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Ariel Jones died at twenty-nine, a murder set to music. The last sensation she knew was the rough, calloused texture of Edward’s hands tightening around her throat, a brutal final note to their toxic duet. A specific lyric from her own song, the one that should have made her famous, played on a sickening loop from the studio speakers, its melody about a gilded cage becoming a suffocating, literal truth. Through the graying haze of her fading vision, past the bursting spots of painful light, she saw Esther’s face. It was not a mask of sorrow or shock, but one of pure, twisted satisfaction, an expression of triumph that was seared into Ariel’s final moment of consciousness.
Now, a gasp tore from her lungs, sharp and ragged, a breath she should not have been able to take. She was not on the cold floor of a locked recording studio, the scent of soundproofing foam and stale coffee in the air. She was in her childhood bedroom, a place she thought she had escaped forever. The air, thick with the cheap lavender air freshener her stepmother, Margaret, favored, filled her lungs. Worn posters of long-dead composers, their faces stern and knowing, stared down at her from the floral-papered walls. A disorienting wave of vertigo washed over her as the visceral memory of her death, the crushing pressure on her windpipe and the frantic, useless struggle, clashed with the soft, lumpy reality of the worn quilt beneath her fingers. Her heart hammered against her ribs, a frantic, impossible drumbeat.
Her phone glowed on the nightstand. With a trembling hand that felt strangely smaller and more delicate than she remembered, she reached for it. The screen lit up the predawn darkness, displaying a date that made her blood run cold: March 15th. She was nineteen again.
Ten years had vanished like smoke from a snuffed-out candle. The memories of that lost decade, however, did not fade. They crashed over her, a tidal wave of perfect, agonizing clarity. Every stolen composition, every casual humiliation, every calculated betrayal that had paved the road to her murder burned anew in her mind. She remembered the slow, creeping realization that the two people she loved most, the man she had promised to marry and the woman she had tried to love as a sister, were systematically dismantling her. Most vividly, she remembered the final, chilling moment Edward looked down at her, his love-struck mask gone, and decided she was more valuable to him dead than alive.
Ariel sat up, forcing her breathing to steady, to even out. The girl who once cried herself to sleep in this very room, the timid people-pleaser who would have done anything for a scrap of affection, was a ghost. In her place sat a woman who had survived her own murder and been granted the rarest of impossible gifts. This was not a dream. This was a second chance, an encore she would not waste.
She slid from the bed and crossed the room to the small vanity mirror. Her reflection showed features that had always been a source of quiet discomfort for her stepfamily. A pair of striking, asymmetrical eyes stared back, the left a pale, luminous amber and the right a deep, dark brown. It was a genetic legacy from a father she barely remembered. Her black hair, catching reddish highlights even in the dim light, fell in natural, untamed waves. These features, which Margaret’s constant passive criticism and Esther’s backhanded compliments had taught her to see as flaws, now felt like a declaration of self. They were a part of her that Edward and Esther could never touch, could never steal or claim as their own.
Today was the day. She knew it with a chilling certainty that settled deep in her bones, a cold, hard stone in her gut. Today was the day of the contract signing, the event that would chain her to the subsidiary label owned by Mitchell Adam. It was the first link in the long, heavy chain Edward and Esther had forged to steal her life’s work and, ultimately, her life. Back then, at nineteen, she had been so full of naive hope, so blindingly desperate to believe Edward’s promises of a shared future and Esther’s saccharine-sweet support. What an absolute, tragic fool she had been.
Her phone buzzed on the nightstand, the sound unnaturally loud in the quiet room. A message from Edward. Can't wait to see you sign your future today, babe. You're going to be a star. A bitter, acidic nausea rose in her throat. She set the phone down, face-first, and moved to her old digital keyboard, its keys yellowed with age and endless hours of practice. Her fingers found middle C, and the note rang out, clear and pure. A soft, gentle blue erupted behind her eyes, a cascade of silent color only she could see. Her synesthesia, the strange and wonderful condition that allowed her to see the architecture of music, had made her a prodigy. It had also made her a target.
Her fingers began to move, muscle memory guiding them through a haunting, complex melody she had composed in her previous life. It was a piece Edward had dismissed as "too complicated," only to later claim it as his own breakthrough composition after her death. The music painted the darkness with streaks of defiant violet and triumphant gold, of angry crimson and cold, sharp silver. This was hers. All of it. This time, she would not let them take a single note.
When the final chord faded, Ariel stood. She began to prepare for the day ahead, her movements deliberate and precise. She chose the same modest blue dress she remembered wearing to the first signing, a costume for the role she had to play. Everything needed to appear normal until the precise moment she chose to detonate their plans.
Her stepmother’s voice, sharp and perpetually irritated, sliced up the stairs. "Ariel! Breakfast!"
The sound made her jaw clench, but she smoothed her expression into one of meek compliance. She descended the stairs to a scene perfectly preserved in her memory. Margaret stood with her back turned at the stove, her posture a monument to rigid disapproval. Esther sat at the table, a picture of effortless beauty, scrolling through her phone. She looked up as Ariel entered, her smile pure poison honey.
"There she is," Esther said, her voice a practiced melody of false affection. "Our little musical genius. Big day today, isn't it?"
Ariel met her gaze, making her own smile reach her mismatched eyes. "I'm excited," she lied smoothly. "Thank you both for making this happen for me."
Esther’s smile widened, completely oblivious that she was looking at a ghost with a perfect memory and a score to settle. "Of course we support you," Margaret said from the stove, not bothering to turn around. "Family helps family. Even when..." The unspoken words, the familiar weight of her otherness, hung in the air. Even when you're not really family. Even when you're a freak.
Ariel had heard them all before. She ate her breakfast in silence, playing the part of the grateful, awkward charity case. Inside, she was a predator, patiently counting down the hours until she could burn their world to the very ground.