They called themselves The Listeners.
They dressed in old headphones, frayed audio cables wrapped around their arms like sacred threads.
They walked in silence.
They spoke only in lyrics.
Not real ones.
Made-up lyrics — the ones they swore came from Elena's forgotten demos.
---
> "She wasn't afraid," one said, eyes wide, voice thin like stretched tape.
"She didn't run. She chose the static. She became it."
They weren't there.
They'd never heard her voice in person.
But they were certain of it all.
---
Ezra watched their gatherings from a cracked drone camera.
Dozens of people — sitting in circles, heads bowed, humming out of sync.
Some carved notes into their skin with razors.
Others held up cassette players with no tapes inside, pressing play on silence and weeping like it was a funeral.
---
They were building something dangerous:
A new version of her.
Not the Elena he knew.
Not the one who whispered when she was nervous or slept with a light on because she feared the dark under her music desk.
This new Elena?
She was a prophet.
A martyr.
A voice that spoke only to them.
---
They released a manifesto online:
> "Ezra's memories are false.
He recorded control, not love.
Elena was never his."
It went viral among the post-Harmony faithful.
People began deleting Ezra's old recordings.
Replacing them with fan-made versions — fabricated quotes, twisted lyrics, re-edited videos.
---
The past was being rewritten.
Not by time.
But by grief-fueled obsession.
---
Ezra confronted one of them in person.
A teenage girl outside the old studio.
She wore Elena's hairstyle. Her exact necklace. Even the same lipstick color.
> "You don't know her," Ezra said quietly.
She smiled. Her teeth were sharpened.
> "Neither do you."
---
He looked into her eyes and realized:
She believed it.
Truly believed that her Elena — the one she'd assembled from fragments and fantasy — was the real one.
And Ezra?
He was just a footnote in someone else's gospel.
---
Later that night, Ezra stared at his only untouched recording —
the one he swore he'd never release.
It was Elena's last message.
Raw.
Uncut.
Never heard by anyone else.
He hovered his finger over "upload."
Because maybe the only way to protect her memory now…
Was to sacrifice the real one.