The auditorium lights glowed with golden intensity, reflecting off rows of eager faces and the faint shimmer of camera lenses. It was audition day for The Rising Voice, the most-watched singing competition in the country, and the tension backstage was thick enough to taste.
Contestants whispered rehearsed lyrics under their breath, some prayed, others paced. But among them, one girl stood perfectly still — serene, unflinching, almost otherworldly.
Her name was Lila Byrne. Nineteen. Unknown. And utterly certain.
She didn’t look like the typical star-in-the-making — plain jeans, a black top, no makeup, hair tied back neatly. But her eyes carried something electric, something that seemed to hum with quiet danger.
When her name was called, she stepped into the blinding stage light.
“Next up, we have… Lila Byrne!”
The judges smiled politely. The audience clapped out of habit.
Then, before the host could say another word, Lila walked straight to the microphone and said, in a voice clear and unwavering:
“I’m the best singer in the world.”
A collective gasp spread through the audience. The judges exchanged amused looks. The host blinked.
Lila stood tall, calm, her gaze sharp as glass. “And I’m about to prove it.”
At first, the room didn’t know how to react. The judges — all veterans of the industry — laughed nervously. One of them, a flamboyant pop star named Darren Voss, smirked.
“Well,” he said, crossing his arms, “confidence isn’t something you’re short on, huh?”
“I don’t need confidence,” Lila replied. “I just need the song.”
That silenced even him.
“Alright then,” said another judge, Mira Lang, leaning forward. “What are you singing for us today?”
Lila smiled faintly. “The Impossible Song.”
The audience murmured. That wasn’t a title anyone recognized.
“Is that an original?” asked Mira.
Lila shook her head. “It’s older than any of us.”
Something about the way she said it made the hair on Darren’s arms rise.
The music began — though none of the technicians remembered pressing play.
It started as a single note, low and resonant, vibrating through the speakers and into the floor. Then Lila opened her mouth, and sound — no, music — poured out.
It wasn’t just beautiful. It was perfect.
Every note, every breath landed with uncanny precision. Her voice shifted effortlessly from delicate whispers to thunderous power. The melody twisted, soared, and broke rules no composer would dare write — but it all made sense, a harmony that bent reality itself.
People in the crowd stopped breathing. One man fainted quietly in the back row.
The cameras captured everything, yet something about the footage shimmered, like light refracted through water.
Lila sang of things no one understood — words in no known language, emotions that felt too raw to be human. And behind her, the stage lights began to flicker, forming shadows that didn’t match the people standing nearby.
The final note rang out, stretching across the room, across the airwaves, beyond the understanding of anyone who heard it.
Then — silence.
The first to speak was Darren. His voice trembled slightly.
“Who are you?”
Lila tilted her head. “I told you,” she said softly. “The best singer in the world.”
The audience erupted — wild applause, tears, cheers. The judges stood, stunned, clapping instinctively. It was a unanimous yes, of course. It would’ve been madness to say no.
But something lingered.
As Lila turned to leave the stage, Mira noticed something odd: her reflection on the giant LED screen didn’t turn with her. It stared directly out at the audience — and smiled.
The performance went viral within hours.
“The Girl Who Sang the Impossible Song”, the headlines read.
Clips flooded YouTube, TikTok, every platform imaginable. People reported chills, tears, uncontrollable emotions while listening. Others swore they heard whispers under the melody.
Scientists analyzed the recording — claimed there were frequencies outside the human range. Religious leaders called it divine. Conspiracy theorists said it was alien.
And then… something stranger began to happen.
The people who listened to the song repeatedly started to disappear.
It began with a fan named Hannah Lewis, who had replayed the video over 200 times in two days. She texted a friend that she felt “pulled” toward something, like the sound was calling her name. The next morning, her apartment was found empty — her phone still playing the performance on loop.
Then came others. Dozens. Hundreds.
Authorities pulled the video offline after reports from twelve different countries. But mirror copies kept surfacing, each time with subtle distortions — Lila’s eyes looking directly at the viewer, her mouth forming different words than the ones she sang.
The phenomenon grew. The Song Effect, they called it. A sound that consumed.
Back at the studio, Mira Lang couldn’t sleep. The melody haunted her dreams.
One night, she returned to the recording booth where Lila had performed, long since sealed off by investigators. She pressed play on a backup recording, just once.
The sound filled the empty room, pure and overwhelming. And then she heard another voice — not from the speakers, but right behind her.
“Do you understand now?”
Mira turned. Lila stood in the doorway, barefoot, eyes shining faintly in the dark.
“What are you?” Mira whispered.
Lila smiled sadly. “Once, I was human. But music changes things. The right frequencies reshape the world — open doors. I just… learned to listen back.”
“Listen back?”
“To the echoes that exist before the sound.”
She stepped closer. Mira’s heart pounded in her chest. “People are disappearing,” she said. “What did you do to them?”
“They wanted to hear perfection,” Lila said softly. “Perfection doesn’t exist here. So they followed it home.”
She lifted her hand, and Mira saw something impossible — waves of sound visible in the air, spiraling like threads of light.
“You could come too,” Lila said. “You heard it, didn’t you? You felt it.”
Mira took a step back. “No. I—”
But the melody started again, faint and irresistible, rising from the air itself.
Her reflection in the glass shifted — smiling when she didn’t.
Lila’s voice grew softer. “Once you hear the truth in the song… it never stops.”
The sound crescendoed. Mira screamed. Then — silence.
The next morning, the studio was empty. The only thing left was a single recording device still running, capturing faint static.
Then, faintly, a voice — Lila’s — whispering:
“The best singer in the world is the one who never stops singing.”
And somewhere, far beyond the range of human hearing,
a chorus of missing voices answered her back.