The transition from life to death was not a silent one. For Aria Thorne, it was a discordant crash of cymbals and a sharp, stinging pain in her chest that felt like a piano wire snapping under too much tension.
She remembered the stage lights. They were so bright they looked like dying stars. She remembered the smell of the old wood of the stage and the collective breath of five thousand people held in anticipation. Then, the snap. Her heart, a weary muscle that had been played as hard as her strings, finally gave up. The floor rushed up to meet her, the cold marble of the concert hall was the last thing her skin ever felt.
Darkness followed. It wasn't a void; it was a heavy, suffocating silence.
And then, she woke up.
Aria tried to gasp, but there were no lungs to fill. She tried to open her eyes, but there were no eyelids to lift. Instead, her consciousness expanded outward in a terrifying, panoramic wave. She didn't have a body; she had a structure.
She felt the coldness of her own frame—carved from ancient rosewood, polished to a mirror-like finish. She felt the terrifying tension along her spine—twenty-four golden strings stretched so tight they felt like they were screaming in a frequency only she could hear. She wasn't standing; she was resting on a pedestal, a decorative object in a room that smelled of dust, old blood, and expensive incense.
Am I dead? her mind shrieked. The thought didn't manifest as a voice, but as a low, mournful vibration that hummed through her wooden chest. Is this hell? Am I a prisoner in my own instrument?
The psychological horror of her existence began to sink in. She was aware of everything—the air brushing against her strings felt like sandpaper on raw nerves. Every footstep in the hallway outside sounded like an earthquake. She was trapped. A conscious mind inside a silent, gilded cage.
Suddenly, the massive doors of the chamber groaned open. The light that flooded in was harsh and unforgiving.
A man walked in. He didn't walk like a person; he moved like a predator surveying a wasteland. This was Emperor Killian von Astra. In the Empire of Solaris, his name was whispered with fear. He was the man who had ordered the "Great Silence," a decree that saw every flute, violin, and cello in the capital gathered and burned in a bonfire that lasted three days.
He approached the pedestal. Aria's panoramic vision allowed her to see him in terrifying detail. He was hauntingly beautiful, but it was a beauty carved out of ice. His violet eyes were hollow, reflecting a soul that had long since forgotten the meaning of mercy.
He didn't speak. He simply stared at her. Aria felt his gaze like a physical weight. To him, she was a relic of a father he hated—a golden toy that represented everything he wanted to destroy.
Killian reached out. His fingers were long and pale. When he touched the top of her frame, Aria felt a jolt of electricity that made her internal strings shiver. It wasn't a musician's touch; it was the touch of a man deciding where to strike.
"My father called you his 'Heavenly Voice'," Killian whispered. His voice was a rasp, cold and dry. "But in my palace, there is no heaven. Only the dirt we walk on."
He drew a dagger from a sheath at his hip. The blade was obsidian, dark and jagged. Aria felt a primal, psychological terror. If he cut her strings, what would happen to her soul? Would she be silenced forever? Would she vanish into the void?
"I've spent ten years erasing the noise of this world," Killian hissed, leaning closer. Aria could smell the faint scent of rain and iron on him. "Why should I leave the most beautiful noise for last?"
He raised the dagger. In that moment of absolute horror, Aria's survival instinct—the same instinct that made her the greatest performer in her previous life—took over. She didn't have hands, but she had will. She didn't have a voice, but she had resonance.
She gathered every ounce of her consciousness and threw it against the golden strings of her own chest.
NO!
TWANG.
The sound was not a melody. It was a violent, sonic explosion. It was a scream translated into the language of metal and wood.
The vibration was so powerful it cracked the marble floor beneath her pedestal. The air in the room distorted, a visible ripple of golden energy that slammed into Killian. The dagger was ripped from his hand, clattering loudly as it slid across the floor.
The Emperor fell back, his eyes wide with a shock that quickly turned into a dark, morbid curiosity. He stood up slowly, ignoring the thin line of blood trickling from a small cut on his cheek where the soundwave had grazed him.
He didn't call for guards. He didn't run. Instead, he walked back to the harp, his face inches away from the rosewood frame.
"You're alive," he breathed. A slow, terrifying smile tugged at the corners of his lips—the smile of a man who had finally found a toy he couldn't break on the first try.
Aria felt her strings humming with exhaustion. She had used all her strength for that one note. Now, she was at his mercy.
Killian didn't reach for the dagger again. Instead, he ran a thumb along the string she had just plucked. The touch was still cold, but for a split second, Aria felt something else—a flicker of a heartbeat through his skin, a hidden rhythm that was just as broken as her own.
"I was going to burn you, little harp," Killian said, his voice dropping to a dangerous, intimate murmur. "But perhaps... I will keep you. I want to see how long it takes for a soul made of gold to turn to ash in my hands."
He leaned in so close his lips almost brushed against the wood.
"Sing for me again, and I might let you keep your strings. Defy me, and I will make you watch as I melt you down into a shapeless lump of metal."
The horror remained, but as Killian turned to leave, locking the doors behind him, Aria felt the first spark of something new. A connection. A thread of fate, as thin as a hair but as strong as steel, had just been tied between the woman who was a harp and the man who was a monster.
The silence of the room returned, but it was no longer heavy. It was waiting.
Aria Thorne, the Golden Prison Harp, was alone in the dark. She was terrified. She was trapped. But she was also, for the first time in her two lives, truly dangerous.
The first movement of the symphony had begun. And the Emperor had no idea that he was no longer the one holding the conductor's baton.