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🌒 CHAPTER TWO – The Girl Who Lived in Smoke 🎶🔥
It's been one year since the fire.
A whole year, and the world still smells faintly of ash whenever Aria breathes too deeply.
She tells people she doesn't remember that night.
🖤 Lie.
Because she remembers everything.
The heat. The scream that wasn't hers. The way Eli looked at her before the flames took him.
No one found his body.
No one talks about the song.
Aria moved to a smaller town with her aunt — new school, new name, new life.
Every morning she wakes before dawn, heart racing, because she swears she hears it.
That same tune.
> 🎶 Light the fire, feed the flame… whisper the names the ashes claim…
She tells herself it's in her head.
Until today.
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🌫️ Morning, at Ridgeway High
The hallway smells of old paper and lemon cleaner.
Students shove past her, laughing too loud, the world moving on like nothing ever burned.
Aria keeps her earbuds in, music up — anything to drown the world out.
But between tracks, she hears it.
A hum.
She stops.
Someone at the far end of the hall is leaning against the lockers — a janitor, old and quiet, softly humming that same haunting melody.
Her blood goes cold.
> No. No, it can't be that song.
She walks faster, clutching her books, pulse hammering.
The tune follows. Echoes.
Like the walls themselves are remembering.
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🌑 After Class
Rain starts again. It always rains here.
Aria cuts through the courtyard, umbrella up — and stops.
Someone's sitting on the low wall by the fountain.
Head down. Hoodie soaked.
Humming.
That tune.
Her tune.
Her throat dries up. "Stop," she whispers — barely sound.
The person lifts their head.
Grey eyes.
The kind she's seen every night in her dreams.
> "Eli?" she breathes.
He smirks — the same crooked one that started a thousand rumors.
Only now, his skin looks a little too pale. His clothes, faintly burned at the edges.
> "Miss me, Fire Girl?" 🔥 he says softly.
"Because I never really left."
Lightning splits the sky. ⚡
And just like that — the humming stops.
Silence.
Only her heartbeat, and the faint smell of smoke that never really fades.
🖤🎶🔥
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