Stockhausen : Conversations With The Composer /

Behind velvet curtains and gilded balconies, the opera is more than a performance. It's a hunting ground, a court of monsters disguised as patrons and benefactors. When a masked nobleman claims her talent as his own, Lyria is drawn into a world where music is power, restraint is survival, and desire is the most dangerous temptation of all. The longer Lyria remains under his protection, the more she awakens. Her body responds to hungers she does not yet understand and her are dreams invaded by a silver-eyed predator who promises freedom instead of restraint. As the opera's beauty curdles into something predatory, Lyria must decide what she is willing to become to survive it. The stage is watching. The city is listening. And once the blood sings, it cannot be silenced. TRIGGER/CONTENT WARNING: This story contains mature themes and content intended for adult audiences (18+) Reader discretion is advised. It includes moments of violence, sexual content and dark erotic elements, manipulation, obsession, and emotional power dynamics.

I may come off as spoiled, but I can tell you now that I'm far from it. Coming from a theatrical family doesn't help my case though, music was basically drilled into my brain. I'm sorry. I forgot to introduce myself. My name is Celesta. And I'm cursed… Cursed with a colorless soul. How will I ever get it out of me? I can tell you now that it wasn't easy, but somehow I managed to get through it… with the help of my Muse.

The day before the piano competition finals, my boyfriend deliberately locked me on the rooftop to help his childhood friend win. He stared at me intently, his voice low and steady. "You'll have plenty more chances. Can't you just let her have this one?" Later, to secure her spot in the orchestra, he went so far as to break my fingers with his own hands. I confronted him in anger, demanding to know why he would do this when we were supposed to be in a relationship. He looked at me solemnly and said, "Susan, Miranda's mother saved me all those years ago, and now I have to fulfill this wish for her." What he didn't understand was that for me, losing the use of my hands felt like losing my very life. After I made the decision to stop loving him, he shattered his own hand, hoping to get my forgiveness.

Being a mute used to be simple before all the craziness started. I just can't talk and that's who I am. Mum has learned to accept that and I guess so have I. Everything was just fine in my high school in Shanghai. I had finally made it to year twelve and even though I was in China, I was actually being treated as a human being despite my disability. Things were definitely not perfect but I would give anything to go back to that, like it was before. I heard my first voice that year, right at the beginning of year 12. I didn’t really have any real friends, but I was used to it and before the voices started, I was fine with that. But it all changed when I first heard them. The voices inside their heads started then and my life was never the same. They weren't just thinking about school or they girls or guys they were into, no they were thinking about doing things, doing horrible things to each other and I was the only one that knew how messed up they really were.

3:00 a.m. Insomnia gnawed at my nerves like a rusted saw, grinding back and forth mercilessly. On a whim that I couldn't explain, I opened a radio app called "Echoes from Below." The interface was simple and bare. Black background, blue text. No ads, no host introduction. Just a single audio waveform, slowly buffering on the screen. The shape of the waveform felt wrong. It didn't look like soundwaves at all. More like rows of sharp, interlocking teeth. A pop-up window appeared in the center of the screen. [Listening Guidelines] The letters glowed blue, carrying an unsettling eeriness. [This station's signal may extend into dreams. If you hear the broadcast while dreaming, firmly believe that you are awake.]

When he and his father eventually decide to begin a new life after his mom and sister's death, Praxis Cohen, a suicidal teenager with an expressionless visage on his face, finds himself in a huge, formidable laboratory where teenagers like him are being injected a drug of which the effect is still unknown. Fortunate enough, his body can withstand the drug that leads him to be declared by Dr. Conscire as the first patient to have successfully passed the First Stage of the experiment in this generation. As he proceeds to the Second Stage, Dr. Conscire, the president of the organization, decides to release him off the laboratory to find out that the effect of the drug enables him to read minds and do psychokinesis that sets his mind into chaos. In his debacle as an experimented guinea pig of the nameless organization, realizing that he is not alone in this experiment, Praxis meets new marvelous people to discover the origin of the experiment, the reason why they turned into supernormal beings, the connection of this experiment to the unborn world war in the future, the twists and turns of their past stories, and to discern the next stages of the experiment. With the collaborative effort of their team, they strive to choose the best course of action to put an end to this fight.