The weeks that followed Starboy's release were anything but triumphant. What should have been a celebratory victory lap turned into a cold plunge back into the relentless machine of the music industry. The sleek confidence Alex wore in the video—the swagger, the sharp lines, the fire—now felt like armor discarded on the battlefield. In its place: pressure, doubt, and the looming threat of a legal war that could bring everything crashing down.
The cease-and-desist from Sting's publishing house had metastasized into a full-scale assault. What began as a quiet legal nudge had grown into a roar. The demands were bold, the language venomous. And the press was beginning to sniff blood.
Echo Chamber's nerve center—once a humble studio tucked into the Vance family home—had become a war room. Legal pads and whiteboards replaced guitars and synths. The dining table was now crowded with high-powered lawyers in tailored suits, speaking in clipped bursts of legalese that left Alex reeling. They spoke of torts and statutory damages, mechanical royalties and injunctive relief. But all Alex heard was the sound of his dreams being dissected.
"They're demanding eighty-five percent of all royalties on 'Lucid Dreams,'" said Marcus, the lead attorney, spreading out another stack of documents. "Past and future. They want a precedent. They want control. And they're threatening an injunction. If they file, the song could be pulled from every platform within days."
David Vance paced behind them, jaw clenched tight. His usual executive calm had curdled into quiet fury.
"This isn't about money anymore," he said. "It's a statement. They want to discredit us. Paint us as pirates. If they win this, every catalog owner in the industry will come knocking."
The weight of it all was crushing—and not just for Alex.
Jarad was unraveling. The headlines were merciless. Did Juice WRLD Steal His Biggest Hit?Is 'Lucid Dreams' Built on Stolen Sound? A storm of doubt clouded what should've been his breakout moment. He called Alex one night in a panic, his voice shaking.
"Bro, what the hell is going on?" he said, barely breathing between words. "They're saying I jacked the beat. People are calling me a fraud, man. I didn't— I swear I didn't—"
"I know," Alex said, voice low and calm, trying to anchor them both. "You didn't. You're not the thief here. I brought you that melody. I built that track. This is on me. Not you."
Jarad fell silent. Alex could feel the storm on the other end of the call, a young artist caught in the crossfire of corporate war. He knew that fear too well.
"I got you," Alex promised. "You just focus on your music. I'll handle the rest."
But even as he spoke those words, Alex felt the walls closing in. During one especially grim meeting, the legal team laid out the numbers. A settlement would be expensive, humiliating—but survivable. Fighting back? That was war.
And then, in the middle of the noise, Alex's gaze drifted to the other side of the room. There, on a separate whiteboard—untouched in days—was the Echo Chamber release schedule. The grid of upcoming drops. A calendar of creativity.
Harry. Alec. A blank slot.
A breath.
Then clarity.
"Stop," Alex said suddenly, cutting through the murmur of lawyers.
Heads turned.
He stood, walked over to the board, and stared at the empty space. It was like staring at a blank page and seeing the answer hiding in plain sight.
"We're not retreating," he said, voice cold and clear. "We're not going to let them dictate the story. While they come for our biggest hit, we're going to drop our most beautiful song."
He turned to his father. "We go high art. Surprise release. The two most soulful voices we have. Billie. Khalid."
David studied his son. What he saw wasn't a panicked twenty-year-old—it was a commander plotting his counterstrike.
"Show them what Echo Chamber stands for," he said.
Alex didn't wait.
He returned to his studio that night, unlocked a session file in the Codex he'd kept for the right moment—a delicate composition titled lovely. It wasn't made for charts. It was made for the kind of pain that didn't shout, but lingered. A song about beauty in sorrow, about the strange comfort in shared darkness.
He called Billie, Khalid, and Finneas the next morning.
The studio was quiet when they arrived. Everyone could feel the tension in the air—the lawsuit, the noise, the stakes.
Alex didn't waste time.
"I don't want a press release," he said. "I want a response. Something honest. For anyone who's ever felt stuck in the dark, but didn't want to be alone there."
He played the stripped demo—just a piano and a whisper of melody. No drums. No flash.
When it ended, the room sat in stillness.
Khalid gave a quiet nod. "It's heavy," he said. "But yeah… it's true."
Billie looked up, her eyes bright with something deeper than agreement. "Let's sing it."
The session that followed felt like a kind of prayer. Finneas laid down the skeletal piano track—melancholic, looping, bare. A single cellist came in to weave a line beneath it, mournful and rich, like a shadow that moved with the music.
Billie recorded first—her voice breathy, barely more than a ghost, every word coated in glass.
Then Khalid—his voice warm, tired, like a safe place to fall apart.
But it was the chorus that transformed everything.
"Oh, I hope some day I'll make it out of here…"
Together, their voices—hers like mist, his like earth—wrapped around each other. And in the merging, something new emerged: a shared ache, refracted through two different lives. It was more than a duet—it was empathy set to music.
As the final harmonies faded and silence returned to the studio, Alex looked around.
This wasn't just damage control. It was a reminder. A reminder that while the industry played games of profit and power, Echo Chamber still believed in something deeper.
Not spectacle. Not headlines.
But soul.
And this time, the whole world would feel it.