MistNovel - Read Web Novel Stories & Fiction Online

Mitchell Adam woke with a gasp, his heart hammering against his ribs as if trying to escape his chest. For a disorienting moment, he was adrift, unmoored from time and place, a stranger in his own skin. The ceiling above him was unfamiliar, a stark white expanse instead of the textured gray he was used to. The pale morning light streamed through floor-to-ceiling windows at an angle that felt fundamentally, impossibly wrong. His own body was a stranger’s vessel, lighter and leaner, coiled with a youthful energy that felt alien. He sat up, and the expansive penthouse suite spun around him. It was his, yes, but an earlier version of it, a ghost of a room decorated in a minimalist style he had discarded years ago as too cold, too impersonal.
No. Not years ago. Years from now.
The thought was utterly illogical, yet it resonated with a profound emptiness that yawned inside his chest. It was a hollowed-out space where something vital, something that defined him, should have been. He stumbled out of bed and into the cavernous en-suite bathroom, his reflection in the mirror stopping him cold. The face staring back was his, but it was the face of his past. The fine lines etched by years of ruthless negotiations were gone. The threads of silver that had begun to distinguish his temples had vanished from his dark hair. His jaw was sharper, less world-weary. He was twenty-five years old again. It was impossible.
His phone sat on the marble countertop. He grabbed it, his hands shaking with a tremor he could not control. The date on the screen confirmed the encroaching madness: March 15th, ten years in the past. His mind, usually a fortress of cold, hard logic, raced, desperately trying to impose order on the chaos. He remembered being older, his thirties a blur of relentless ambition that had built his company into a global empire. He remembered the deals, the betrayals, the victories. He remembered… what? The memories were phantoms, fragmented and incomplete, like a beautiful song played with half the notes missing, leaving behind only a painful, frustrating silence.
A melody drifted through the fog of his thoughts, hauntingly beautiful and steeped in a sorrow so deep it felt like a personal loss he could not name. He could not identify it, could not recall where or when he had heard it, yet the music carried an almost physical weight, settling in his chest like a stone. A woman’s face flickered at the very edge of his memory, blurred and indistinct, but he felt an unshakeable certainty that she was connected to the song, to this gaping void within him. Who was she? Why did the thought of her fill him with such an inexplicable sense of failure?
The questions followed him as he moved through his morning routine, an automaton going through familiar motions that now felt strange. His body felt different, stronger and more responsive, making the simple act of tying his tie or pouring coffee feel alien. At eight o’clock sharp, his assistant, Rebecca, called, her voice sounding younger, less harried than he remembered.
"Good morning, Mr. Adam. Your schedule is ready when you are."
He listened as she detailed his appointments, each one triggering a faint, unsettling sense of déjà vu. He had lived this day before; he was certain of it.
"You also have a video conference at two," Rebecca continued, her tone crisp and professional. "The subsidiary label is finalizing the contract with that new artist, the Jones girl. You asked to personally oversee the signing."
Jones. The name meant nothing to him, yet it stirred something in the hollow space inside his chest. The melody in his mind grew louder, more insistent, and with it came a flash of an emotion so intense it nearly buckled his knees: guilt. It was heavy, suffocating, and utterly inexplicable. For a split second, he felt the phantom sensation of a pen in his hand, the smooth weight of it as he signed a document that felt like a death warrant. His immediate, active goal was no longer the next quarterly report or a hostile takeover. It was to find the source of this melody and the origin of this crushing guilt. The Jones girl. Could she be the key?
He ended the call and pulled up her preliminary file. The photograph showed a young woman with arresting, asymmetrical features, one dark eye and one light, her expression a study in shy uncertainty. He read her history: nineteen, a musical prodigy, represented by her fiancé. The subsidiary had offered a standard, predatory contract. So why did he feel a sense of impending doom? Why did looking at her photo make the song in his head crystallize into something achingly, sorrowfully familiar?
The morning passed in a blur of meetings that felt like echoes. At one-thirty, Rebecca reminded him of the conference. He settled at his desk, pulling up the video feed. The signing should have been a minor footnote. Yet he could not look away.
The meeting room came into focus. On one side of a long table sat his executives. On the other, a young woman with mismatched eyes, her gaze downcast. Ariel Jones.
Mitchell leaned forward. The melody in his mind swelled, and for a heartbeat, he could almost hear words woven into the notes, a voice singing of shattered trust and talent stolen and sold. On the screen, someone placed a contract in front of her. The fiancé smiled, a picture of confident control. His hand moved to the intercom to tell Rebecca to cancel the contract, an impulse he could not explain.
Before he could speak, Ariel Jones looked up. Her gaze seemed to pierce through the screen and meet his. In that instant, the melody reached a powerful crescendo, and a ghost of a memory crashed over him with the force of a physical blow. A woman's hands covered in blood. The sick, cold satisfaction of profit built on the wreckage of a life. His own face, ten years older and infinitely harder, looking at a report detailing a dead artist’s posthumous catalog value.
Mitchell jerked back from the screen, his heart racing. On the video feed, Ariel Jones picked up the contract. He held his breath. Her expression shifted, a small, frigid smile touching her lips. Then she began to tear the contract apart. The chapter of his day he thought would be a footnote had just become the headline, and he knew, with a certainty that chilled him to the bone, that his life had just irrevocably changed.