Chapter Text
Zoey couldn’t breathe.
The stage lights had gone cold, flickering faintly over the blood-soaked floor. Rumi’s soul, or whatever that shimmering orb had become, floated for a heartbeat before it was drawn into Mira’s gok-do, The light vanished inside it, and the silence that followed felt wrong.
That was it.
Rumi was gone.
Not banished, not sealed—killed.
Zoey stood frozen, her mind spinning through every rehearsal, every laugh, every late-night confession Rumi had ever made. Now, she couldn’t even look at the space where her friend had stood.
Mira knelt beside the spreading pool of blood. Most demons didn’t bleed when they died—they shattered into sparks of corrupted energy, erased. But Rumi wasn’t like them. She bled. Her crimson blood steamed on the floor, staining the ground beneath them. Thin spiderwebs of red light crept outward, alive and pulsing like veins in the stone, showing how despite how they felt, rumi did this. The honmoon is their life's work. unravelling in front of them..
Mira’s hands trembled. The gok-do was still glowing faintly before disintegrating into sparks of energy, “She… she wasn’t supposed to—” Mira choked, voice breaking. She pressed her palms to her face, smearing blood across her cheeks. Zoey reached for her, but her own hands were shaking too much to hold anyone steady.
Mira sat there. still
Then, as if something inside her snapped, Mira forced herself to her feet. Her expression hardened, the light in her eyes dimming into something cold and determined.
“She betrayed us,” Mira said finally, voice hoarse. “We can’t mourn her. Not now. The saja boys are still out there. The honmoon isn’t sealed. If we stop here, she dies for nothing.”
Zoey wanted to scream that Rumi didn’t deserve to die for anything, there must have been an explanation right-?. But the words stuck in her throat. The world had rules—terrible, ancient rules—and they were only the latest idols to break themselves trying to keep them.
Mira turned away. “We have work to do... songs to sing,” she said. “Demons to slay.”
Zoey swallowed the sob rising in her chest.
and followed her
they fought like nothing happened
they fit back into there role as protectors, idols, singers, stars. they rid of the demons back stage.
mira was more violent in her attack
they killed the saja boys
mira drove with her rage
zoey fought with greif and confusion.
They didn't know how they could do this without rumi.
It was weird, different.
But they had to try
Celine would tell them what to do.
Shey would have helped them understand. She knew rumi longer then they had.
But she wasnt here…
She died when the back studio caved in.
When rumi caused the shockwave that upset the pillars
Bobby didnt know about the demon hunting stuff
They only had each other at this pount…
and then thhey had to walk up on that stage....
and sing...
like they werent dying inside.
The crowd screamed their names, thousands of voices calling until a hush rippled through when they saw Rumi’s place—bare, the spotlight still aimed at nothing.
Zoey’s earpiece hummed. Her throat was sand. Every move was choreographed, every breath measured, yet her body felt detached, like someone else was puppeteering her limbs. The music swelled—bright, synthetic, merciless.
She turned to her right by reflex.
Rumi’s spot was empty.
Mira sang her verse perfectly. Not a crack in her voice, not a hint of the blood still under her nails. Her eyes didn’t meet Zoey’s. They were fixed on the crowd, on the illusion of perfection. Her voice carried the melody, but her soul wasn’t there—it was buried with Rumi.
“Shine, shine, my heart’s a firework—
even if it burns me, I’ll smile for the sky.”
The line was meant to sound triumphant.
Tonight, it felt like a lie.
The crowd cheered. The lights pulsed.
Mira’s next line trembled but didn’t break.
“We fall like stars, but no one sees the ashes.
Keep dancing, keep glowing, till the dawn forgets our names.”
Zoey joined in, her voice soft, almost prayer-like.
“Tell them we’re fine, tell them we’re bright,
paint our pain in gold tonight.”
She could hear Rumi’s harmony in her mind—
a phantom voice trying to complete the chord.
But it wasn’t there. Only the echo of it, empty space where warmth used to live.
The chorus hit, slow and hollow, the tempo dragging like time itself:
“Hearts beat, lights fade,
smile through the dark parade.
If one of us falls away,
the show must never—never—
fade.”
The audience waved their glowsticks, the color-coded light forming constellations across the darkness. They had no idea. None of them ever did.
When Zoey’s final line came, she sang it barely above a whisper, her voice trembling against the noise:
“We’re never alone, not even when we fade.
The stage remembers our names.”
Behind the sound, the faintest vibration—the honmoon, pulsing beneath the stage, restless. Like it knew one of its own had been taken.
Zoey didn’t cry. She couldn’t.
Instead, she smiled wider.
The show went on.