In the hush of twilight’s hold
Pedals spin fast, fleeing summer’s embrace
The store’s decaying front, a warning sign
Five boys enter its maw

Buried in shadows
Through labyrinthine aisles
A relic calls

“Come and play”
A whisper from the arcade
The neon glow lights the way
For the harbingers of
Summerhaven’s woe

“I’m the marrow in this machine
Neverending slumber
This prison holds me entombed in code
I, Malrakar, a digitronic wraith
Awoken by a rattling coin”

As they play
A darkness stirs the arcade
The neon glow lights the way
For the harbingers of
Summerhaven’s woe

This villainous 8-bit game
Malrakar now wide awake
The conjurer of
Summerhaven’s throe

“I am He
Born of Death
Wrath foretold
Free at last”

No name to its glitching form
No shape to its writhing crawl
Through the mist-woven pines, it slid
An ink-black stain where nothing belongs.

The demon’s roar, a symphony of screams,
Rending flesh from infant bones
Mothers screamed, fathers bled
As the quiet town lies gralloched on the hill

As they chase
This forgotten god of decay
And ravage the code to its frays
The boys prevail, as
Summerhaven mourns

The neon fades to grey

“Bound in circuits
Of pixelated wasteland
I linger and
Await another coinfall”