The Apparition || Bad Omens || Noah Sebastian

Epilogue

That morning, Noah woke up with a strange sensation burning in his chest. He had an odd dream the previous night. A girl was dying before his eyes, during one of his concerts.

It was a nightmare.

He had seen the security staff widen a circle within the crowd to allow the paramedics to work. He had watched them as they tried to resuscitate her.

He saw one of them shake his head towards the colleague who had just spoken to him.

He saw the security guy check his watch.

Time of death.

Noah threw the blankets off along with that strange feeling that his mind had left him.

They had a concert that night in their hometown. It was just his subconscious giving him a bit of anxiety, nothing unusual.

That night the stage lights were blinding, so intense that it was impossible to see past the first row of the audience. Noah brought a hand to his eyes, shielding them for a moment. The crowd in front of him was a stormy sea, a river of bodies moving to the rhythm of Bad Omens. The deafening roar of the fans was a single voice, a continuous echo that seemed to rise from the depths of the earth.

"Sold out," the agent had said just a few hours earlier, with a satisfied smile. His lifelong dream was coming true. Bad Omens had become a name in the metal scene, a name everyone knew, and he, Noah, was the beating heart of it all. He never imagined everything could go this well.

It was that feeling of absolute power, that moment when the world stopped, and everything revolved around him—his voice, his movements. He felt his heart beat in unison with Nick’s drums, while Jolly and Nicholas erupted into furious riffs. Every note, every breath, every word that came out of his mouth seemed to shape the reality around them. Noah felt invincible.

Yet, that night, something felt different. He couldn’t quite grasp what it was, but an invisible shadow seemed to loom over the stage, as if some unknown energy was creeping between the notes, silent but relentless.

"This will be the last one, folks!" Noah shouted into the microphone, his voice hoarse and powerful, though with a trace of unease hidden behind the excitement of the moment. The crowd erupted in cheers as the band launched into their final song of the night, one of the fan favorites, a crescendo of anger and despair that climaxed in a cathartic scream.

That’s when he saw her.

The girl from the dream. She had long, curly black hair, dancing with the rest of the crowd.

She wasn’t lying unconscious on the ground. No one was performing CPR on her. No one was checking their watch for the time of her death.

Noah watched her from the stage, his heart beating faster in time with the music. The girl from the dream was alive. She danced, smiling, unaware of what could have happened, unaware of what he had seen—or rather, dreamed. And yet, something deep inside him stirred. He didn’t know why, but every fiber of his being was screaming at him not to lose sight of her.

As the last notes of the song filled the air, Noah allowed himself a deep breath. The concert ended in an explosion of applause and cheers, but his gaze remained fixed on that figure in the crowd. He brought a hand to his chest, as if trying to grasp an elusive feeling, a memory he had never lived.

After leaving the stage, he pulled up the hood of his hoodie, trying to slip away unnoticed. He needed some air. He slipped out the back of the venue, hands in his pockets, his heart still in turmoil. The night air was cool, but it couldn’t calm the storm raging inside him.

It was then, lost in his thoughts, that he bumped into someone. He felt the impact before he saw her. The girl took a step back, looking at him in surprise. "Oh, sorry!" she said, laughing nervously, as if that small collision was the most absurd thing that had happened that night.