Brandon's POV
My fingers tightened around the steering wheel as if the leather could ground me. As if holding on hard enough might steady the storm inside my chest. My old truck rumbled beneath me, its engine humming like a stubborn heartbeat refusing to give out. The sky above the city was that bruised shade of dusk—indigo bleeding into gold, like someone smeared paint across the horizon with shaking hands.
The Soundforge audition building rose in front of me like something out of another life. Glass panels stacked against steel, twenty floors of gleaming ambition. The kind of place where dreams weren't whispered—they were demanded, tested, sharpened until only the strongest survived. Two revolving glass doors spun under a massive silver sign that read:
SOUNDFORGE GLOBAL AUDITION | ARTISTRY MEETS DESTINY
I exhaled slowly, staring up at it.
This was it.
