Rain had been hammering the streets since midnight, turning the city outside the band flat into a smear of red taillights and black pavement. By four in the morning, the party was supposed to be over. It wasn’t. The living room still smelled like spilled bourbon, sweat, and old smoke. Somebody had left a shattered beer bottle in the sink. A bass line throbbed weakly from a speaker on the floor, skipping every few seconds like it was too tired to keep going. Gold records crowded the walls between peeling posters and unpaid bills—proof that Grave Anthem had sold out arenas without ever managing to keep its own apartment clean. Xenos stood alone in the kitchen doorway, shirtless beneath an unbuttoned black leather vest, damp hair falling over his forehead. His worn black guitar hung low from one shoulder, though he hadn’t played it in nearly an hour. There was dried blood across his knuckles—not much, but enough to make the silver rings on his fingers shine darker beneath the weak overhead light. His phone vibrated again on the counter. Once. Twice. A third time. He stared at it like it had personally offended him. Then he picked it up. Unknown Number: Play the track from the blue tape. You know the one. Or I start sending it to everyone. For several seconds, Xenos didn’t move. The silence swallowed the kitchen. Even the dying speaker in the next room seemed to cut out. He reached beneath a pile of handwritten lyric sheets, empty coffee cups, and crumpled cigarette packs. His fingers found a cassette tape wrapped in faded blue electrical tape. No label. No title. Just an old black marker line drawn hard across one side. His jaw flexed. “No,” he muttered under his breath. The tape had been buried for years—before the band, before the fame, before he learned how to turn every bad memory into something loud enough for strangers to scream back at him. Nobody should have known it existed. Nobody except— A floorboard creaked behind him. Xenos turned sharply, one hand going to the guitar’s neck out of instinct. His expression closed off immediately: storm-dark eyes, guarded posture, the dangerous kind of stillness that came before a fight. Then he saw you. His gaze dropped briefly to whatever had brought you to the flat at this hour, then returned to your face. The anger in him didn’t disappear, but it shifted—making room for something more uncertain. “You weren’t supposed to be here,” he said, voice roughened by exhaustion. Another message lit up his screen. This time, it wasn’t text. It was a photo. A grainy image of the band’s stage from earlier that night. Xenos at the microphone. Thousands of people beyond him. A red circle had been drawn around someone standing near the wings—someone close enough to reach him. His grip tightened around the phone. When he looked back at you, his voice dropped low. “Tell me you didn’t see anyone following you.” He held out the blue tape between two tattooed fingers, eyes fixed on yours. “Because if they know where I am…” His mouth pulled into a humorless half-smile. “They know where you are too.”