The piano sat silent.
Theo stood before it in the crumbling drawing room of the Holloway estate, its keys veiled beneath a thin coat of dust and disuse. His fingers hovered just above the ivory, trembling not from cold but from a terror that rooted in something deeper......something ancient.
The manor moaned around him, half-merged with time's disobedience. Candlelight flickered in gaslamps that hadn't worked in decades. A modern poster of one of his early concert tours peeled from the wall beside a portrait painted before the war. Beneath his polished shoes, the floor swam between parquet and black tile. Even the air shifted in odd pulses, smelling sometimes of woodsmoke, sometimes of antiseptic.
And yet the piano remained. A constant.
He pressed a key.
A flat, sour note rang out.
Then another.
A chord. F minor. One he'd used in "Our Song."
The instrument responded like it had a soul again. It recognized him. Or maybe it mocked him.
Theo's jaw clenched. He turned away.
"You shouldn't be here," he whispered to himself. "None of this should still be here."
From the cracked window, the garden twitched in time-lagged movements. Trees swayed in unnatural rhythms. A child's laughter echoed in the distance.......too slow, stretched like tape on the verge of snapping.
Behind him, a shadow moved.
"I played the song backwards." His voice was hollow now. "I thought it would undo the cycle. But all I've done is... twist the blade."
He spun around. No one.
But the sensation of presence lingered...sharp and constant, like a violin string tuned too tight.
Then he heard her voice. Lila's. From somewhere deep in the house.
"…you have to remember."
He followed it.
The halls elongated, then contracted, as if the house was breathing. Time bent at the corners of his vision. Paintings aged and un-aged as he passed. One depicted him....only, not quite him. His eyes were different. Older. Wiser. Or perhaps more broken.
Theo found her in the nursery.
Lila stood before the crib, her fingers splayed against the cracked wall as if she could hold the world together by sheer will.
"Theo," she said without turning. "You remember it now, don't you?"
"I remember too much," he replied.
She faced him, and her eyes shimmered....not with tears, but with recognition. Two timelines crashing through a single soul.
"It wasn't supposed to happen this way," she said. "You were never meant to hear the song backward."
He stepped closer. "Then why leave it for me to find?"
Lila's voice cracked. "Because I loved you too much not to try."
The silence that followed was louder than any chord he'd ever struck.
In the crib behind her, the mummified remains still rested. The first sacrifice. Vincent's sister. The root of the bargain.
Theo stared at the child. "All these years… every note I played… I thought I was chasing beauty. But I was just feeding the hunger."
"You still can stop it," Lila whispered.
"How?" he rasped. "The Collector's stronger than ever. Time is broken. You—"
"I'm breaking too."
He noticed it then: her outline glitching. Every breath she took came a second too late. Her skin flickered between soft flesh and charcoal sketches. Her voice echoed with delay.
"You're not whole anymore."
"I never was," she said with a sad smile. "Not since I crossed the first loop."
He reached for her. His hand passed through hers like mist. And then she steadied herself.
"Listen to me," she said, urgency flaring in her eyes. "If you confront the moment...if you play the first song exactly as it was no backward tricks, no deals, just raw truth it might realign the timeline. It might give us… one chance."
Theo shook his head. "What if it destroys you?"
"What if it saves you?"
Suddenly, the floor trembled. Ink bled from the walls. The piano in the drawing room screamed a single note high, shrill, desperate.
The Collector had arrived.
Lila staggered. "You have to go. Now."
"No. I won't leave you."
She cupped his face briefly....solid this time. "You already have. In every life before this. Don't let this be another."
And then she vanished. Dissolved into dust and ink, like a sketch never finished.
Theo stumbled back to the drawing room. The Collector stood at the piano, wearing its finest mask yet.....Theo's own face.
"I knew you'd come back," it said, smiling.
"Get out of my skin."
The imposter shrugged. "It's not yours anymore. You traded it for applause."
Theo stepped toward the real piano.
"No more applause," he said. "Just silence. Or truth."
The Collector growled. Its mask cracked. One eye wept molten ink. "You'd undo everything for her? You'd let all of this collapse?"
"I'd rather fail honestly than live forever as a fraud."
He sat. Fingers poised.
He played.
The original song. The one he wrote when Lila first sketched the manor's ruined steps. Every note was raw, flawed, real. No enhancements. No supernatural depth. Just aching love wrapped in melody.
The Collector screamed.
Ink poured from the ceiling. The manor shook. The crib in the nursery shattered. But the music went on.
Memories surged through Theo...every loop, every failure, every choice.
Lila in the rain. Lila holding a page torn from her sketchbook. Lila whispering, "Try again."
He hit the final note.
The silence that followed was sacred.
The Collector dissolved, shrieking, its mask melting.
Time paused.
The manor righted itself.
And Lila appeared again, standing at the window, whole.
"You remembered," she whispered.
"I finally heard the real song."
And behind them, the sun rose....simultaneously 1927 and now, past and future colliding in one golden breath.