Zariah couldn’t breathe. The sight of Tamika’s lifeless body etched itself into her vision, carved into her chest like every scream she hadn’t let out. Her childhood friend—gone. Murdered with an instrument meant to create beauty. Silenced in the most brutal way.


Marcus vomited in the hallway. Keenan just stood still, fists clenched, jaw locked tight.


“We have to go,” Zariah said finally, her voice hard.


“We’re trapped,” Marcus croaked. “The roads are blocked. GPS is fried. Something’s messing with tech—and us.”


“Then we go old-school,” Keenan said. “Street by street. We stay together, we run.”


Zariah stopped him. “No. We find him. We end this.”


Marcus wiped his mouth, breathing hard. “How? He’s not human.”


“He’s human enough to bleed,” she snapped.


Marcus pulled a folded piece of paper from his pocket. “I’ve got one lead. Your grandfather’s song.”


Zariah looked at him sharply. “What about it?”


“It’s not just music. It’s a map. Or maybe a spell. I matched the notes to locations across Beale—the symbols line up. He left it behind to protect us.”


They followed the melody, each note taking them deeper into the underbelly of Beale Street. Past forgotten murals, past the blues museum, through alleys filled with whispers and cigarette ghosts.


Eventually, they reached a basement beneath the old Lucille’s Lounge, long abandoned. The door was marked with the spiral again—this time surrounded by tiny hand-drawn instruments.


Inside was a shrine.


Dozens of brass instruments hung from the ceiling like butchered animals. Rusted trombones, cracked clarinets, a drum skin stained with blood. On the far wall were photographs—gruesome images of every known victim, including Tamika, DeShawn, and even Zariah’s grandfather.


In the center of the room stood a man.


Tall. Thin. Wearing a long black coat. His face was hidden by a gold-plated trumpet mask.


He turned slowly to face them.


Keenan stepped forward. “Uncle David?”


The Trumpet Man removed his mask.


It was David Holloway—Keenan’s uncle. Supposedly killed in a bar fire in ‘97.


“I never died,” he said, voice soft as velvet. “I evolved.”


Zariah gritted her teeth. “You killed them. All of them.”


“No. I liberated them,” he said. “I silence the unworthy. The ones who’ve forgotten the power of Black art. Of protest. I was chosen. I became the verse.”


“You became a murderer,” Keenan growled.


David raised the trumpet to his lips. “Music is sacrifice.”


He blew one long note.


Marcus collapsed, eyes bleeding, skull shaking from the inside.


Zariah screamed.


Keenan charged—but David moved too fast, too fluid, sidestepping and striking Keenan across the face with the trumpet.


Zariah crawled toward Marcus’s bag, reaching for her grandfather’s sheet music. Blood smeared the notes, but the melody was clear. She grabbed a nearby saxophone and forced herself to breathe.


She played.


Three notes.


Four.


The room shook. The instruments rattled.


David stumbled, clutching his ears. “No! You don’t know what you’re doing!”


Zariah played louder. Clearer. Her grandfather’s song—his final protest.


The walls cracked. Fire erupted from the floor.


David screamed as the trumpet mask melted to his skin, his body twisting in agony.


Then—silence.


Just the echo of a final note.