The Soulbloom
Where the Iron Bard Plays
This is not the story I promised earlier in the week. It is not the one I had started writing. But it is the one that wanted to be written. Thank you
and for giving me this opportunity.
In the hidden places of the world, where the soil is rich with memory and inspiration, grow the Soulbloom Dahlias. They are not as other flowers. For seasons, they lie dormant, waiting. They wait for the passing of a monumental artist—a musician whose sound was so foundational it did not merely entertain, but altered the very soul of the listener.
They wait for the Bard who walked the line between darkness and light, whose voice held both the rumble of thunder and the quiet vulnerability of a solitary man.
When such a spirit leaves the mortal world, its essence—the pure, creative magic of its music—refuses to fade. It is drawn to the waiting bloom for a final encore. The music becomes the flower, and the flower becomes the stage.
The silence was the worst part.
It wasn’t a true silence, not in a city that never fully slept. It was a profound and personal void, a frequency that had been broadcasting for Aston’s entire conscious life and had suddenly gone dead. The news had confirmed it that morning. The voice that had taught him rebellion, solace, and the strange beauty of the dark was gone. The world felt muted, its colors bled out.
He found himself pushing through the door of “The Vinyl Crypt,” a bell above him chiming a feeble welcome. The shop was his only real church, a sanctuary crammed with towering shelves of records that smelled of old paper, dust, and forgotten magic. Behind the counter, Henry was meticulously cleaning a record with a velvet cloth, his long grey hair tied back in a loose knot. He didn’t look up, but he knew.
“It’s like someone just… turned it all off,” Aston said, his voice cracking on the last word. His hands found the familiar comfort of a record bin, his fingers tracing the spine of a worn album cover, one depicting a shadowy figure against a stark, violet sky. “I was fourteen when I first heard this. It… it felt like someone finally understood, you know? The world felt wrong, and his voice made it okay to feel that way.”
Henry paused his work, setting the cloth down. He looked at Aston, his eyes holding the patient wisdom of a man who had heard a million songs. “I know exactly what you mean. For me it was a beat-up cassette on a bus going nowhere. The music sounded like it was forged in a factory fire. That voice wasn’t just singing about darkness; it was holding a lantern up inside of it.” He sighed, a soft, rumbling sound. “And that’s why you’re wrong, kid. A light like that doesn’t get turned off. It only dims temporarily, until it really begins to shine.”
He leaned forward over the counter, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. “There’s a story the old musos tell. A myth for the ones who leave a piece of their soul in the grooves. It’s not in any book. It’s a tale you earn after a thousand spins. They call it the Soulbloom.”
“A bloom? You mean like a flower?” Aston finally managed, a skeptical smile touching his lips. “Henry, come on. That sounds like something out of one of those fantasy books you hate.”
Henry’s expression didn’t change. He simply resumed polishing a spot on the vinyl with his cloth. “Is it any stranger than a man from a rusty factory town creating a sound that would define a century? It’s not about magic, kid. It’s about energy. Where do you think all that sound, all that power, goes? It has to land somewhere. Nature finds a way.”
Aston fell silent, the old man’s logic feeling strangely, undeniably right. He listened, captivated despite himself.
“They say,” Henry continued, “that for a short time after the great silence falls for a true master, their spirit doesn’t fade. It looks for a new stage. It finds a patch of earth that remembers its roots—a place of struggle and growth. And there, it blooms.”
He picked up the record again, holding it like a sacred text. “It’s not a ghost story, kid. It’s a story of transformation.” He leaned in even closer then, his voice dropping to a near-whisper, as if sharing a sacred secret. “If you know how to listen, you can still hear the concert. I’d go to the old Crown pub, down by the canal. Or what’s left of it. Some say that’s where the whole thing started. Go see where the stage burned and life now grows from the ashes.”
Leaving the shop, Aston felt a sliver of impossible hope pierce his grief. He walked toward the canal, to the burned-out hull of a pub that had been a ruin for as long as he could remember. But now, he heard things differently. The rhythmic lap of water against the canal wall was a heavy, deliberate bass line. The wind whistling through the charred beams was a sustained, ghostly vocal note. He was following a phantom arrangement, a song only he could hear.
The Crown was a skeleton of memory, its blackened beams reaching for the sky like skeletal fingers. The floor was gone, reclaimed by defiant weeds and wildflowers. And there, in the center of the ruin, where the stage would have been, was a single, impossible flower. A dahlia, its petals a riot of deep magenta and pale, creamy white, stood in stark contrast to the charcoal-black ground. It seemed to pulse with a soft, inner light in the deepening twilight.
Aston approached slowly, his heart hammering against his ribs. As he drew closer, the soft, inner light of the dahlia began to gather, pulling from every petal until it formed a single, phantom spotlight. It shone down upon one of the broader petals, illuminating it like an empty stage.
A figure stepped out of the shadows and into the spectral beam. It was a calavera, a joyous skeleton, but unmistakably… him. The round glasses, the long, dark coat that billowed around its form, the way it held its hands as if gripping a microphone stand only it could see. A sound drifted from its open jaw—not through the air, but blooming directly inside Aston’s mind. It was that legendary, prophetic wail, the same timbre that had shaken stadiums, yet it sang melodies he had never heard, lyrics made not of words but of pure, raw emotion.
Then, a second spirit flickered into being beside the singer. This one was more electric, sharper. It held a spectral, V-shaped guitar, and its bony fingers flew across a fretboard of pure light. The music that poured from the ghostly instrument was at once intimately familiar and utterly alien. It was the foundation of songs he knew by heart, but twisted into new, glorious shapes, with chords that shouldn’t have been possible.
Together, it was the sound of thunder and velvet, the sound that had built a genre, now evolving in real-time before him.
As the duo played their unearthly, metal anthem, tiny, shimmering forms began to rise from the dahlia’s glowing heart. Ethereal dancers made of starlight and memory, each one a spark from a soul who had been moved by the music. There were millions. They danced with wild, graceful abandon on the stage of petals, a celebration of the sound that had given them life.
Aston stood, mesmerized. This wasn’t a sad farewell. This wasn’t an ending. It was a genesis. He was witnessing the moment man became immortal. The music hadn’t died; it had become a living force, shedding its mortal confines to be woven into the fabric of the world itself.
He watched for an hour, or maybe a lifetime, as the concert raged. He didn’t feel the need to stay until it was over, because he understood it never would be. The rhythm of the spectral song had synced with his own heartbeat. The silence that had haunted him was gone, filled now with a profound and permanent resonance.
He turned to leave, not feeling like he was abandoning the scene, but like he was carrying it with him. The music had not died, it had simply found a new stage.
Aston walked away from the ruin and back into a world no longer muted, feeling the eternal riff blooming in his own heart.
I struggle to find words here, L.G. Not only is this a beautiful tribute to musicians across time and space, but it's also yet another example of how you continue to grow and evolve as a writer.
When I first met you, you were a king of cosmic horror. You still are, but in the months since then, I have seen you conquer fantasy, romance, and now, a piece that defies genre by capturing the ethereal essence of emotion that only music can provide.
Well, music, and now this story, it seems. You've placed so much intention and emotion into these words, that they almost vibrate like notes in a song. Truly amazing work, my friend. You continue to inspire me every time I read your work.
This was absolutely beautiful and spoke to the part of me that adores the kind of music that can touch the soul. Really enjoyed this piece!