Archspire Involuntary Doppelganger Lyrics

Dead lives rive
From my human hide

When the cult had come for me
I could have got away, but didn't
I couldn't be the one to cause this any longer
Had it been a day or a year inside this skin? I could not tell
The faces I had captured over centuries took hold
I became a kind of hunter, eating pelts of pleading meat
To acquire their appearance, taking their form
With will alone, alive and crawling out of me to catch its prey
Shed you foreign poison peltry, take the rind you want
Seen to be a wicked omen
Despite attempts to hide my live birthmark
Crown of a dark demon tar
I'd taken back with me from the other side
There is no god for if there was then how'd this evil take me?
It seeped and crawled its way along my face as mother wept

Stealing identities from every skin it sees
Growing with urgency

When he tried to cut it off, many a time to no avail
It would take my livid father's manic features
Laughing at him as he tried to hack them off his son
Knowing that he could not end my life, he took his own
Mother mourned the death of him and knew that many more would follow if I didn't leave right then
Heading out into the wood, I promised I would never come back
I thank the dead that she knows not what I have become

Taking over adolescent tendencies to feed, to hunt, to kill, to change
Decades take me deep into the curse's endless undertow
There is no time or end behind this epidermal prison
My thread of youth imprisoned, tortured by immortal victims I am the involuntary doppelgänger

I cannot stop it, my skin is alive
All of the time I've spent inside it
I never thought it could be calling out to any other
Involuntary doppelgänger
Had it grown bored of its feed or gained knowledge with time?
Whatever the change had been, I felt it emanating information
Had it tried to send a beacon
Warning them to stay away?
I heard the voices calling back
Involuntary doppelgänger
Had it tried to send a beacon
Warning them to stay away?
I heard the voices calling back
Involuntary doppelgänger

One last face
It had to acquire before it's caught
The menace cloak
Found her still alive and skinning bodies of her own

It appeared she had done the same as I for all this time
To see her son again, and there I stood
The cloak of others made her impossible to recognize
She carved me like any other martyr of our curse
When the cult had breached our cabin
Taking me to be a random victim of the doppelgänger
Heading out into the woods, I promised I would never come back
I thank the dead that she knows not what I have become

Taking over adolescent tendencies to feed, to hunt, to kill, to change
Decades take me deep into the curse's endless undertow
My tongue speaks in a cadence that only A.U.M. can decipher
Void of bidding heading out a very heated inner wreathing
Of a demon with intent to animate and be gone

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