tried to buy Avalon again, this time for triple the price. Elara sent them a single word: “Sold.” Then she hung up and laughed.

First was . He was OmniSphere’s secret weapon, a former child star with cheekbones sharp enough to cut glass and a social media following of eighty million. He’d been sent by OmniSphere to sabotage the audition, though no one could prove it. Julian sauntered onto the floor, radiating smugness. He didn’t act; he performed attitude. He read the lines as if he were ordering a latte. “Tick, tock, the mouse ran up the clock,” he sneered, then looked directly at Elara in the producer’s booth. “That’s the take, right? We can ADR the emotion later.”

“You’re hired,” Kael said, his voice hoarse.

Kael leaned forward.

Kael looked at the empty seats, the ghost lights, the dust motes dancing in the last rays of sun. He thought of Silas Avalon’s motto, painted in faded gold above the stage door: “We don’t give them what they want. We give them what they never knew they needed.”

They backed down.

They shot in secret, moving from soundstage to abandoned warehouse to a decommissioned trolley barn in the dead of night. OmniSphere tried to stop them. A private investigator was hired to track their locations. A fake fire alarm was pulled during a crucial monologue. But the crew of Avalon, a family of misfits and true believers, became a fortress.

Elara flinched. Kael just shook his head. “Next.”