The touch wasn't cold, the way I'd imagined a ghost would feel.It was alive—too alive—like the hum that hides inside every note before it's born.My pulse answered him in perfect time, two frequencies aligning until the space between them disappeared.
When I finally dared to look up, his eyes were inches from mine. The blue inside them wasn't color; it was movement, ripples of light shaped into memory.
"Three years," I whispered. "I thought you were dead."
"I was." The words came out soft, factual, without tragedy. "Then you started to play."
A tremor passed through the room. The lights above us flickered in sync with his breathing, brightening each time he exhaled. Outside the window, the rain hung motionless—each droplet frozen in air like a bead of glass suspended by invisible threads.
Time had stopped.
I took a step back, dizzy. "What is this?"
"Resonance," he said. "When two notes meet at the same frequency, they amplify each other. You called, I answered. The world made room for the echo."
The explanation made no sense, but every cell in my body believed it.I reached toward the window. My fingertip brushed one of the frozen raindrops. It quivered, sang a tiny metallic tone, and dissolved into mist.
I turned to him. "You're really here."
He nodded. "For as long as the song lasts."
The words hit me harder than any scream. I'd pulled him back—but only temporarily. A fragile miracle held together by vibration and will.
"Then I'll never stop playing," I said.
His expression softened, sorrow sliding through the beauty of his face. "That's not how it works, Lyra. The longer the resonance holds, the more it consumes you."
"I don't care."
He stepped closer until his forehead touched mine. The static around him softened, becoming warmth. "You always cared," he murmured. "That's why I could find you."
For a heartbeat, the city outside exhaled again. The rain resumed its fall, the hum of traffic returned—but quieter, distant, as if the world had been detuned by half a key.
He glanced toward the piano. "Play for me."
"I—my hands are shaking."
"Then let them shake. The music won't mind."
He moved behind me, the way he used to when we composed together, his presence wrapping around mine like sound around silence. I sat at the piano.
"E," he whispered.
I pressed the key. The note rang pure, glowing in the air.
"F."
Another note, trembling.
"G."
The motif. Ours.
As the final note faded, he laid his hands over mine. They felt solid now—warm, alive—and yet when I looked down, our fingers were slightly out of phase, like two film frames misaligned.
"You see?" he said. "Even now, we don't quite exist in the same measure."
I turned to him, desperate. "Then we'll change the tempo."
He laughed, and for a second, the world was exactly as it had been before he vanished.
Then the walls began to sing.
Low, continuous, harmonic—every surface vibrating with a resonance I hadn't written. The lights pulsed to its rhythm; the air shimmered; the piano strings thrummed on their own.
Adrian stepped back, eyes wide. "Lyra… what did you do?"
"I played," I said.
He looked at me as though I'd just opened a door that should have stayed closed.