Page 5 of A Voice of Silver and Blood (Crown of Echoed Dreams #1)

CHORDS AND CONFESSIONS

I sag against the door like my bones are liquid. The click of the lock is too soft to feel protective. It’s a show and I know it, but still, it’s something. A line between me and everything that hunts the night.

I kick off my boots and nearly trip over Milo’s hoodie that he left tossed in the hallway.

Muttering a curse I kick it to the side.

I ignore the stack of bills peeking out from under the rickety credenza.

The smell of stale incense and reheated noodles fills my nose. My life, in three bullet points.

In the corner that serves as my bedroom, I flick on the salt lamp. Rose-gold light spills across my sheets, over the wall of pinned-up notes and lyrics, and settles against the curve of my mic stand like it’s blessing the steel.

It may only be a corner but it’s my sanctuary. My ritual space and its equipment is my war drum.

I settle onto the floor and pull the mic close.

I tighten the screws on the arm. They’re stripping out and are always slipping, just enough to annoy me.

The little red light on my interface blinks— half alive.

My laptop whirs, slow and obstinate, but it’s faithful.

She’s carried me through late nights and silent breakdowns and every moment where I felt like I had nothing left to give.

Tonight, I have something. It may not be much, but it’s something.

I slip the headphones on and test the mic with a breath. It’s warm against my lips, like it’s listening. Like it knows me. An old friend, ready to listen.

“Hey,” I say softly, into the hush. “This is Skye. You’re listening to Ties That Bind .”

A small pause. I always give the silence a beat, it gives the ghosts time to settle in.

“This isn’t scripted,” I exhale softly, gathering my thoughts.

“Tonight’s episode is about love,” I continue, voice low and even. “Not the easy kind. Not the fairy tale crap they sell you when you’re young. The kind that aches, and the kind that stays even when the person doesn’t.”

My throat tightens. I swallow it back.

“I want to talk about what it means to keep going when the world pulls the floor out from under you. About what it costs to protect someone you love and how we do it anyway. No matter how much it hurts.”

My fingers curl around the edge of the desk. I don’t read from notes. I never do. This podcast isn’t a performance. It’s a bleed.

“Some nights, I feel like I’m shouting into a well,” I admit. “Like nothing I do matters. Like I don’t matter. But then I remember—I’m still here. And you…you’re still listening. Maybe that’s enough. I hope it is. ”

I exhale slow, watching the audio levels pulse on the screen. This space is the only time I feel seen—ironically, since no one can actually see me.

“I guess what I’m saying is that this is for the ones holding it together with nothing but duct tape and defiance. For the ones who keep showing up, even when it hurts. You’re not alone. Not tonight.”

I reach over and press stop, but I leave the headphones on. Just for a minute. Silence hums in my ears. Not empty silence, but one full of things unspoken. I sit, breathing, in the warmth of a room that finally feels still.

I press record again, but I don’t speak right away. The mic waits, patient. It always is. It never demands, but welcomes.

Outside, the city groans—sirens in the distance, someone yelling three floors down, a car horn stabbing the dark. The world doesn’t care. That’s the magic. The truth feels like a rebellion against the status quo that’s not static; it’s a dwindling spiral.

“My mother used to say,” I begin, voice a little rougher now, “that the world will take everything you give it. So you have to decide what’s yours to keep.”

I pause. Swallow to ease the lump forming in my throat, trying to keep it from choking me.

“I’ve talked about how she taught me to breathe through silence. To sit with it. Not fill it just because I was afraid of what it might be hiding or worse what it might say back.”

My eyes sting. I blink, but don’t stop.

“She was soft in a way that felt sharp—like velvet over glass. The kind of woman who carried her pain like a second spine, but she never let it bend her.”

I lean closer to the mic.

“She sang to herself while she cooked. Old folk songs. Weird little half-rhymes I never found in books. She said they were gifts from her mother. And her mother’s mother. I thought she meant heritage. Maybe she meant something else.”

The room feels heavy. Not sad, exactly—just full of old ghosts.

“I still hear her sometimes. When things get too quiet.”

I close my eyes and rest my forehead against the side of the mic for a beat. The metal is cool and real.

“Grief’s like a song you don’t remember learning. The melody lives in your bones, even when the lyrics are gone.” The line comes out of nowhere, but it lands true. “I think I make this podcast because it’s the only way I know how to keep singing.”

I press stop and sit back in the chair, exhaling like I’ve run a mile.

The apartment is dim and golden and still. My mug of coffee’s gone cold. Milo’s not home yet. Maybe he won’t be tonight. And yet, for a moment, even with the silence pressing in, I don’t feel completely alone.

As I’m about to export the file, the new message icon blinks at the corner of the screen. Weird. I don’t get a lot of voicemails. Comments, sure, but a voice message is unusual.

I open the inbox and scan the headings of the comments. Most of them are the usual—soft-spoken thanks, a story about someone’s divorce, a comment about the episode I did on inherited shame. One guy always ends with “Stay weird,” which I kind of love .

I stop on the voice message. It has no metadata. No name. No timestamp. Just an unknown source. I hesitate. Then click play.

A burst of static hits first, sharp and distorted like someone tuning a radio with shaky hands. Then?—

“They’re coming.” The voice is low. Male, I think, but it’s warped. It sounds like it’s underwater or a thousand years old. “The dreaming girl can’t hide forever.”

Silence. Then another crackle, like breath caught in wires. The message ends. I blink. Stare at the waveform on the screen like it might explain itself if I squint hard enough.

“Okay,” I say to the empty room, dragging my chair back with a screech. “Creepy fan is new.”

I try to laugh, but it comes out thin. This feels too specific, too personal. My mother used to call me dreaming girl, but no one could know that. I move the pointer to delete the message—but decide to archive it, just in case. Just in case what, I don’t know. Maybe proof I didn’t imagine it.

It’s probably nothing. Someone trying to be weird and mysterious. People do that when you talk about grief and shadow work, and ghosts. Still…I glance toward the window. The curtains stir. Didn’t I shut them earlier?

I cross the room and tug them closed tighter, suddenly hyper-aware of how many windows face mine. How many shadows can see in.

“Just a troll,” I murmur. “Some dude who thinks he’s clever.”

I shut down the studio rig. The silence feels thicker. Weighted. Listening .

It’s late. Too late to still be up, but sleep’s a cage I can’t quite slip into.

My head’s full—echoes of old memories stirred up by the podcast, the strange message, the way the air’s felt off ever since I left the club.

Like the veil between me and the rest of the world has grown thin and twitching.

I brush my teeth. Pull on my threadbare and holey sleep shirt. Double-check that the stove’s off—again. Old habits, sharp-edged and familiar. I pause at the window before I kill the lights.

Across the alley, a figure stands near the lamppost. Not moving. Just...watching. I squint, but a car rumbles by and when the headlights sweep across the space, he’s gone.

It’s nothing. It’s just my imagination. Too many emotions in too short a time and too much coffee. I’m wired. That’s all. I lock the window. Shut the curtain. Then I hear it.

A click.

Soft. Subtle. Coming from the front door. I make it to the hallway and then freeze, every hair on my arms rising.

Another sound—the slow turn of the doorknob. Not fast, not loud. Like someone is testing it and trying to be quiet. My breath catches. I don’t move.

The knob keeps turning… then stops. I tiptoe to the door, carefully trying to not to let the floorboards creak. I grab the battered bat I keep next to the door and press my eye to the peephole.

Nothing. No one.

But I feel someone on the other side. A presence that I know is pressing its palm against the wood. Not trying to force it, but letting me know that it could .

The silence on the other side of the door is almost worse than a knock would be. I wait. Count to twenty. Then there is another sound—a breath. Long. Deliberate.

My heart skips. I clench my teeth, trying to see more than the peephole allows, and then I hear footsteps receding down the hall.

I back away slowly, heart pounding so hard it echoes in my ears. I double-check the lock. The deadbolt, and also slide the chain into place. Then I do something I haven’t done since Mom died.

I grab the little bowl of salt she used to keep by the back window.

Sprinkle a thin line across the door’s threshold.

My hands shake, but the motion feels right, just as the man’s gaze at the Vein didn’t feel threatening even though it should have.

This may be make-believe protection, but it’s a comforting ritual.

I climb into bed with my pants on and leave the light on. Just this time.

Outside, something passes across the window—a shadow in the shape of a man. It pauses. Watching. I swear it nods, then it’s gone.