The rain was not falling.It was suspended in the air, each droplet a bead of glass threaded onto invisible wires, swaying gently as though the whole world were caught in the middle of an intake of breath. Somewhere above the clouds, the blood-red moon pulsed in slow rhythm, like a beating heart muffled beneath skin.
Elias stood in the center of the opera house's grand stage, though "stood" felt generous — his knees trembled as though the floor itself were rejecting him. The boards beneath his feet were warped, curved upward in the middle like the ribcage of a drowned corpse.
The house was silent.No wind, no breath, no rustle of the audience's clothes.
Because the audience was not there.
Or rather — they were there, but they were wrong.
Rows upon rows of figures sat in the velvet seats, heads bowed, hands clasped on their laps, skin as pale as parchment. Their faces were covered not by masks but by sheets of paper, crinkled and blotched with black ink, the musical notation carved into their features like a second, alien face. From a distance, they resembled hymnals given human form.
And somewhere beyond them, in the shadows high above the box seats, the Conductor's presence lingered. Not visible. Not audible. Just there — a pressure on the spine, a whisper in the eardrum that dissolved before it could be heard.
Elias swallowed and looked down at his own hands. The bow of the violin was heavier than it had been in any other loop. No — heavier wasn't the right word. Denser. Like it was holding more than wood and hair. It pulsed, faintly, in time with the moon.
"Again," the Conductor's voice said — and this time, it came from everywhere. It was not a command so much as a sentence already decided.
Elias's first note was wrong.He knew it before it even left the string.
It hung in the air, a twisted sound, like a candle's flame catching a gust. At once, the audience lifted their heads in perfect unison. The sheets of music covering their faces shivered, as though something behind them had drawn breath.
He froze.
The second note came on its own, pulled from the violin like marrow from a bone. It was clearer, sharper — and it hurt. A hairline crack appeared in one of the thorned roses sprouting from the edge of the stage, and from that crack leaked something like molten silver.
A realization burned through him.The music wasn't just keeping the audience in place. It was feeding them.
He looked at the bow again — the density, the pulse — and understood too late. It was a vein, and he was the hand pressing the heart to pump.
The Conductor's presence grew heavier, the shadows knitting tighter above the stage. "Continue."
Elias almost stopped. Almost. But the opera house itself reacted — the rafters groaned like the bones of a sleeper shifting, the clouds outside pressed closer against the stained glass windows, their sheet-music shapes blurring into unreadable scrawls. The entire building would swallow him whole if he resisted.
He played.
Three notes.Four.
Each one made the roses grow — not upward, but inward, curling toward him, thorns dripping crystalized petals that cut tiny red crescents into the stage. The molten silver from the first crack began crawling toward his boots.
His breath came faster, heart pounding with the beat of the blood moon. The audience swayed in unison, the black ink on their sheet faces shifting — notes moving without hands to write them. The sound filled him and hollowed him in the same breath.
When he reached the seventh measure, something changed.
The suspended raindrops began to fall again.Not down — but up, streaming toward the ceiling in spirals, vanishing into the darkness. The air itself seemed to reverse. His lungs didn't know whether to inhale or exhale.
The Conductor stepped into view.At least, Elias thought it was him.
It was a silhouette shaped from the bones of instruments: violin necks, trumpet bells, organ pipes. Hollow cavities where eyes should be, and from within, the faint glow of red light in perfect rhythm with the moon's pulse. The figure's hands — if they were hands — were long, jointless bows of blackened wood.
"Final rehearsal," it said, though the words rang in Elias's skull without sound.
Elias took one step back. The roses reacted instantly — thorns erupted from the stage behind him, cutting off retreat. The molten silver climbed higher, licking at his ankles.
Something inside him — some quiet, stubborn splinter — whispered that this was the last loop. He didn't know how he knew. He just did.
He played the final bar.
The opera house shuddered. The ink-faced audience rose to their feet as one, and every sheet of paper ripped in half simultaneously, the sound like a thousand fragile bones snapping. Behind each mask was nothing. Just hollow, cavernous dark.
The Conductor's red-lit hollows leaned forward, impossibly close, the metallic scent of his presence filling Elias's nose.
"You play well when you're afraid."
Then the silver surged up and over him — and the world ended.