"Submerged" treats the past as an active medium, not a memory the speaker can stand outside and describe. Water, shadows, ghosts, chains, and breathlessness all point to the same condition: old story and old selfhood keep pulling downward. The repeated image of being submerged is not decorative. It is the song's emotional law.

The music makes that law harsher because it keeps moving. A slower song might make drowning feel like stillness, but Gaerea makes it feel like a fast current with no surface. The circling middle section and final refrain return turn repetition into captivity: the speaker can move, scream, and endure, but every phrase comes back to the same depth.