Sejin wakes in a bed floating in black water. A slow, steady tick… tock… echoes from nowhere. She coughs — the water tastes like old music paper.
She's still wearing her concert dress from the night she failed her final recital.
A figure in a mask shaped like a conductor's baton stands on the water's surface, unmoving.
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The Offer
The masked figure speaks in a voice like bowed strings:
> "The Third Violinist has gone missing. Without them, the coming century's score cannot begin.
You have perfect timing but imperfect will — ideal for a replacement."
Sejin laughs — thinks it's a hallucination. But then she hears thousands of faint melodies in the water below, each melody whispering a memory from her own life.
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The Stage
A massive, decaying concert hall emerges from the black water. The "instruments" are not violins or cellos — one player is bowing a beam of moonlight, another is plucking the shadow of a dead tree, another blows into a hollow memory of someone's laughter.
Sejin is handed a violin made of broken clocks. Each string is a different era — Bronze Age, Industrial Revolution, some era she doesn't recognize.
She is told: play only the notes that exist.
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The Mistake
On her first note, she accidentally draws a sound that hasn't happened yet — a city burning under a lavender sky.
The entire orchestra halts. The Conductor's mask tilts toward her.
The water under her feet ripples violently — somewhere, in reality, a war begins two years early.
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Cliffhanger
The Conductor whispers:
> "You've played a forbidden note.
Now you must finish the century before it collapses — or be erased from the score entirely."
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