He was beside her.
They moved through streets twisted with rubble and ruin. Flames licked the walls of buildings that had been standing that morning and were dying now. Screams tore through the dark, sharp and metallic, mixing with the stench of blood and burning timber until breathing felt like swallowing something wrong. The way she breathed when she was running and afraid but refusing to let the afraid win. He ran… She ran…
Like there was somewhere to go. Like if they just kept moving the world would let them arrive somewhere safe. Glass shattered underfoot. Shadows stretched like hands across the ground. The city was folding in on itself and none of it mattered because she was right there and as long as she was right there everything else was just noise.
They reached the edge of a safe zone.
Relief came so fast it almost stopped him. His chest opened. His lungs finally took a full breath. He turned to her and she was looking back at him and for one single second the fire, the screaming, the whole burning world behind them went quiet.
Then she shoved him forward.
"Go." Her voice cracked on the word. Fragile and commanding at once. The voice of someone who had already decided something and would not be talked out of it.
He stumbled forward from the force of her hands on his chest. He turned back immediately. He always turned back. There was never a version of this where he didn't turn back.
But she was already gone.Unseen hands had come from the dark behind her and taken her so fast that one moment she was there and the next she simply wasn't. Not falling. Not running. Just gone. Swallowed whole by a darkness that had no business moving that fast.
Her scream ripped through the chaos.
It echoed off the burning walls. Tore through smoke and ruin. Rose above the screams of strangers and the crack of falling timber and the roar of fire eating everything it touched.
Then it faded.
Faded.
Until there was nothing.
Until there was only him. Standing at the edge of a safe zone. Alone…
He woke up with a start.
Sweat clung to his skin. Lungs heaving. The clock glared at him.
3:02 a.m.
Grunting, he sat up and ran a hand through his hair. He reached for the cigarette on the nightstand and lit it without looking. Inhaled. Let the bitter warmth settle somewhere in the center of his chest where the dream was still burning. Smoke curled around him and carried the weight of what he had lost, the way smoke carries things, quietly, without asking if you want it to.
He did not look at the window. He did not look at the city outside it. He sat in the dark of a room that had never felt like his and smoked and let the silence press in until it was the only thing in the room.
"Your presence," he said quietly. His voice came out low. Rough. Like something that had not been used in a long time. He said it to the empty room because there was no one else to say it to.
"Keeps lingering. Even after you disappeared." he added sadly.
The ember flared. Dimmed.
Nothing moved. Nothing breathed.
Only the echo of her hands on his chest, pushing him forward.
His phone lit up on the nightstand.
He looked at it for a long moment. Then picked up, said nothing.
The voice on the other end was quiet. The kind of quiet that comes from years of learning how to hold things without making noise about it.
"You had the dream.", The voice came in.
He looked at the clock again.
Silence sat between them. Long and heavy. The kind of silence two people share when they have said everything there is to say about a thing and none of it helped and they have stopped pretending that talking helps. Outside the penthouse window Luxara City breathed and glittered and went about its business, gold and glass and obscenely alive, unbothered by anything that had happened nine years ago.
"I found something." The voice was careful. Not excited. Careful. Like a man who had learned not to let himself feel things before he was sure they were real.
He took a slow pull from the cigarette. Waited.
"We have nowhere else to look."
He sat forward. "Where?"
"Stormlaks."
The name meant nothing to him at first, Then the man continued.
"S.I.L. We want you there when the next academic year begins."
He frowned. "You think she's there?"
"We don't know."
"Then what makes Stormlaks different from every other place we've checked?"
"Nothing. That's the problem."
Silence settled between them.
"It's our next option," the man said. "If she isn't there, we'll move on."
He looked toward the window. Luxara City was still awake beneath him, its towers lit against the night as if nothing in the world had ever gone wrong.
"When?"
"Next month. You'll have time to arrange everything before the students return."
He took another drag from the cigarette… A school.
After nine years, this was what they had come to. "Fine."
The man exhaled. "We'll send the details."
The call ended.
He lowered the phone and sat quietly,
Then he set it down and put out the cigarette, looking at the ceiling and letting himself feel the thing in his chest that he usually kept very far under everything else. The thing that had no name anymore because he had stopped letting it have one. It lived in him anyway. It had always lived in him. It lived in the dream and in the cigarette and in the particular quality of silence that followed mid 3am and it would not leave no matter how many years passed or how many cities he moved through or how many dead ends he walked away from.
He stood. Put on his jacket.
He paused at the door with his hand on the frame.
The room behind him was dark and still and full of smoke slowly thinning into nothing. He did not look back at it. He looked at the door in front of him and said the thing he said every time. The thing that had kept him moving when moving felt impossible. The thing that was less a sentence now and more just a sound his chest made when it needed to keep going.
"I'll find you"
He stepped out and pulled the door shut behind him.
7:16 A.M. | Veld City
The alarm had been ringing for nearly a minute before the hand beneath the blanket finally found the phone.
It missed.
The alarm continued.
The hand searched again, this time with more determination, and the noise stopped abruptly.
She opened one eye, stared at the ceiling for a moment, trying to remember why she had set the alarm in the first place. Then she saw the time on the screen.
7:16.
"No, no, no."
She sat up so quickly that the blanket fell to the floor.
Sunlight cut through the blinds in sharp stripes across the floor.
She groaned before she was fully awake. Her muscles already knew what her mind was still catching up to. A night on her feet did this. Made the morning feel like punishment for something she hadn't done.
The room around her was small, but she had made it hers. A narrow bed sat against one wall, a wooden chair held the uniform she had ironed the night before, and a shelf above her desk carried the few things she could not afford to replace. Her old headphones. Two photographs. A chipped mug Cass had given her after their first year of friendship.
The night at the bar replayed in her mind before she had even sat up properly. The hum of conversation, the clatter of glasses, the faint laughter that always had a sharp edge underneath it. She had worked quietly, poured drinks, collected tips, smiled when necessary, and remembered every judgmental glance. She had done this countless nights before, yet each felt heavier, longer, more exhausting than the last.
She dragged herself upright. Ran her fingers through damp hair. Eyes heavy with fatigue. A soft sigh left her before she could stop it.
She sat on the edge of the bed for a moment. Just a moment.
"Melinda." Her mother's voice floated from the next room. Soft. Warm. The kind of voice that had been the first sound she heard every morning of her life. "Are you awake?"
"Yes." She stood. Smoothed the covers behind her out of habit. Crossed to the wardrobe and pulled out what she needed. She moved through the small room the way you move through a space you know completely, no wasted motion, everything in its place, every action carrying the weight of a routine built from necessity and kept from choice.
She stopped in front of the mirror, grabbed the uniform and hurried into the bathroom.
By the time she came out, her hair was tied back, one shoe was on, and the other was nowhere to be found. She looked under the bed, nothing. She checked beside the wardrobe, still nothing.
Then she remembered.
The kitchen.
She rushed out of the room and nearly collided with her mother.
Her mother caught the cup in her hand before it fell.
"You are going to kill me one morning."
Melinda stopped.
"Good morning to you too."
Her mother gave her the look she reserved for situations in which Melinda was clearly wrong but not yet in enough trouble to deserve a lecture.
She was a tired woman in her early forties, though life had a way of adding years to people without asking permission. Her hands carried small scars from years of cooking, cleaning, washing and doing whatever work paid enough to keep their home running. She had raised Melinda with more determination than money, and there were days when the difference showed.
"You're late," she said.
"I know."
"You said that yesterday."
"And I was late yesterday too."
Her mother tried not to smile.
Melinda found the missing shoe beneath the kitchen table.
"I have to go."
Her mother held out a piece of bread.
"Take this."
"I'll eat later."
"You said that yesterday."
Melinda took the bread.
"You're becoming very repetitive."
"Someone has to be."
The smile disappeared from her mother's face when she looked at Melinda again.
"Did you check your email?"
Melinda knew what she meant.
For the past few months, the question had become part of their mornings.
S.I.L… Stormlaks International Luxury.
The school was the kind of place Melinda had grown up seeing from the outside. Its name appeared in newspapers, on scholarship lists and in conversations between people who never had to calculate whether they could afford transport home. She had applied to Stormlaks Institute of Luxury four months ago. She had rewritten the application eleven times. She had not told most people because most people would have laughed and she did not have the energy to manage their doubt on top of her own.
She knew the acceptance rate. She had looked it up enough times that the number lived in her head permanently. She knew what kind of people got in. Empire heirs. Old money. People whose parents made phone calls that opened doors. She was none of those things. She was a bar girl from a small apartment in Luxara city with old neat clothes and a mirror that didn't work.
But she had the grades. She had always had the grades. Her mother had insisted she try.
And somewhere beneath all the practical reasons, Melinda wanted it.
She wanted to know what it felt like to walk through those gates.
"I haven't checked yet," she said.
Her mother nodded.
"Check when you get to work."
Melinda reached for the door.
"I'll call you."
"Don't forget."
She smiled. "I won't."
Her mother watched her leave, then looked at the empty kitchen. For a moment, the apartment became very quiet. She had learned not to dream too loudly for her daughter. Dreams cost nothing at first. It was everything after that worried her.
7:41 A.M. | Veld Bus Stop
Melinda reached the bus stop just as the first bus pulled away.
She stood there, breathing hard, watching the back of it disappear into traffic.
"Perfect."
Someone beside her laughed.
She looked over.
A girl about her age was smiling at her.
"Sorry," the girl said. "You looked like you were about to fight the bus."
Melinda smiled despite herself.
"It started it."
The girl laughed and turned back toward the road.
Melinda's phone vibrated.
Cass.
There were very few people in Melinda's life who could make her smile simply by seeing their name appear on a screen.
Cass was one of them.
They had met three years earlier after Melinda took the wrong seat during an examination and Cass decided, within ten minutes, that they were going to be friends. Cass was loud, dramatic, fearless and possessed an almost supernatural ability to discover gossip before the people involved knew it was gossip.
Melinda answered the call.
"You're alive."
"Unfortunately."
"You sound tired."
"I woke up late."
"Again?"
"Don't start."
Cass laughed. "I have news."
"Good news?"
"Potentially life changing."
Melinda frowned. "What did you do?"
"Why does everyone assume I did something?"
"Because it's usually you."
"I'm offended." Cass did not sound offended. "Come to the bar early tonight. Before your shift. I need to tell you in person."
"Cass—"
"In person, Melinda. Some things cannot be said over a phone."
"You literally called me on the phone."
"Goodbye."
The line went quiet.
Melinda stared at her phone for a moment. Then she heard it.
Music. From somewhere behind her in the crowd. Just the opening notes. Just the first few seconds before the voice came in.
She knew it before the voice came in.
She knew it from the first note the way you know something that has gotten into you so deeply it has stopped being external.
DYNAMIC.
And then his voice.
~ I keep the light on for a ghost…. You left
~ But somehow stayed the most
~ Every room still holds your name (yeahhh)
~ I'm the only one to blame… Sooooo
~ I WILL BURN BURN IT DOWN X2
~ I'll burn it down and start again
~ But you'll still be there at the end oooooh
~ Still be there… Still be there… Be thereee
The crowd around her kept moving. The city kept making its noise. Somewhere a bus horn sounded two streets over. None of it reached her.
She stood in the middle of the bus stop with her bag on her shoulder and her schedule in her head and let the song do what it always did to her. Take everything practical and quiet it completely, make the calculation in her head dissolve, remind her that she was a person with a chest that felt things, not just a girl running numbers at a bus stop in Luxara city.
She had heard his voice for the first time two years ago. A clip someone reposted. Thirty seconds of a live performance from S.I.L's annual showcase. She had watched it four times before she even understood why she kept pressing play. Then she found the rest. The songs. The interviews. The footage of DYNAMIC performing in the S.I.L auditorium to a crowd that knew every word.
He was the kind of musician that made you feel like the song was happening inside you instead of outside you. The kind that made you suspicious because nobody's voice should be able to do that to a stranger. And yet.
Everybody knew DYNAMIC. Everybody knew him. The band that came out of S.I.L and made the kind of music that got under your skin before you gave it permission. And everybody knew the other one too. The sports director. The athlete. The one whose name showed up in headlines attached to words like record and extraordinary and untouchable.
S.I.L produced people like that apparently. Put them in the same building and let them become things the rest of the world talked about.
She was still thinking about this when the bus arrived.
The crowd surged forward. She moved with it. Found a spot near the door and held her bag close and watched the city pass through the window as the bus pulled away from the stop.
Her phone buzzed again and she looked at the screen.
Her heart jumped again, making it oblivious to Cass "Oh, no."
Melinda looked at her phone.
"What?"
"He's playing."
"So?"
Cass laughed.
"You have that face."
"What face?"
"The face you make when your imaginary husband starts singing."
"He is not my imaginary husband."
"You watched the same performance fourteen times."
"It was a good performance."
"You paused it."
Melinda looked away.
The song continued around them, warm against the noise of traffic and morning voices.
There was something about his voice she could never explain. Maybe it was the softness beneath it. Maybe it was the way he sounded as though he understood something he had never said aloud.
She had never met him.
She knew that.
She also knew she had absolutely no business smiling at her phone like this.
Cass was still laughing.
"Anyway," she said, "check your email."
Melinda's smile faded.
"Why?"
"Just check it."
The bus arrived.
People began moving.
Melinda climbed aboard, found a seat near the window and opened her email.
There was one unread message.
Stormlaks International Luxury.
Her fingers stopped.
For a moment, she simply stared at the screen.
Then she opened it.
Cass's voice was still in her ear.
"Melinda?"
She didn't answer.
Her eyes moved slowly across the message.
Her mouth opened.
Outside the window, Luxara City moved past as if nothing had changed.
But Melinda sat perfectly still.
She had spent months waiting for that email.
Now that it was here, she was suddenly afraid to read the rest.
END OF CHAPTER ONE
KEDA