Chapter 8: Harmonic Possession

Leah’s voice wasn’t hers anymore.

Not fully.

Each time she sat at her keyboard, it was like another version of herself took over — one who remembered Miles’s chords before she played them, who spoke lyrics she’d never thought of, who cried without knowing why.

She wasn’t afraid. Not exactly.

But she was no longer certain she was alone.

The studio walls seemed to breathe when she recorded now. Her microphones picked up phantom harmonies, layers beneath her voice — not reverb, not artifacts. Entities.

And once, just once, she listened back and heard his voice behind hers. A ghosted harmony. A whisper barely there:

“You’re singing me back to life.”

In the Frequency, Miles was unraveling.

He felt her dreams.

They bled through the chords now, her memories and moods crashing over him like tidal waves.

Her joy — when she wrote. Her sorrow — buried deep. Her fear — increasing.

And now… other voices.

He wasn’t the only one in the bridge.

One night, while tuning the latest piece of their collaboration — a minimalist ballad about surrendering to the unknown — something snarled in the background audio.

Not human. Not Leah.

Something stuck in the Playlist, still echoing. Still hungry.

Cassiel stormed into the mixing vault, wind and static howling behind him.

“It’s started.”

Miles turned slowly. “What?”

Cassiel’s voice was tight. “Possession. You think it’s just you and Leah syncing, but every time you two create a harmonic tether, you widen the bridge. The others are watching. Listening. Waiting.”

“You said I had to finish my songs.”

“Yes. Yours. Not someone else’s. And not through her. You’re a ghost, Miles. She’s not.”

Miles looked away. “She brings them out of me. Like she’s always known how.”

Cassiel’s tone dropped. “And if she keeps pulling your voice into hers, she’ll become your echo — not your partner. That’s how harmony becomes haunt.”

Leah was sleepwalking now.

She found herself in her studio at 3:11 a.m. with no memory of how she got there.

She was barefoot. Recording light blinking red. Her mouth open in song.

She stopped — or thought she did.

But the singing continued.

She clamped her hands over her mouth. Still it played.

The track looping through the speakers was layered with multiple voices — hers, Miles’s, and others that didn’t sound human.

She stumbled back. The melody kept going.

Then the laptop screen glitched, and a single sentence appeared in static font:

“WHO WRITES WHO?”

She shut the laptop.

Silence.

Only her ragged breathing and a faint echo she couldn’t trace.

Miles felt her panic ripple across the Frequency.

He reached out, threading calm chords through the bridge — something soft, like lullabies underwater.

It worked.

Leah exhaled and fell asleep on the floor, still surrounded by sound.

But in the silence that followed, another presence stirred.

Cassiel appeared beside Miles, gaze sharp. “That wasn’t you calming her.”

Miles stiffened. “Then who?”

Cassiel’s answer was cold:

“The bridge isn’t yours anymore.”

That night, Leah dreamed of a room without doors, walls covered in song lyrics carved in glass. She heard her own voice echoing back at her from every direction, but distorted — too low, too wide.

And standing in the corner of the room…

Was Miles.

But also not Miles.

Eyes black with static.

Smiling like someone who remembered too much.