The room was made of shadows. Black curtains moved like unsettled thoughts black furniture held their shape like unspoken vows the tall shelves overflowed with books that remembered what people forgot. The bed lay close to the glass terrace, and the terrace itself floor to ceiling was glass below it, the city glimmered 55 floors down, like a patient animal waiting to be named.
Hayal Urwah sat on the edge of the bed with a black diary open and a pen balanced in her fingers. She wrote without flinching.
"I stay awake because some wounds still demand an audit. Some people sleep after forgetting; I wasn't given that luxury. As nothing was given to me, nothing will be left to them peace least of all. From tonight, every turn of this story, every proof, every ending I will write it."
She closed the diary with a crisp snap, crossed the glass, and watched her reflection dissolve into the city lights. A smile too precise to be kind touched her mouth. Then she picked up her bag and left.
The black car slid out into the night. Her driver adjusted the mirror, then risked a glance.
"Madam, directly to the arena?"
"To the music," she said, eyes on the passing neon.
Her phone vibrated. She answered without hello.
"Ma'am?" The line carried the hum of a busy office. "This is Arisha from MythAndTheCity. The ad collaborators we discussed three brands have been calling non-stop. They want a meeting tomorrow. Should I book 11 a.m.? They're… insisting."
Hayal watched the city, voice measured. "We don't chase ads, Arisha. Ink doesn't beg."
A pause on the line. "Understood, ma'am. But they say they want in front section, first issue of the month."
"Tell them our pages are not real estate," Hayal said softly. "They are a graveyard and a birth ward. Only what deserves to live forever gets a plot."
"Should I still schedule?"
"Schedule," she allowed. "Eleven. One rule if they're selling illusions, I burn them at the doorway."
"Yes, ma'am."
"And Arisha if they ask what our rate is, tell them the price is truth. Cash is just the receipt."
Click. Call ended.
The driver said nothing. Some silences were not to be interrupted.
Lights rose like a second sky. Crowds thrummed. As Hayal stepped from the car, heels met marble one metronome, perfectly indifferent to the noise. The air changed. It always did around her.
Whispers sparked and spread.
"Isn't that her…?"
"Hayal. MythAndTheCity."
"She writes like madness."
"Madness with manners. I love that magazine no fluff, just veins."
"She scares me a little."
"That's why I read her."
She moved through security without a ripple, the kind of presence that isn't loud it's inevitable.
Inside, the stage pulsed. Farez stood in the pre-show glow young, magnetic, tuned to the crowd's hunger. In a different section of the hall rows away Mirha sat with her parents. Fans, admiring, but strangers to the Syeds beyond the name on the banner.
Mirha leaned in, whispering, "He's going to break them tonight, Mama. Listen to the sound check he's ready."
Her mother smiled. "Then clap like you mean it. He won't hear your heartbeat otherwise."
No handshakes, no family ties, no smiles exchanged between households. Just an audience and a stage.
Hayal watched from the edge of VIP, her expression unreadable, eyes learning the room the way surgeons learn scars.
During the interval, a server's tray clinked by. At the side table one glass of juice remained.
Hayal reached.
Another hand reached too.
Their fingers touched the same cold rim. A boy clear eyed, unexpectedly gentle. He stepped back, the instinct of courtesy already in motion.
"You take it," he said.
"It's fine," she replied, gaze steady.
"I insist."
She lifted an empty glass from the corner, poured the lone drink into two equal halves without breaking eye contact, then slid one toward him.
"Equal," she said. "The only taste that doesn't sour."
He stared a second too long caught, not by beauty, but by precision. She raised her half a fraction.
"Life changes flavour when you stop accepting crumbs," she added, and sipped.
He opened his mouth no words came. She was already walking away.
The house went dark. The first chord bloomed. Farez took the stage as if it had always been waiting for him. The crowd surged to its feet. In the distance, Mirha clapped until her palms stung her father whistled her mother's eyes shone. Fans only fans.
The Syeds Farez's parents and his brother watched from their own section, a private island of pride. Separate. Unintroduced. Unaware of Mirha at all.
Hayal sat very still, like a knife lying on velvet.
Sing, she thought. Build your cathedral of noise. I'll choose where to place the crack.
Song after song, light after light, until the last note floated and broke like sugar in hot tea
Backstage doors spilled people into the lobby. The Syeds gathered parents first, then two young men closing the circle around Farez in a rush of laughter.
"Bro!" The boy from the juice table barreled in, throwing his arms around him. "You killed it."
Farez laughed, pulling him tight. "I heard you yelling above the crowd."
"I'll keep yelling till I can't." The boy's voice was warm as oath. Another brother clapped Farez's shoulder; their father's eyes blurred with pride; their mother fixed an invisible crease on Farez's sleeve, as mothers do.
"Ayan," Farez said, cupping his cheek, "my loudest heartbeat."
So the boy from the glass had a name. And a bloodline. Ayan Syed.
Across the lobby, Mirha's family flowed with the crowd happy, anonymous. They did not approach the Syeds. The Syeds did not notice them. Two orbits, no crossing.
Ayan turned half-away searching. "There was a girl," he told Farez, scanning the exits. "Not from here. Like… thunder before rain." He smiled, confused at himself. "I should say thanks. She split the last drink with me."
"Find her tomorrow," Farez teased. "Tonight, you're mine."
"Always," Ayan answered. "Life or death."
They laughed, a promise disguised as a joke
Outside the glass doors, Hayal's reflection hung beside theirs for a breath families bright with victory, her face lit by a colder star. She opened her diary against the car roof and wrote a single line.
"Let them smile; storms raft on laughter."
She slid into the back seat. The driver glanced in the mirror.
"Home, madam?"
"Not yet." She watched the arena bleed its lights into the night. "Take the long road. I like to count the exits."
The car moved, silent as a verdict.
Somewhere behind, a boy searched the lobby for a girl who had already become a sentence.
And ahead, at eleven the next morning, three brands would walk into a meeting thinking money buys pages only to learn that on MythAndTheCity, pages buy souls.
———Chapter 01 Ends here——