
Coughed his final breath out clutching iron on his chest
I don't blame the
