Chapter 8 Celeste
Celeste
The first note hits, and the arena exhales.
The pressure rolls up through the stage, through my boots, and through my bones. The crowd surges as one living thing, a tide of bodies and breath and anticipation that crashes straight into my chest and settles there, steady and unrelenting.
This is where my lungs finally work.
The lights slice down from above, blue and indigo, cutting the world into sharp, deliberate pieces. Smoke curls around my ankles. Heat blooms against my skin. I step into it without hesitation, veil in place, face paint set, wig catching the light like oil on water that shifts every time I move.
The crowd goes feral for it.
For Ara.
For Umbra.
I lift the mic, and the sound that comes out of me isn’t gentle. It never is. It’s textured and rough around the edges. Wrapped in melody sharp enough to cut through sixty thousand screaming throats.
Bass bleeds through concrete and steel, low enough to rattle teeth. I feel it in my sternum, syncing my pulse to something larger than myself. My body knows this rhythm better than it knows fear. Every step lands exactly where it’s meant to, every breath is measured and controlled.
Pyro erupts behind me, heat licking my back as Dusk locks into the groove, her bass slung low, and I can only imagine her feral grin behind her mask.
Twilight is already gone, his shoulders loose, fingers flying, hair damp and catching the lights as if he belongs to them, as Shade drives the beat like a weapon, her sticks snapping down with surgical precision.
The crowd gives itself to the energy in the arena.
We ride the hit of the opening song’s final note together, the arena shaking under our feet, and I let myself feel it fully—that rush, that sense of standing exactly where I was always meant to be.
Then the lights drop.
The transition hums low and slow, acoustic tones spilling into the sudden hush. I move down the catwalk, boots striking in time, posture perfect. This is where I get to make eye contact and interact with the fans in my movements.
The fans crying into their hands, kids clutching handmade signs, couples pressed together as if our music stitched them into one piece.
I let my gaze linger, giving each pocket of the crowd its moment. This part of the set isn’t about spectacle, it’s about individual attention. About learning how to split myself into thousands of moments and hand each one to someone different without ever losing the thread of who I am.
This song asks for that kind of care.
Shiloh wrote it years ago, back before Umbra existed.
It’s about a quiet love affair that survives on whispers and side glances, on stolen hours that feel sacred because no one else knows they exist. And how there’s a type of love that can slip into your life and settle under your skin and convince you that secrecy is safety until it isn’t.
We rehearsed this entire show for months before our first live show.
Twelve to sixteen-hour days in empty warehouses, tape marks on concrete floors standing in for the large stage we had only ever seen 3D renderings of.
By the time this tour was announced, we knew exactly what we wanted: ownership of every inch of the stage.
Our venues are so large, I knew I couldn’t just stand and sing; I wanted to move with intention so no corner of the crowd felt forgotten.
Every step is timed to the lighting cues, the camera sweeps, and the rise and fall of the sound. I know where I’m going before my foot even leaves the ground, because my body learned this path long before tonight.
The catwalk carries me forward, my movement steady, spine straight, every movement precise. The lights begin their slow migration toward the secret VIP section, and I feel the shift ripple through the room before it lands.
My big brother is there.
There’s nothing that stands out about our VIP section. Family goes there when they can make it, and when they can’t, Rowan fills the empty seats with fans who didn’t have tickets but waited outside anyway.
Orion doesn’t get to come often. His world doesn’t bend around tour schedules and encores. But when he can show up, it’s because he carved the time out with his own hands.
Our eyes meet for a second.
I can’t wave or give any type of acknowledgment that the cameras could catch. Just a look held long enough to say everything we never say out loud. As I draw a breath to turn away, I notice the man standing beside my big brother is the one person I never wanted to see again
Something inside me fractures cleanly.
Lucian.
Right there, he’s close enough to Orion that there’s no room for doubt. No space for my brain to soften it or pretend I’m mistaken. He isn’t a trick of the lights or a memory dragged up by adrenaline. He’s real.
Lucian fucking Sterling.
My voice fractures on the next line, a raw, audible fracture that slips past whatever control I thought I had, and spills straight into the mic. The sound carries, thin and exposed, as if it has peeled back a layer and left my soul visible to the arena.
The crowd answers with a cheer that mistakes the accident for intention, as if it were a moment of vulnerability crafted for them. They don’t know the sound was ripped from my soul from seeing a ghost standing twenty feet in front of me.
I let the crack live. I lean into it, roughen the next note, let the tremor turn into texture. I make it part of the song. I give them heartbreak dressed up as artistry, devastation disguised as intimacy.
The arena erupts like I just gave them my soul, and in a way, they just witnessed it crack wide-open.
Rowan is somewhere offstage, watching from the wings like he always does.
As tour manager, he’s the architect behind the chaos.
He’s the reason this exists at all. The one who refused to let Korbyn’s talent get swallowed by assumptions, aesthetics, and industry bullshit.
Rowan built a band around his little sister when no one would take her seriously as a musician.
The music took off faster than anyone had planned. Our albums dominated the charts, causing a demand that turned into a roar the moment fans decided Umbra wasn’t meant to stay contained to screens and shadows. Touring wasn’t something we planned; we were summoned.
And now here we are, years later, on our first world tour.
The spotlight settles, clean and bright, and I deliver opening lyrics to our next song with control and weight. The crowd answers immediately, volume surging, emotion cresting as they feel the shift without understanding why.
Turning back toward the full sweep of the arena, I lift my chin as the song builds again. The sound expands and the lights flare, causing the moment to stretch wide enough to hold me.
I lift my hand on cue, let the emotion show in my movements the way fans love, let them read the tremor as passion instead of the truth tearing through my chest.
The lights drop for the transition, and I turn my back to the sea of faces.
My hands tremble so hard I tuck them into my skirt as I try to catch my breath through tight lungs. My ribs feel too tight, my pulse sharp and fast under my skin.
Lucian Sterling is here.
Here.
After seven months of silence that ripped away at my heart one day at a time. The cruel words that he hurled at me, and how they cut clean and stayed lodged in my heart. Lucian pulled himself out of my life so abruptly that I’m still finding the empty spaces he left behind.
He’s the man who told me I deserved better while deciding—without me—that he couldn’t be it. He selfishly took the future from my hands like I wasn’t strong enough to choose for myself.
The next beat hits, and I bring my heel down hard enough to feel it in my bones. Every movement sharpens as my anger and resentment build; precision replaces softness. Control replaces hurt. I pour everything I can’t say into the song and let the music carry the weight.
Each lyric lands with intention, and each breath burns clean.
The crowd eats it up, oblivious to what they’re taking in.
But I can’t stop seeing him.
He’s enjoying the concert. Fucker. Every time I accidentally look his way, he’s singing with me. I can’t help but take in his face as it subtly changed in the past seven months, but the core of him is unmistakable. The same man who once held my heart like he knew how easily it could break.
And broke it anyway.
He has no idea.
No idea that the woman commanding this stage, wrapped in smoke and light and noise, is the same one who kissed him in the dark. Who traced his jaw with shaking fingers, and made promises she meant.
The spotlight cuts across the pit again, and I force my face toward the heavens, letting the emotion read as devotion instead of devastation. The crowd screams, thinking my tears are theirs and that this moment belongs to them.
They have no idea I’m bleeding under the glitter.
When the lights drop for the transition, I turn my back to him.
The next cue hits—floodlights blaze white, then ignite into molten gold.
And whatever softness I had left?
The tiny, stupid, traitorous hope I hadn’t been able to kill?
It incinerates.
Once I reach the final song, a new energy takes over—a battle cry, our signature anthem—and I lean into the mic like I’m baring my teeth.
Let him watch; he’s never coming to another concert.
Enjoy it while it lasts.
The flames explode behind me, heat licking my skin as the chorus erupts. My body moves on instinct, the months of training, discipline, and building Ara from my own bones.
By the time I hit the final note, there is nothing left of me but raw nerve and shaking breath. As soon as we drop through the trap doors in the stage, the roar of the crowd filters through above me.
They’re losing their minds. I can feel the stomp of their feet shake the ground under me; they’re screaming our names.
I should feel powerful, invincible; instead, I feel like I’m standing on a fault line seconds before it breaks. I stumble through the walkway under the stage, breath still ragged, body slick with sweat.
My hands are shaking so badly I nearly drop my in-ears. The noise behind me is deafening, an ocean of people who think I just gave them the best performance of my life.
Maybe I did, but it doesn’t matter.
It wasn’t for them.
I’ve played sold-out stadiums on this tour. I’ve heard tens of thousands of people scream my name.
But it has never been like this. This energy is different.
It’s not just excitement. It’s raw, electric reverence. Like I set something free inside them, and now they don’t know how to put it back.
The crowd keeps going. A full two minutes past our exit cue, and they’re still going. They’re stomping while they’re chanting Umbra so loud it’s echoing off the walls of Nissan Stadium, as if it belongs to something ancient and holy.
I should feel triumphant.
But all I feel is rage.
Rage that he was here. That he got to see this part of me.
Rowan is waiting under the stage at the checkpoint with my phone and emotional support water bottle, his brows drawn tight in a way I know a big brother lecture is on its way.
He keeps pace with me as we walk to the green room, his eyes already scanning my face, my posture, before locking on my throat.
“Hey,” he says, and there’s no heat in it yet. “Talk to me. Your voice clipped on the bridge and went raw a few times tonight. Do you feel strain? Pain? Anything sharp?”
“I’m fine,” I say automatically, trying to get to the privacy of our makeshift dressing rooms.
Rowan holds the door open for me, and I brush past him, trying to get away from the interrogation I know is coming.
“You don’t sound fine. I want a doctor to look at you before we do anything else, and you’re on vocal rest for the rest of the night.”
I stop short. “Rowan. No.”
He exhales through his nose, frustration leaking through the calm. “Celeste, that crack wasn’t planned. I heard it in your support. You can’t mess with your voice like that. Not on a run this long.”
My jaw tightens. “My voice is fine.”
“That’s not—”
“My voice is fine,” I repeat, sharper now, and finally turn to face him. “My heart is not.”
That gets him to still.
“Is he here?” He asks quietly.
I nod once. “He was standing next to Orion. That crack wasn’t strain; it was shock. I saw him, and the song hit differently. That’s all.”
Rowan’s shoulders ease a fraction, though the worry doesn’t leave his eyes. “Are you sure your vocal cords are okay?”
“I promise,” I say. “I don’t have any pain, there is no burning or loss of range. It was just… a moment.”
He watches me for another beat, weighing it, then nods once.
“Okay. I still want you to hydrate. Steam when you’re back at the hotel.
No talking unless you have to,” he pauses.
“And for what it’s worth, you handled it, and you fucking killed it without hurting yourself.
Social media is already going insane about your ‘note changes’. ”
“I didn’t know he’d be here,” I admit, the words finally slipping loose. The validation from him and the fans lands harder than I expected it to.
“I know,” Rowan says. “If you had, Orion wouldn’t be breathing.”
A humorless laugh breaks out of me. “You’re not wrong.”
He reaches out and taps the back of my hand with two fingers. “You don’t have to be invincible tonight, you just have to get through it.”
My hands still shake as I grab my toiletry bag, pulse roaring loud enough to drown out the world.
What the hell are you doing here, Lucian Sterling?
And why does it still feel like my soul remembers the shape of you?