2 years later

“Can you give me more displacement on the final syllable? Think of it less like a goodbye and more like an evaporation. You’re fading into the mist, Celine. The audience needs to feel the cold.”

Celine H. adjusted her oversized headphones, the leather cool against her temples. She stood in the center of the soundproof booth at Silverbird Studios, a space that had become her sanctuary over the last twenty-four months. The dim, amber glow of the recording light reflected off the glass, casting a soft halo over her silhouette.

She wasn’t the girl in the hospital chapel anymore. The hollow-eyed exhaustion had been replaced by a...