Chapter 7: The Phantom Bridge

Miles stood alone in the Playlist vault, surrounded by suspended songs that hummed like breathing memories. His hands trembled as he laid spectral fingers across a flickering console that hadn’t been there yesterday.

It had built itself from thought — or guilt.

Cassiel said nothing as he entered, only watched.

“I can reach her more cleanly now,” Miles said. “Guide the signal. Ease the bleed.”

Cassiel stepped closer, voice low. “You’re trying to build a bridge.”

Miles nodded. “She’s slipping. I can feel her syncing too hard with the dead. I can control it now. If I tune the chords exactly right, thread them between us—”

“She’ll become a medium.”

“She already is.”

Cassiel’s brow creased. “A bridge doesn’t just go one way. You might reach her. But what comes back?”

Leah woke at her desk, pen in hand.

The page before her was filled.

But not in English.

She stared at the looping script — jagged lines and swooping marks that resembled musical notation warped into glyphs. Ancient. Familiar.

The lyrics hummed in her blood like a forgotten hymn.

“What the hell…?” she whispered.

She grabbed her phone and looked at the time.

2:43 a.m.

The last time she looked, it was barely 10.

She replayed the audio file she’d apparently recorded.

The voice was hers. But the song wasn’t.

In the Frequency, Miles hovered above a new console — crystalline and rippling with tones.

He played a slow progression: F#m - D - B - E, strung together like steps on a ledge.

Each chord tethered a memory.

F#m: the night he almost told his father he didn’t want to study law.

D: the smell of cigarette smoke and poetry in his first lover’s bedroom.

B: the last open mic before the accident.

E: Leah. Not the real Leah, but the feeling of her voice when she sang his lyrics like they’d always belonged to her.

He whispered: “This is the bridge.”

He activated the mix.

The moment Leah pressed “record,” her studio lights dimmed.

The chords played themselves. She didn’t even touch the keys.

Her voice followed. Smooth. Possessed.

Lyrics spilled from her mouth, ones she hadn’t written.

She tried to stop.

Couldn’t.

Tears streamed down her face — not from fear. From awe.

It was like she’d remembered a version of herself that had died and come back singing.

Then the glass cracked.

The studio window — a single jagged fissure slicing across it like a scar.

The song stopped.

And in the silence, she heard him.

Not a whisper. Not a memory.

A voice.

Clear. Gentle. Familiar.

“I’m sorry.”

She spun. No one.

But every speaker in the room buzzed with a frequency just above human hearing.

Back in the Frequency, Cassiel burst into the vault.

“Miles, stop.”

“She heard me.”

“You’ve anchored her to both sides. That’s not guidance — that’s entanglement.”

Miles stepped back from the console. “I just wanted her to know she wasn’t alone.”

Cassiel gritted his teeth. “If you keep this up, neither of you will be.”

The playlist trembled. One of the tracks burst like a bubble, dissolving into silence.

Leah’s thread glowed too brightly now — burning through the structure of the vault, unstable and bright.

“She’s becoming the song,” Cassiel said. “And songs this haunted can’t survive long in the land of the living.”

Miles looked down, heart splitting.

He’d built the bridge.

But he might have opened a door neither of them could close.