The Enchanted Playlist

Prologue: A City of Dreams and Ghosts

If you ask anyone about Harmonia, they'll tell you it's a city of dreams. The streets hum with ambition musicians playing on every corner, artists sketching under neon lights, singers belting out their hearts to the night. They'll tell you it's beautiful, magical even.

But they won't tell you the truth.
Harmonia is haunted.

Not by ghosts you can see, but by dreams that refuse to die. By people who gave everything to be heard and ended up forgotten. The city remembers them, though, in its shadows and whispers. And sometimes, it chooses someone to carry their echoes.

I didn't know that the night I found the playlist. Back then, I was just Melody Grayson, a twenty-year-old nobody with big dreams and an empty wallet.

I grew up in a place where silence was louder than any song. My mom worked two jobs, my dad walked out when I was six, and music was the only thing that made sense. By the time I was eight, I could pick up a tune on the piano just by hearing it once. By thirteen, I was writing songs no one would hear. By twenty, I was playing on street corners for spare change.

And failing.

"This city eats people alive," my best friend Juno told me once. She was my opposite in everyway loud, bold, and unapologetically herself. "But you're too stubborn to let it chew you up."

That's the thing about Juno. She always made me sound braver than I was. The truth? I was scared, scared I'd never make it, scared that my dreams would slip through my fingers like sand. I thought if I could just find the right sound, the right moment, everything would change.

I didn't expect my moment to come in the form of an old MP3 player.

The night I found it, I was wandering the city, my fingers aching from hours of playing my keyboard. I didn't have enough money to pay rent, and the shame of calling my mom to ask for help sat heavy in my chest. Juno had invited me to crash at her place, but I needed to clear my head first.

That's when I saw the pawnshop.

It was tucked between two neon-lit bars, its sign flickering like a dying firefly. I almost walked past it, but something pulled me in. The air inside smelled like dust and secrets, and the shelves were cluttered with forgotten lives old guitars, cracked records, broken amps.

And then I saw it.

An MP3 player, small and battered, sitting alone on the counter. It wasn't much to look at, but as I stepped closer, I swore I heard a faint hum, like it was calling me. My hand hovered over it, and for a moment, I hesitated. It felt...alive.

The shopkeeper's voice snapped me out of it. "That one's special," he said, his eyes glinting in the dim light. "It's yours for twenty bucks."

I didn't think twice. I handed over the money and left the shop, the MP3 player warm in my hand. If I'd known what it was, what it could do, I might have left it there.

But I didn't. And that's how it all began.