One year later…


Beale Street pulsed with life once more, but there was something different in the rhythm. The music still played, the crowds still danced, but there was reverence in the way people paused near Club Euphoria, now reborn as The Harper Center for Black Arts and Resistance.


Zariah stood beneath the mural painted across the club’s restored brick wall—a towering image of her grandfather, eyes closed, saxophone raised toward the sky. Below him, smaller figures held instruments: Tamika with her signature earrings, Marcus with his camera around his neck, and Keenan mid-stride, fist raised.


She wore black, her locs pulled into a high bun, a golden saxophone pin fastened to her chest. A plaque beneath the mural read:


"For those who turned silence into song.

For those who died for their verse.

We remember. We resist. We rise."


The mayor spoke words of unity. Community members sang. And as the sun dipped below the rooftops, Zariah took the stage with her saxophone, lit only by the soft orange glow of streetlights.


She played the melody her grandfather had written all those years ago. The song that had broken the curse. The song that reminded Memphis—reminded the world—that Black voices do not fade.


They echo.


And somewhere, deep in the alleyways where jazz once cried and blood once pooled, a faint trumpet note tries to play again.


But it cannot overpower her song.


Not anymore.