Three Werewolves: Tour Blog

It didn’t take long.

A fan account posted a clip from the St. Louis show the next morning—just a short, zoomed-in video from the wings, showing a girl in a headset lifting her mic and calling a lighting cue moments before Field Notes From the Stars began. The amber-white swell that followed had already become iconic, but the discovery that someone new was behind it? That caught people’s attention.

The caption read:

🌟 WHO IS THIS STAR?

She called the cue right before “Field Notes” last night and the whole crowd LIT UP.

Is she crew? Is she new? Is she the real MVP?

#Starcatcher #FeralEclipseCrew #BehindTheMagic

It didn’t take long for fans to connect the dots. The girl who had posted the original Minneapolis video? The same one now riding with the band?

Within hours, “Starcatcher” was trending on fan forums and Instagram. Fan art popped up. One person even drew her wearing a headset made of moonlight, surrounded by floating sheet music. Another animated a short clip of her calling Cue 32 with sparkles flying from her fingertips.

Emily found out the way most people do—by accident.

She was sitting cross-legged on the floor of the tour bus lounge, sipping cocoa and helping Jonah organize a massive tangle of mic cables, when Gabriel burst in from the bunk hallway holding his phone like it was on fire.

“EMILYYYYY!” he howled.

She jolted upright. “What?! What happened?!”

“You’re internet famous,” he said, spinning the screen around.

She stared at the post.

She blinked.

“Oh my gosh.”

Cassie leaned over from the kitchenette and smirked. “Better get used to fan mail, Starcatcher.”

Diesel, feet propped up in his usual front-lounge chair, added, “Just don’t start charging for autographs until after you’ve learned how to coil XLR properly.”

Emily turned bright red.

Gabriel practically bounced. “Wait wait wait—it gets better. Look.” He tapped a message notification. “A podcast wants to interview you. Some behind-the-scenes music series. And Rolling Stone Online just DM’d the band asking if they could include you in the next feature.”

Emily looked at Thane, stunned. “They… want to talk to me?”

Thane smiled and gave a calm nod. “You’re part of the heartbeat now. Let them hear it.”

She sat there, phone in hand, heart pounding, eyes shining.

She wasn’t invisible.

She wasn’t in the background.

She was seen. And celebrated.

Jonah, leaning over the newly untangled cable pile, nudged her with an elbow. “Told you the downbeat was coming.”

She laughed softly.

And this time, she didn’t feel like she was catching stars.

She was one.

The energy backstage that night was electric.

The crowd in St. Louis was packed wall to wall—screaming, stomping, chanting the band’s name even before the house lights dropped. You could feel the sound through your feet like thunder rolling under concrete.

Emily stood offstage-left in the narrow black alleyway of cables, amps, and taped-down floor markings, her brand-new headset tilted slightly on her head. It was a little big, and Gabriel had jokingly slapped a sticker on it that said “Starcatcher Control Tower” in Sharpie.

Thane handed her a folded cue list and tapped the page lightly. “Follow along. Mark’s running the board tonight, but he’s giving you the nod for Cue Thirty-Two. It’s the lighting swell just before Field Notes From the Stars.”

Emily blinked. “Wait — I call the cue?”

“You’ve earned it,” Thane said, his tone calm and even. “Besides, I trust you.”

She gripped the paper like it was sacred and slowly nodded. “Okay. I can do this.”

The first few songs passed in a blur. Gabriel was on fire—leaping across the stage like a caffeinated meteor, bass thrumming so deep it rattled bolts. Cassie belted like she was channeling lightning. Rico and Jonah moved in perfect sync, and Maya ripped through her solos like a woman possessed. And Mark’s lights? They painted the air in rhythm and color, moving the crowd like puppets on invisible strings.

Emily watched it all from her post, eyes on the cue list, fingers lightly tapping her thigh to the beat.

Then… the acoustic guitar started.

Cassie stepped forward. The crowd fell silent.

Emily’s heart kicked into overdrive.

Cue 32 – “Starfall Fade-In” – 12-beat delay – swell from 20% to 90% on amber and white backlight wash.

Mark glanced at her across the dim corridor and gave her the tiniest nod. She lifted the headset mic to her lips, voice shaking but steady.

“… Standby Cue Thirty-Two… and… go.”

The lighting rig responded like it had been waiting for her.

A soft swell of golden-white light bathed the stage from behind, creating silhouettes of the band in a quiet halo. The crowd gasped. Phones went up. Some fans actually sobbed.

Onstage, Gabriel looked toward the wings—and winked.

Cassie began to sing.

“The world gets loud…
but stars don’t speak in screams…”

Emily’s hands shook, just a little. Not from fear. From wonder.

She kept her headset on, staying quiet, listening to Thane and Mark calling cues around her—so much sound, so much coordination. But she had done her part. She was in it. Not watching from the outside anymore.

When the house lights finally came up and the band took their bows, Emily took off the headset slowly… and smiled wider than she ever had before.

Mark passed her on his way off the lighting platform and said, “Nice call.”

Diesel was already waiting by the bus with a cookie in one hand and a proud, dad-joke grin on his face. “Told ya, Starcatcher.”

It was an unusually muggy night in St. Louis, and the venue was pure chaos.

The backstage area was cramped, the loading dock was a bottleneck, and two separate opening acts were trying to fight over limited floor space. Gabriel had already tripped over the same power cable twice, Thane was knee-deep in a faulty input patch that refused to speak to the snake box, and Jonah was muttering to himself in double-time as he helped Rico drag the drum riser into position.

In the middle of it all, Emily stood frozen near the gear wall, clipboard clutched in both hands, eyes darting from crew member to crew member. Someone had just handed her a printout of the patch list, and now a stagehand was asking her—loudly—where the DI box for the acoustic guitar had gone.

She swallowed hard. “Uh… I think… it was with rack six? Or maybe… maybe the fly case by the cable spool?”

The stagehand huffed and rolled his eyes, muttering something under his breath as he walked off.

Emily’s ears were hot. She turned, backing out of the way of a dolly full of mic stands, and nearly tripped into a lighting rack. Jonah appeared just in time, steadying her by the elbow.

“You okay?” he asked, gently.

“I… I don’t think I’m helping,” she whispered. “Everyone’s busy. I keep messing things up. I shouldn’t even be back here.”

Jonah blinked, then quietly motioned her to follow him to the side of the stage, out of the way of the chaos. The muffled thump of a bass test rumbled through the floor.

“Can I tell you something?” he said, crouching beside a crate.

Emily nodded, still on the verge of tears.

“I used to throw up before band competitions in high school,” Jonah admitted, brushing his hair back. “Like, every single one. Even when I knew the routine. Even when I nailed every fill in rehearsal. I’d still sit behind the bleachers and think I didn’t belong.”

Emily looked at him, surprised. “But… you’re you.”

He smiled. “Yeah. But it took a while to believe that meant something.”

He stood again, pulling a folded diagram from his pocket. “You know what this is?”

“Stage plot?” she asked softly.

“Yep. But look closer.” He handed her the patch list—the same one she’d been given earlier. “Half of this doesn’t match what’s actually onstage. The labels are wrong. The routing is flipped. Wanna impress everyone?”

She hesitated.

Jonah leaned in. “Grab a pencil, and fix it.”

Emily blinked, then took a breath.

And did.

She moved fast—quiet, steady, but determined. She traced every box and rack she could find. Noticed that Rack Six had been swapped with Rack Four. Found the DI box buried under a coiled extension reel near the fog machine, exactly where no one thought to look. She double-checked the snake inputs, relabeled the patch sheet by hand, and ran it straight to Thane mid-wiring.

Thane took one glance, looked back at her, and raised a brow. “You did this?”

Emily nodded, heart in her throat.

“Nice work,” he said simply, and waved her to follow him as he adjusted the gain structure.

Ten minutes later, Gabriel found her coiling cable and handed her an espresso with a little sticky note stuck to the side. It read:

💡 Not an intern. Field Engineer in Training. – G

She laughed out loud.

Later that night, just before the show, Jonah found her again, sitting just inside the bus with her feet up, finally breathing again.

“You good?” he asked.

She nodded. “Better. Still nervous. But better.”

He smiled. “You ever hear the beat of a song where it feels like it’s not quite in sync—but you know if you just wait one more bar, it locks in perfectly?”

She tilted her head. “Yeah.”

“That’s what you’re doing,” Jonah said. “You’re syncing up. That feeling? It’s not fear. It’s the downbeat.”

Emily beamed, pride finally outweighing the doubt.

Then Gabriel stuck his head in the bus door and yelled, “FIELD ENGINEER, YOUR PACK SUMMONS YOU. IT’S ALMOST SHOWTIME!”

She stood up.

Ready.

Two nights after Kansas City, the Feral Eclipse tour bus hummed along the I-70 corridor beneath a wide Missouri sky. Inside, the crew lounged in their usual post-show sprawl—Cassie curled up with a book in the corner, Jonah practicing finger taps on a pillow, and Gabriel pacing the length of the bus with his eighth espresso of the day, rambling enthusiastically about adding a bubble machine to their light show.

Emily sat on the edge of one of the unused bunks, her knees drawn up, hoodie sleeves pulled over her hands. She still hadn’t quite convinced herself this wasn’t all a dream.

Thane appeared beside her with a soft knock on the bunk frame. “Hey. We don’t usually make it official, but…”

He handed her a laminated lanyard. Bright red. Custom printed.
Feral Eclipse – Crew Access – Emily
In the corner, written in Gabriel’s scrawl, someone had added: Starcatcher.

Emily stared at it, eyes wide. “I… get my own badge?”

Thane smiled. “You’ve already earned it.”

Jonah peeked around the corner and grinned. “Also, heads-up—we assigned you Bunk #8. It’s the one under mine. Rico’s above you, so don’t worry about sudden guitar solos. He’s surprisingly quiet.”

Mark walked by with a mug and added, without looking up, “But if you hear mysterious typing at 2 a.m., it’s me reprogramming the ghost lights. Nothing to be alarmed about.”

Cassie leaned over the couch with a grin. “And if Gabriel tries to explain the tour layout using snack metaphors again, you’re legally allowed to hit him with a pillow.”

Gabriel popped up from the kitchenette, holding a cookie. “The cookie tray is the stage layout, and I stand by it!”

Diesel called back from the front of the bus. “She ain’t allowed to bring drama unless she brings enough cookies for the rest of us.”

Emily laughed, warm and real, hugging the lanyard to her chest.

Thane leaned in slightly, voice low but full of kindness. “You’re one of us now, Emily. Just be yourself, help where you can, and don’t be afraid to learn. We’re loud, weird, and slightly cursed, but… this pack sticks together.”

Her voice was soft but certain. “I won’t let you down.”

“You already haven’t,” Gabriel said, hopping into the opposite seat and handing her a cookie. “Now let’s teach you how to survive load-in without getting crushed by a rolling rack.”

It was after the second encore in Kansas City—a packed show at the Midland Theater, where the walls still hummed with the echo of thousands of voices chanting the final chorus of Field Notes From the Stars. The song had officially entered the main setlist a week ago, and now, every time they played it, the crowd lit up the venue with cell phone flashlights like stars in a digital sky.

But backstage, beneath the high of another killer night, a soft tension hummed in the green room.

Thane stood at the end of the hallway, arms crossed, talking quietly with Gabriel. Jonah was toweling off his neck, still glowing from the performance, while Cassie sat on a crate, flipping through a worn notebook with half-baked lyrics scrawled inside.

A knock at the door cut through the air—gentle, hesitant.

Maya opened it.

Outside stood a girl in her late teens, wearing an oversized Feral Eclipse hoodie and a lanyard with the venue’s “Production Assistant” pass hanging from it. Her hair was pulled into a messy ponytail. Her hands trembled slightly at her sides.

“Um…” she said, voice barely above a whisper. “Sorry. I know I’m not really supposed to… interrupt.”

Cassie looked up. “Hey, it’s okay. You with the crew?”

She nodded, eyes darting toward Jonah. “I — I was at the Minneapolis show. The small one. The VIP night.”

That got everyone’s attention.

“I was backstage,” she continued. “I… recorded that song. Field Notes. I didn’t mean to… not really. I just… I couldn’t not. I’d never heard anything like it.”

Jonah stood slowly. Gabriel tilted his head, a curious glint in his eye.

“You’re the one who posted it,” Thane said gently.

She nodded again, lower lip trembling. “I didn’t even put my name on it. I just… I thought it might disappear if I didn’t share it.”

There was a long pause. She braced herself for anger, or disappointment. She didn’t get either.

Instead, Jonah stepped forward with a slow, quiet smile. “You saved it.”

Her eyes widened.

Gabriel was next, grinning like she’d just offered him espresso and a standing ovation. “You birthed a classic, starlight. That post has changed people.”

Cassie stood and crossed the room, holding out her hand. “Thank you.”

“I’m sorry if it wasn’t cool,” the girl whispered, still unsure whether to cry or laugh. “I just… I didn’t think anyone would ever hear it if I didn’t.”

Mark, from the corner, added dryly, “Best unlicensed distribution of a track I’ve ever seen.”

Everyone laughed.

Thane walked over, calm and kind as always. “What’s your name?”

“Emily,” she said softly.

“Well, Emily,” he replied, “how do you feel about getting credited properly when the single drops next week?”

Her mouth dropped open. “Wait… seriously?!”

“We don’t forget our pack,” Jonah said. “Especially the ones who believe in us before we believe in ourselves.”

Emily wiped her eyes, nodding. “Can I… can I come back and see the next show?”

Gabriel placed his paw gently on her shoulder. “You’ve got a lifetime pass, starcatcher. All-access.”

She broke into tears then, the good kind—the overwhelmed, everything-is-changing kind. And in that room full of musicians and werewolves and worn-down road gear, she was the one glowing brightest.

The studio wasn’t flashy. No gold-plated walls or skyline views—just a cozy, dim-lit space tucked inside a renovated brick building in downtown Chicago. The ceilings were high, the walls thick with sound foam and old rock posters, and the air carried that electric smell of warm tubes, dust, and just a touch of coffee.

Thane had picked this studio on purpose. It wasn’t built for show-offs. It was built for artists who had something real to say.

The band had driven in direct after the last show, spurred by the viral wave of Field Notes From the Stars. With over ten million views, hundreds of covers already flooding YouTube, and people tagging them in stargazing videos with the lyrics—it was clear: this wasn’t just a moment. This was the moment.

Inside the control room, Thane stood behind the console, headphones on, hands dancing across the EQ with surgical precision. Diesel sat on a folding chair in the corner, arms crossed and tapping a pen on a legal pad. “Don’t screw it up,” he muttered with a smirk. “Half the damn world’s listening.”

In the tracking room, the band had spread out in a loose semicircle—no baffles, no isolation booths. Just shared space and open mics. They wanted it to feel like that night in the clearing.

Cassie stood center with the acoustic guitar in her hands. No flashy makeup, no monitor wedge. Just her voice and six strings.

Jonah was seated on a cajón instead of his usual drum throne. He tuned it gently, the old familiar tap-tap giving him peace. Gabriel knelt beside him, holding his bass like it was a sleeping child, keeping his touch featherlight and his face unusually serious.

Rico leaned against an amp, playing softly under his breath, running scales to warm up. Maya had her notebook open nearby, scribbling alternative chord ideas and murmuring to herself.

Cassie strummed a chord.

Everyone froze.

It was time.

Thane’s voice came through the headphones.

“Take one. Full pass. Just like the clearing.”

The red light blinked on.

Cassie began.

“The world gets loud…
but stars don’t speak in screams.
They whisper like we’re worthy,
of forgotten little dreams…”

Gabriel’s low harmonies crept in like a sunrise, layering behind her vocals with haunting tenderness. Jonah tapped a syncopated beat on the cajón, soft and measured—heartbeat tempo. Rico played clean, melodic flourishes that hung in the air like fireflies.

A gentle wash of shimmer filled the headphones. Like starlight had been captured in a synth pad and woven into the mix. Thane caught it and rode the faders just so, letting it swell with the second verse before pulling it back into near-silence again.

“Field notes from the stars…
scribbled on napkins and scars…”

The room held its breath.

They finished the full take with Cassie’s voice barely above a whisper. No one moved.

Thane clicked off the record light and spoke, voice hushed through the intercom. “That’s the one.”

Gabriel blinked, eyes a little glassy. “Already?”

Thane nodded slowly. “That was it. We’ll do a few safety takes… but that was it.”

Mark, still staring at his laptop, muttered, “Victor didn’t even flicker.”

Everyone laughed, soft and warm.

Cassie wiped a tear from her cheek. “We’re gonna break hearts with this one.”

Jonah looked around at all of them, then closed his eyes and whispered, “Good.”

It was three nights later at a smaller venue in Minneapolis—an intimate VIP-only event held in a converted warehouse with hanging Edison bulbs, velvet armchairs, and candlelit tables where superfans lounged with drinks in hand. The kind of show where nobody wore earplugs, and every lyric hit just a little closer.

The band had planned it as a stripped-down set—no pyro, no towering stacks, just warm lights and acoustic vibes. The kind of night meant to reconnect, to breathe.

About halfway through the show, after the usual acoustic versions of fan favorites and a few playful crowd interactions (including Gabriel making up a song about someone’s sparkly boots on the spot), Cassie glanced toward Thane, then back at the crowd.

“Alright,” she said into the mic, “we’ve got one more for you… and it’s not on any album. Not yet, anyway.”

The crowd buzzed.

“This one’s… a little different. We wrote it under the stars a few nights ago. No lights. No stage. Just us and a fire.” She looked at Jonah, who gave her a small nod and tapped his sticks gently together, four-counting into silence.

Thane dimmed the house lights from the soundboard. One soft spotlight glowed down on the stage.

Cassie began to play, her voice like the night wind.

“The world gets loud…
but stars don’t speak in screams.
They whisper like we’re worthy,
of forgotten little dreams…”

Every face in the crowd changed. Phones stayed down. Eyes softened. And from somewhere near the side curtain, unseen by the band, a young production intern who had helped set up cables earlier that evening was crouched behind a speaker, hands trembling as she held up her phone, recording every second—completely overwhelmed.

She hadn’t meant to record it. She just… had to.

Gabriel’s harmony curled under the chorus like smoke, and Jonah’s subtle taps on the rim gave it heartbeat. Mark’s lighting didn’t change once—just a gentle dusk-tone glow the entire time. The music hung in the room like a prayer.

“Field notes from the stars—
scribbled on napkins and scars…”

By the time the last note faded, more than a few fans were openly wiping their eyes. The band didn’t take a bow. They didn’t need to. They simply nodded, smiled, and walked offstage in near silence.

The moment had spoken for itself.

---

The next morning, the video was online.

The intern, still anonymous, posted it with no caption. Just the title:
“Field Notes From the Stars – Feral Eclipse (Unreleased)”

The clip was raw. Shaky. Recorded from backstage at an angle. You could barely see Gabriel’s face. The sound wasn’t perfect.

But it didn’t matter.

It spread like wildfire.

Fans reposted it with captions like:

“I didn’t know I needed this until I heard it.”
“This is what it feels like to fall asleep safely.”
“The most beautiful thing they’ve ever written. Please release this.”

Within twelve hours, it hit 2.3 million views.

By nightfall, #FieldNotesFromTheStars was trending globally.

Gabriel saw it first on the bus and screamed so loud he nearly knocked over the espresso machine. “WE’RE GOING VIRAL FOR THE CHILL SONG!”

Cassie pulled up the comments on her phone and just smiled, softly mouthing a thank-you to the unknown fan.

Thane reviewed the tour calendar quietly. “Might be time to record this one for real.”

Jonah, from his bunk, whispered into the quiet of the bus, “We wrote that for us. But maybe… maybe it belongs to them too.”

Mark, without looking up, muttered, “Victor would be proud.”

Everyone laughed.

The next evening found the band tucked backstage at a mid-size theater in Peoria, Illinois. Load-in had gone smooth, soundcheck was wrapped, and dinner was still a couple hours off. Outside, the crowd was already starting to line up. Inside, the green room was dim and quiet, lit mostly by a warm lamp in the corner and the faint glow of someone’s laptop left on standby.

Jonah sat cross-legged on the couch with a worn notebook in his lap, absently flipping through half-scribbled lyrics and snare exercises. Gabriel was curled up on a beanbag in the corner, barepaw and lazily twirling a Sharpie in one clawed hand, tail swaying with each slow breath.

Cassie was the one who broke the silence. She looked up from her chair, where she’d been absentmindedly strumming Rico’s backup acoustic guitar.

“So,” she said. “That night in the clearing? I can’t stop thinking about it.”

Rico nodded from the floor, back against the wall, arms resting on his knees. “Same. I kept hearing this melody in my head last night. Been trying to figure out where it came from, and I think it was Mark humming.”

Mark, who had been pretending to nap with his arms crossed and one paw on the edge of the gear crate, opened one eye. “Wasn’t humming. Just breathing funny.”

Gabriel chuckled softly. “Well, your haunted breathing is inspiring as hell.”

You stood nearby with your tablet tucked under one arm, monitoring backstage comms, but listening with half an ear as the vibe shifted. Something was happening—slow, organic. The kind of shift that usually meant a song was about to be born.

Cassie started plucking a quiet progression in D major—bright but soft, warm and reflective. Jonah tapped gently on the couch cushion in time, mimicking kick-snare patterns without making a sound. Gabriel sat up a little straighter, his Sharpie forgotten as he watched the chords unfold.

Cassie sang, almost more to herself than anyone else.

“The world gets loud…
but stars don’t speak in screams.
They whisper like we’re worthy,
of forgotten little dreams…”

Jonah scribbled furiously. “Say that again—the stars don’t speak in screams.”

She smiled and kept playing.

“We chased our lives through city lights,
but found the truth in pine and flame.
The fire crackled, kept us warm,
and made us say our real names…”

Mark slowly sat up. “Bridge should drop to silence. No drums. Just layered harmonies and one guitar.”

Rico raised a brow. “You’re contributing lyrics now?”

Mark smirked. “I’m contributing vibe.”

Gabriel was next. He softly sang backup on the chorus as it began to form, his deep voice wrapping around Cassie’s lead like smoke curling through starlight.

“Field notes from the stars—
scribbled on napkins and scars.
We learned the sky’s not that far,
when you’ve got fire and hearts and guitars…”

Rico hummed a countermelody under it, and Jonah leaned forward to tap out a rimshot rhythm on the wooden armrest. Even Maya drifted in quietly from the hallway and sat on the floor, mouthing along, eyes bright.

Thane watched it all—their fingers, their faces, the way it just clicked. The chaos of the haunted show, the silence of the starlit night, the freedom of the road—it was all becoming something real. Something worth preserving.

At the end of the first full run-through, no one spoke. The last chord rang out and faded.

Gabriel finally whispered, “Okay, I’m obsessed.”

Mark grunted in agreement. “Let’s record it. Now. Before it vanishes.”

Thane hit STOP on his phone’s recorder, then backed it up immediately to cloud storage and two different thumb drives. “Already on it.”

Cassie looked around the room. “We’ll save the wild songs for the big crowds… but this one? This one’s ours.”

The night after the haunted theater show, the band found themselves with a rare off-day and no pressing schedule. Thane had spotted the campground while scanning routes on the bus map—a quiet, tree-lined state park nestled on a hill just outside of Bloomington, Indiana. No towns. No streetlights. Just a blanket of woods, a clearing big enough for the bus, and the kind of stillness you can’t buy backstage.

Diesel pulled the rig into the grass parking area and killed the engine with a sigh. “Y’all are gonna love this. Nothing out here but crickets, trees, and maybe a possum or two with attitude.”

Thane was already out of the bus, clawed feet in the grass, sniffing the air like it was better than coffee. “Perfect.”

The others trickled out, stretching, yawning, surprised by how good it felt to not have anywhere to be. Jonah immediately started pulling out a small folding fire pit and a lighter. Rico grabbed a cheap acoustic guitar from the gear trunk. Gabriel—armed with a thermal mug and an energy bar—wandered off a few yards to lay flat on the ground, arms out like he was trying to become one with the sky.

Mark was the last out, holding a flashlight, which he promptly turned off once his eyes adjusted. “No light pollution,” he muttered. “Haven’t seen a sky this clear in years.”

They set up a little camp in the clearing—chairs in a rough circle, a few pillows from the bus tossed down, and a fire beginning to crackle in the center. The forest around them hummed gently, and the stars above stretched endless and quiet.

Cassie was the first to break the silence after they settled. “We don’t do this enough.”

“Sleep outside?” Rico asked, tuning his guitar.

“No. Stop.” She leaned back and stared at the stars. “Just… stop.”

Thane sat nearby, arms resting on his knees, eyes reflecting the fire. “Feels earned, doesn’t it?”

Jonah nodded from across the fire, poking at the flames with a stick. “We’ve been running non-stop for months. Big venues. Big noise. This?” He gestured around. “This feels real.”

Gabriel rolled onto his side and grinned. “We should do this more often. Camp out. Tell scary stories. Hunt cryptids. Interview a raccoon.”

Cassie tossed a pebble at him. “You are the cryptid, furball.”

They laughed. Easy. No stage. No pressure.

Mark sat still, eyes skyward. “When I was a kid, I used to sneak out just to stare at the stars. City light always drowned them out. But out here?” He pointed. “That’s Orion. And the Pleiades. And if you wait twenty minutes, you’ll see a satellite.”

Jonah leaned back, mouth twisting in a thoughtful smile. “We should write a song about this.”

Gabriel, ever the chaotic muse, sat up suddenly. “Field Notes From the Stars. That’s the title. No takebacks.”

Thane chuckled. “Only if the bridge has crickets in the background.”

Rico began picking a soft, drifting melody on the guitar. The notes carried through the trees like wind-blown sparks. Jonah joined in with subtle, rhythmic taps on a box drum he’d dragged from the gear bay. The others hummed, quiet, thoughtful. It wasn’t a rehearsal. It wasn’t a jam.

It was… peace.

And for a while, none of them spoke. They just played under the stars—firelight dancing off fur and skin, music drifting into the woods. A rare stillness, a shared breath.

Eventually, one by one, they drifted back into the bus, tired in the good kind of way.

Thane was last to head in, glancing up at the stars again, just to soak in one final moment of silence.

From behind him, Diesel spoke quietly, leaning on the bus railing. “Worth the detour?”

Thane nodded. “Yeah. One hundred percent.”

The door hissed shut behind them, and the night reclaimed the clearing—leaving only the cooling embers of a fire and a soft, fading melody on the breeze.

The Lyric Crown was long behind them now. The tour bus rolled quiet through the night, somewhere along a winding Kentucky backroad. City lights had faded into stars, and only the low hum of the wheels and the occasional yawn broke the silence inside.

The band was scattered around the lounge in a rare moment of calm—no caffeine-fueled antics, no cable coils being juggled, no thundering kick drum coming from the back lounge. Just the soft glow of the overhead LEDs and the flicker of the highway beneath them.

Jonah sat with his legs curled up on one of the couches, hoodie pulled halfway over his face, earbuds in but not playing anything. Cassie lounged across from him, lazily scrolling her phone.

“Victor is trending,” she said softly.

Gabriel perked up from where he was sitting crisscross on the floor, nursing a mug of espresso like it was soup. “Victor is trending? Please tell me it’s not because I tried to summon him onstage.”

Cassie smirked. “Fancam videos, Gabriel. That last bass drop? The strobe hit? People think you did summon him.”

Thane, seated at the table with his laptop open, glanced up. “To be fair, it did look rehearsed. Like… insanely rehearsed.”

“I didn’t even touch the cue,” Mark said from his usual spot in the corner, arms crossed, eyes closed. “It wasn’t mine.”

Gabriel leaned back, tail thumping the floor lightly. “I told you Victor was real. I felt a presence. Like stage manager energy, but with unfinished business and dramatic flair.”

Jonah chuckled under his breath. “If Victor had unfinished business, I think it was running our lights better than any of us could.”

Rico wandered in with a half-eaten bag of chips. “I watched a video someone uploaded from the balcony. There’s this weird shadow in the background when the lights hit red. Right where Toni said he used to sit.”

Everyone went quiet for a moment.

Even Diesel, still up front behind the wheel, called back over his shoulder. “All I’m saying is, if the ghost wants a roadie slot, he better not mess with my coffee maker.”

Gabriel sipped dramatically from his mug. “Victor would never mess with the coffee. He respects the grind.”

Mark, without opening his eyes, added, “If he wires his own DMX cues again, I’m going to start charging him union rates.”

Thane laughed softly, then leaned back in his seat. “It was weird. But it worked. That show was electric. One of the best we’ve ever done.”

“Because of Victor?” Jonah asked.

Thane paused, then shrugged. “Maybe. Or maybe we just believed something special was happening. And that made us play like it was.”

Silence settled over the group again. Outside, the trees blurred past like soft shadows in the moonlight.

Then Gabriel whispered, “Do you think if we say his name again, he’ll follow us?”

Cassie threw a pillow at him. “Gabriel. No.”