Chapter 4: Writing Through Her

The next few nights blurred into something dreamlike.

Miles floated above Leah’s world like a dim light left on in the corner of a room — not always noticed, but always there.

He knew he should keep his distance. Cassiel had warned him: “You’re not here to relive your life. You’re here to help them live theirs.”

But when Leah picked up her guitar — a beat-up sunburst hollow-body with a chip on the bridge — and started humming his melody again, Miles couldn’t help himself.

Her voice stumbled. She winced. “The line doesn’t land,” she murmured, scribbling something on a yellow notepad, then crossing it out.

Miles leaned in. It needs space, he thought. Let the beat breathe. Don’t fight the silence.

She paused… then, inexplicably, tried again, slower this time. Letting the air between notes stretch out like a sigh.

It worked.

Goosebumps prickled her arm.

And him?

He felt something impossible: the echo of his old heartbeat.

In the studio between worlds, Cassiel was waiting — arms crossed, foot tapping like a metronome set too fast.

“You’re getting sloppy,” he muttered, eyes on a console panel that now flickered red.

Miles shrugged. “I’m not forcing anything. She’s responding.”

Cassiel’s voice hardened. “You’re embedding. Your soulprint’s starting to bleed into hers. You’re not writing with her anymore. You’re writing through her.”

Miles bit his lip. “Isn’t that the point? She’s finishing my song. I’m giving her something real.”

“No,” Cassiel snapped. “You’re using her to finish your unfinished life. That’s possession. That’s not help. That’s ego.”

Miles turned away, jaw tight. “You don’t get it.”

“I do,” Cassiel said. “I see it all the time. Dead dreamers trying to make themselves immortal by hijacking the living. You want that to be your legacy? A ghost in someone else’s throat?”

Back in the waking world, Leah sat on her fire escape, guitar in her lap, the city buzzing below. Her fingers moved automatically now, like muscle memory — but the words didn’t feel like hers.

She blinked, suddenly unsure. “Why do these lyrics feel… familiar?”

The line she’d just sung — “You were the silence between the stanzas” — she hadn’t written that, had she?

It didn’t even sound like her.

Something stirred in the wind. A chill at her neck.

She looked around. “Is someone there?”

Miles hovered just beyond the rail, watching her. He hadn’t meant to push so hard. But every note she sang — every word she stumbled through — made him feel alive again.

He whispered faintly: You’re not alone. Just breathe. Finish it.

Leah stared at the guitar. Her hand trembled. Then she whispered, “Why do I feel like I’m not the one writing this?”

That night, Miles returned to the studio, face pale and shaken.

“I crossed the line,” he admitted.

Cassiel said nothing, just stared.

Miles sank into a spectral chair. “I felt… like I could finally say what I never got to say. But it’s not about me, is it?”

“No,” Cassiel said. “It’s about the ones still trying to live.”

Miles leaned back. “Then what happens now?”

Cassiel pointed to the glowing orbs above them. One still glowed from Leah’s song. Another flickered — faint, new.

“There’s someone else,” he said. “Another voice breaking through the static.”

Miles stood slowly. “And Leah?”

“She’ll finish the song,” Cassiel replied. “But not with your words. You gave her the spark. Let her carry it now.”

Miles looked down at his hands, translucent but steadier somehow. “One song down. Four to go.”

Cassiel smiled faintly. “You’re learning.”