Mia's POV
The stage is shaking under my feet.
I keep singing anyway because that's what you do when you're desperate. Twenty people stare at their phones while I pour my heart into a cover song I've performed a thousand times. Nobody claps. Nobody even looks up.
This is my life now. Thirty-two years old, singing at mall openings for three hundred dollars.
"Thank you so much—" I start to say, forcing a smile that hurts my face.
That's when I hear it. A sharp CRACK like breaking bones.
The wooden stage splits right down the middle. My stomach drops as the floor disappears beneath me. I'm falling, arms flailing, microphone flying from my hand. Time slows down in that horrible way it does when you know something terrible is happening and you can't stop it.
I don't scream. I'm too tired to scream.
As I fall, my life doesn't flash before my eyes. Just one moment. One single, terrible moment from ten years ago.
The audition. The tea Sophia made me. My throat closing up. Everyone laughing.
That's when everything went wrong. That's when I lost my chance.
I hit the ground hard. Pain explodes through my body, but it's distant somehow, like it's happening to someone else. Blood pools warm beneath my head. The mall ceiling lights blur into stars.
Is this really how I die? On a cheap stage, singing for people who don't even care?
My last thought is bitter and small: I wish I could do it over.
Then—darkness.
Cold.
Nothing.
BEEP. BEEP. BEEP.
My eyes snap open.
I'm staring at a ceiling. Not the mall ceiling. A different one. Cracked plaster, water stains in the corner. I know this ceiling. I stared at it every night for three years.
This is my old apartment. The one I lived in when I was twenty-two.
My heart starts pounding. I sit up so fast my head spins. I'm in my old bed with the lumpy mattress and the blanket with the coffee stain. The alarm clock on the nightstand shows 6:47 AM in angry red numbers.
But that's impossible. I got rid of this alarm clock ten years ago.
I look down at my hands. They're smooth. Young. The scar on my right palm from the broken glass incident three years ago—it's gone. My hands look exactly like they did when I was in my early twenties.
No. No, this isn't real.
I stumble out of bed, legs shaking, and crash into my tiny bathroom. The mirror shows a face I haven't seen in ten years. Twenty-two-year-old me stares back—no dark circles, no tired lines around my mouth, no gray hairs I'd started finding last month.
I touch my face with trembling fingers. The reflection touches back.
"I'm dreaming," I whisper. "I hit my head and I'm dreaming."
But it feels too real. The cold tile under my bare feet. The dripping faucet I never got fixed. The crack in the mirror from when Sophia accidentally hit it with her hairbrush.
Sophia.
My phone buzzes on the bathroom sink. I grab it with shaking hands. The screen shows June 15th.
June 15th.
That's tomorrow. That's the day before the audition that ruined my life.
I scroll through my messages, fingers numb. There's a text from Ethan sent last night: "Hey babe! Can we meet up? Want to talk about that song idea you mentioned. The one about midnight? Could be perfect for my demo "
I know this text. I got this exact text in my first life. I met him the next day and showed him "Midnight Echo." Two months later, he released it under his name and it went viral. I got nothing.
Another text from Sophia: "SO EXCITED for your audition tomorrow! I'll come over early with my special tea. You're going to be AMAZING! "
The special tea that made my throat swell. The tea that destroyed my voice right before I went on stage.
My phone slips from my hands and clatters into the sink.
This isn't possible.
But the evidence is right here. The date. The messages. My young face in the mirror. Everything is exactly the same as it was ten years ago.
I died on that mall stage. I know I died. I felt it.
So how am I here?
My breathing comes faster and faster. Is this heaven? Hell? Some weird in-between?
Then understanding hits me like lightning.
I went back.
I don't know how. I don't know why. But somehow, impossibly, I've been sent back to the day before my life fell apart.
Ten years of knowledge floods my brain. I know every person who betrayed me. Every stolen song. Every missed opportunity. Every trap waiting to spring.
And I'm standing here, twenty-two again, with the chance to change everything.
My reflection stares back at me, and slowly, very slowly, I start to smile.
"Sophia wants to bring me tea?" I whisper to my reflection. "Ethan wants to 'collaborate' on my song?"
I think about the breeding contract in my first life. The humiliation. The poverty. Dying alone on a stage built from cheap plywood.
My smile grows wider, sharper.
"Not this time."
I have one day to prepare. One day before the audition that changes everything. In my first life, I was naive. Trusting. Stupid.
Not anymore.
I'm about to walk out of the bathroom when my phone buzzes again. I pick it up, expecting another message from Ethan or Sophia.
But the name on the screen makes my blood run cold.
UNKNOWN NUMBER
The message says just three words:
"I know what you are."
My hands start shaking so badly I almost drop the phone again.
Nobody knows I died. Nobody knows I came back. Nobody can possibly know.
So who just sent this message?
And what do they want?