The ink on the score looked less like dried pigment and more like congealed blood under the flickering candlelight.
Elias gripped his conductor's baton, his knuckles white against the dark wood.
As the first chord swelled, the air in the rehearsal hall thickened, turning heavy with the scent of rain-drenched lavender and ancient dust ...
A sudden, inexplicable memory of a seaside village he had never visited flooded his mind, stinging with a grief that wasn't his own.
He looked toward the second violin, but the chair was empty.
No sheet music remained, no discarded rosin, just a chilling void where a man had sat moments before .
The music continued, pulling him deeper into a life he had never lived.
