MistNovel - Read Web Novel Stories & Fiction Online

The roar of fifty thousand voices coalesced into a tidal wave of sound, a physical force that crashed against the stage and fed on the synchronized laser light show. The pulsing beat of the synthesizer vibrated up from the stadium floor, a synthetic heartbeat that shook the very bones of the capital. Victoria Alston stood at the center of it all, a still point in the hurricane of her own creation. Her body moved through the intricate choreography of her hit song, "Echo," each step and gesture so practiced it had become instinct, a language she spoke more fluently than words. The stage extended like a spear point deep into the crowd, and she owned every inch of it, from the roaring front row to the distant, glittering seats that touched the sky.
Her voice soared over the final chorus, each note a carefully crafted weapon designed to bend the very air. The lyrics spoke of a love that reverberated through time, an echo that could never be silenced. It was a bitter irony, singing about an eternal connection in a world where she had none. This was what she did best, what every headline and award show proclaimed she was born for. Victoria Alston, the half-fae pop icon whose voice could make you weep, or dance, or fall in love. Tonight, Zenith City, the gleaming heart of the new global monarchy, belonged to her. In the highest corporate boxes, shielded behind polarized glass, sat the newly minted oligarchs, their presence a quiet assertion of ownership. Her performance was not just art; it was a tribute, a required spectacle for the regime that saw her as its most valuable cultural asset.
But it is all empty, she thought, the words a silent counter-melody to the song. She hit the final, stratospheric note, her arms spread wide to embrace the manufactured adoration. Every single face in this crowd, every light, every scream, and I am still alone. The thought was sharp and cold, a shard of ice in the heat of the performance. She remembered her manager, Simon, his face a tight mask of anxiety backstage. "This is Zenith City, Tori," he had hissed, his voice low. "The Council is watching. Everything has to be perfect." For him, she was not a person but a project, and tonight was a critical performance review.
The pyrotechnics exploded on cue, a deafening crack followed by a shower of gold and silver sparks that rained down like shattered stars. Her management had insisted on the extra effects, a dazzling display for the capital's elite. She spun, her bodysuit, embroidered with a thousand slivers of crystal, catching and fracturing the light into a million tiny rainbows. The crowd screamed louder, their devotion a physical pressure against her skin, a demanding energy that she absorbed and reflected but could never truly feel.
That was when the world fractured.
The stadium lights, a constellation of controlled brilliance, suddenly blurred. They streaked into violent lines of color, smearing across her vision like wet paint. The music distorted, the soaring synth melody stretching like melting plastic until the beat devolved into a heartbeat, a slow, thunderous, and alien rhythm that pounded in her ears. Victoria’s own heart hammered against her ribs in a frantic, terrified counterpoint. Her vision shattered completely, the faces of the crowd dissolving into a mosaic of light and shadow, and then it reformed into something else, something ancient and terrible.
Fire. Not the clean, controlled flames of stage pyrotechnics, but a wild, hungry conflagration. It consumed a city of black stone, licking at impossible towers with tongues of orange and crimson. The sky was not blue or black but a roiling ceiling of greasy smoke that tasted of ash and hot metal. She felt the slick, damning warmth of blood on her hands. She looked down and saw them, her own hands, yet not. They were pale and elegant, adorned with rings of bone and silver, but coated to the wrists in cooling blood. A phantom weight pulled at her shoulders, and she felt wings, massive and dark as a starless midnight, unfurl behind her, casting vast shadows over a battlefield of broken bodies and shattered armor. A crown rested on her head, not of gold or silver but of living flame that burned with a cold, white light, its heat a familiar, comforting weight upon her brow.
And a voice, a man's voice, low and broken with a grief so profound it echoed in the marrow of her bones, whispered directly into her soul, a thought that was not her own.
"Forgive me."
The vision struck her with the force of a physical blow. Victoria’s knees buckled, her muscles turning to water. The microphone, slick with sweat, slipped from her numb fingers. It clattered against the stage grill, the sound lost in the feedback that shrieked through the stadium speakers, a sound of pure electronic agony. The stage rushed up to meet her, the world tilting on its axis. The last thing she heard before the darkness swallowed her whole was the crowd’s unified roar of adoration, twisting, changing, and transforming into a fractured chaos of confusion and rising, terrified screams.