After Dark

O N E

**All songs used in the chapter are not mine and I give full credit to those artists**

After Dark's Origin

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Lilliana Bane was waiting patiently in her seat at the bar. She had recklessly signed up for a karaoke contest without thinking twice about it. Trying to forget about the anxious feeling growing inside of her, she swallowed the liquid courage in her glass cup.

She silently focused on the lipstick smudge on the glass from her rushed makeup. She dreaded for the moment they would call her up to the stage after the last performer finished.

She looked over to the stage, a young girl who seemed to be in her early college years, sang very off-key to a cover of an Ariana Grande song she had heard on the radio a few times.

As the girl finished and some scattered claps praised her of finally finishing the song she practically ruined, the announcer came up to the stage and grabbed the microphone.

"And...next up is, Lilly Bane!"

Lilliana blinked away nervous tears and prayed that the knot in her stomach would go away. She slowly walked away from the bar and went up to the stage. Claps applauded her as she walked up, hoping she would be a better performer than the last girl.

She walked onto the stage and hesitantly grabbed the microphone from the announcer. The blinding spotlight made her squint so she couldn't make out anyone's face.

"Uh, hi, I'm Lilly and I'm going to sing Fade Into You b-by Mazzy Star."

The "DJ" already knew the song she was going to sing so he had the song ready to play. The first part of the intro played. Lilliana waited for her que to sing. As it was coming up she felt that no words would come out of her mouth. She seemed to just focus on the size of the crowd. There was a lot of people, she guessed they were here specifically for the competition. The winner was awarded with $1,000, so that may be the reason why she signed up in the first place.

By just her luck, she missed her que. "I-Uh. Can you please stop the music? Please?"

The "DJ" stopped the music as murmurs spread through the crowd.

Lilliana turned around and blinked away her tears. She had always had a love for singing and loved how she sounded, but she had stage fright, so it was a bad mix.

"..okay! We will be right back!" The announcer spoke into the mic and walked up to Lilliana. He sympathetically placed his hand on her back, "Hey, you okay? You don't have to perform if you don't want to."

"No, no. I got it. Just give me a second."

Lilliana walked off the stage, she was greeted by a small group of people. One girl and two other boys, they looked around her age.

The girl with blonde hair spoke up, "Hey! We didn't want to embarrass you, but we noticed you were nervous to sing up there. I'm Dahlia but you can call me Lia." Her warm smile and sweet voice stopped Lilliana from questioning her intentions.

"This is Nate and Cyrus." She pointed to the two other boys next to her.

They were both conveniently attractive and had the same smile Dahlia had on her face. "We would like to offer to sing with you, if you wanted of course. We perform sometimes in bars like this and we're pretty good!"