Chapter 4: Forging a Diva
The silence in the observation booth was a physical thing, thick and humming with tension. Grayfia stood perfectly still, her knuckles white where they gripped the rail before the one-way glass. Beside her, Rias couldn’t stop shifting her weight from one foot to the other, the sleek black tile cold through her stockings.
On the other side of the soundproofed barrier, in the blinding white of the vocal booth, Sabrina Carpenter was crying.
“Again,” Riser’s voice came through the speakers, smooth as poured honey, completely devoid of mercy. “From the bridge. And this time, don’t sing it. Feel it. You’re not asking. You’re admitting defeat.”
Sabrina, her face blotchy, her new black Valentino dress a stark contrast to her pallor, nodded. She closed her eyes, her hands curling into fists at her sides. The previous six hours had been a brutal excavation. Riser had stripped her of her bright, peppy wardrobe, her backup tracks, every mannerism she’d learned from her Disneyfied past. He’d replaced it with silence, with a single sheet of lyrics, and with relentless, surgical critique.
He wasn’t in the booth with her. He was in the control room, a god at the mixing board, his crimson eyes fixed on her through the glass. His fingers rested lightly on the faders.
Sabrina opened her mouth. The first note that came out was fractured, airy. She stopped, swallowing hard.
“The crack is good,” Riser murmured into his microphone, his voice intimate in her headphones. “Let it break. Your voice isn’t a perfect instrument. It’s a diary. Show me the ugly page.”
She breathed in, a shuddering diaphragm breath he’d drilled into her. When she sang again, it was different.
“I built a kingdom on a pleasant smile…
Polished the throne ’til it reflected nothing…
But you see the ghost behind my eyes…
The girl who’s tired of bluffing…”
Her voice wasn’t powerful. It was raw. It wavered on the high note, a vulnerable, human tremor. Grayfia’s breath hitched. She knew that tremor. It was the sound her own composure made when it shattered.
Riser’s hand moved, a slight adjustment on the board, pulling her voice forward, wrapping it in a faint, haunting echo. “Now the chorus. Don’t perform it. Confess it.”
Sabrina’s head dropped back. The tears tracked freely down her temples into her hairline. She wasn’t singing to an audience. She was singing to him.
“So take the key, I’m turning in the crown…
Let the pretty structures all burn down…
I don’t wanna be the master of the silence…
I just wanna be the sound… you pound… into the ground…”
The word ‘pound’ cracked, descending into a rough, almost sobbing gasp. It was devastating. It was erotic in its sheer surrender.
In the observation booth, a soft, involuntary moan escaped Grayfia’s lips. Her hand slipped from the rail, pressing flat against the glass, as if she could reach through and touch the anguish in the room. Her other hand drifted to the base of her own throat, where the memory of her iron collar sat like a brand.
Rias felt like she was going to be sick. Or come. She couldn’t tell the difference anymore. Her own session in that storage room-antechamber was a fresh, aching bruise on her psyche. Seeing this, watching another woman be emotionally filleted and remade into something that served Riser’s vision, was a mirror she didn’t want to look into. Yet she couldn’t look away. Her nails bit half-moons into her own palms. The pain was a anchor.
“Good,” Riser said, his voice a low purr in the silence that followed the last note. “Now, the final run. This isn’t a ballad anymore. It’s a revelation. You’re not asking. You’re stating a fact. And I want you to look at me while you do it.”
Sabrina opened her eyes. They were red-rimmed, hollow, and burning with a new, desperate fire. She fixed her gaze on him through the glass. She didn’t see Grayfia or Rias watching. She only saw Riser.
He began to play a simple, melancholic chord progression on a keyboard patched into her headphones. It was a funeral march for her old self.
“So let it burn, the effigy of who I should be…
Your hands are the only creed I need…
The prophecy was wrong, the kingdom is a cage…
And I am finally on my knees…”
Her voice strengthened on the last line. It didn’t soar. It sank. It was a declaration of intent, heavy and final. The note hung in the treated air, vibrating with pure, resonant need.
Riser held the moment. He let the silence swell. Then his fingers danced across the board, adding a layer of sub-bass so deep it was felt more than heard, a physical vibration through the floor. He nodded, once.
Sabrina slumped, catching herself on the mic stand, spent.
In the observation booth, Grayfia was panting softly, her cheeks flushed. Her deep blue eyes were glassy, fixed on Riser’s profile in the control room. Rias realized she herself was crying, hot, shameful tears she wiped away angrily.
Riser leaned back in his chair, a slow, satisfied smile spreading across his face. He didn’t look at Sabrina. He turned his head, his crimson eyes finding the one-way mirror. He couldn’t see them, but he knew. He always knew. His gaze seemed to lock with each of theirs through the obstruction.
He spoke, his voice picked up by the control room mic and piped into their booth. “She’s ready. The raw track is a haunting. After production, it will be a weapon.” He stood, stretching with the casual grace of a predator. “We don’t just have a singer. We have a siren. And now we own this world’s ears.”
He left the control room, entering the vocal booth. Sabrina was still leaning against the stand. He didn’t praise her. He took her chin in his hand, tilting her face up, examining her tear-streaked makeup, her shattered expression. He thumbed away a smudge of mascara.
“You did what was necessary,” he said, his tone matter-of-fact. “The first cut is the deepest. The rest will be easier.”
He guided her out of the booth, an arm around her shoulders, possessive and steering. He led her past the observation booth without a glance, down the hall toward the penthouse’s living quarters. The lesson was over. The ownership began.
Grayfia finally peeled her hand from the glass. She turned to Rias. Her usual composure was a frayed wire. “He finds the core,” she whispered, her voice rough. “The thing you’ve hidden even from yourself. And he holds a match to it.”
“I need a drink,” Rias muttered, pushing past her, fleeing the claustrophobic booth for the minimalist chill of the main penthouse. She went straight to the lacquered bar and poured three fingers of Riser’s whiskey, drinking it like water. It burned, but it didn’t cleanse.
Grayfia followed, more slowly. She went not to the bar, but to the large, empty sofa, sinking into it. She looked at the city lights bleeding through the floor-to-ceiling windows, but she was seeing something else.
“He’s building something,” Grayfia said after a long moment. “A peerage, but not like any other. Not for battle. Not just for power. He’s collecting… specific types of ruin. And specific types of beauty that can only exist in that ruin.”
Rias leaned against the bar, the cool marble seeping through her clothes. “She’s human. A famous human. What use is she?”
“Influence,” Grayfia said simply. “Devils rule the shadows. Humanity rules the stage. He’s bridging the gap. With her voice, shaped by him, he can craft the narrative. Make them hungry for things they don’t even understand. Make them crave the feeling of falling, of being unmade.” She finally looked at Rias. “He made you crave it in one night. Imagine what he can do with a million hearts listening to that song.”
The truth of it landed in Rias’s stomach like a stone. This wasn’t just about sex. It was about ideology. He was using pleasure, shame, and revelation as recruiting tools, as cultural engineering. And she and Grayfia weren’t just his lovers; they were his first converts, living proof of concept.
Riser returned alone, the scent of Sabrina’s perfume and her tears still faintly clinging to him. He glanced at the whiskey in Rias’s hand, at Grayfia’s defeated posture on the sofa. He smiled, that knowing, infuriating smile.
“Emotional whiplash is a potent drug,” he said, walking to the bar and taking the bottle from Rias’s stiff hand. He refilled her glass, then his own. “You watched her break. You felt it. It aroused you. It frightened you. It made you feel superior and intimately complicit all at once.” He took a sip, his eyes never leaving hers. “That’s the cocktail. That’s what we’re selling.”
“We?” Rias croaked.
“You knelt,” he reminded her, his voice gentle and absolutely ruthless. “You said ‘anything.’ Your brother wants you to be a political pawn. I’m offering you a role in the orchestra. A much more interesting form of power.” He looked at Grayfia. “And you. My loyal instrument. You understand the music, don’t you?”
Grayfia rose from the sofa. She walked to him, the click of her heels the only sound. She didn’t stop until she was inches away, then she sank gracefully to her knees, her head bowed. “I am yours to play, Master.”
Riser rested his hand on the intricate braid of her silver hair. A benediction. He looked at Rias over Grayfia’s kneeling form. “The summit is over. The tedious politics are for others. Our work is here. In the studio. In the secret rooms. In the spaces between notes and heartbeats.” He extended his free hand, not in request, but in expectation. “Are you in the orchestra, Rias? Or are you just part of the audience?”
The memory of his cock splitting her open, of the relentless pleasure that vaporized her will, flashed behind her eyes. It was followed by the haunting sound of Sabrina’s broken voice, singing a surrender so complete it sounded like freedom.
Rias set her glass down. She didn’t take his hand. Instead, she mirrored Grayfia. She lowered herself to her knees on the cold marble floor, beside the former Queen of the Lucifuge. She kept her head up, her blue-green eyes defiant even in submission.
“I’m in,” she said, the words tasting like destiny, and like ashes. “Just tell me what to do.”
Riser’s smile widened. He left his hand on Grayfia’s head and placed the other on Rias’s crimson hair, a conductor poised above his most dissonant, most promising instruments.
“Good,” he said. The city lights glittered behind him, a thousand distant, ignorant stars. “Tomorrow, we open a rift. The music here is just the warm-up. There are other worlds. Other voices, waiting to be perfectly ruined. And we’re going to collect them all.”
His hands left their hair. The moment broke, scattering the tension like shards of glass. “Up,” Riser said, his tone shifting from visionary to practical in a heartbeat. “The next lesson starts now. Grayfia, the atelier is prepped. Rias, observe.”
The ‘atelier’ was a room none of them had entered before, a clinical white space off the main studio that looked more like a surgical suite than a dressing room. Harsh, shadowless LED lights shone from recessed panels in the ceiling. One wall was a single seamless mirror. Sabrina stood in the center, still in the tear-stained Valentino, looking small and exposed.
“Stand straight,” Riser instructed, circling her. “Shoulders back. Look at your reflection, not at your feet.”
Sabrina obeyed, her posture stiffening. Riser stopped behind her, his hands hovering near her shoulders without touching her. “The recording tapped your emotional core. Necessary. But the vessel matters. The world sees the package before it hears the music.”
He gestured, and Grayfia moved forward with the quiet efficiency of a seasoned attendant. She carried a garment bag of charcoal-gray silk. “The dress from the Sukimoto fitting,” she stated, unzipping it.
“It’s not a dress,” Riser corrected, a hint of playful critique in his voice. “It’s a argument. Put it on.”
In the mirror, Sabrina watched as Grayfia helped her out of the black dress and into the new one. The fabric was a liquid metal, the color of storm clouds, and it felt cool and weightless against her skin. It was backless, the plunging line ending just above the swell of her hips, held up by two impossibly thin straps that gleamed like molten platinum. The front was a deceptively simple drape that clung to every new curve he’d carved out for her—the fuller breasts, the narrower waist, the subtle swell of her hips. It made her look both regal and profoundly vulnerable.
“Better,” Riser murmured, his eyes critically appraising the reflection. “But it’s paint on a canvas. The canvas needs work.” He nodded to a sleek, low table where an array of cosmetics lay arranged like tools. “Grayfia.”
Grayfia guided Sabrina to the chair. What followed was not a makeover. It was an unmasking. Grayfia wiped away every trace of the old, girlish makeup with careful, impersonal sweeps of a cleanser-soaked cloth. She reapplied foundation not to cover, but to even, creating a flawless, poreless plane. The eyes were next—smudges of charcoal and deepest violet applied with a precise, artistic ruthlessness that elongated their shape, making them look sleepless and knowing.
“He doesn’t want you to look pretty,” Grayfia whispered, her breath cool near Sabrina’s ear as she applied a dark, satin lipcolor. “Pretty is forgettable. He wants you to look like a consequence. Like a beautiful, terrible decision someone is about to make.”
When Grayfia stepped back, the woman in the mirror was a stranger. Older. Her gaze held a haunted depth that hadn’t been there three hours ago. The gorgeousness was undeniable, but it was a stark, severe gorgeousness. It didn’t invite you in; it warned you to keep your distance while desperately wanting you to cross the line.
Riser studied her for a long, silent moment. He walked to a panel on the wall and tapped it. The white room was flooded with a deep, pulsing bassline, a track all thumping heartbeat and sizzling, distorted synth. “Now the hard part,” he said, his voice cutting through the rhythm. “The body has to speak the same language as the voice. You confessed desperation. Now you need to move with defiance. Get up.”
Sabrina rose, unsteady in the unfamiliar energy of the room and the music.
“The shoes,” Riser said.
Grayfia produced a pair of heels—stiletto daggers with a transparent ankle strap. Sabrina slid her feet into them, gaining four inches of lethal altitude.
“You know how to dance,” Riser stated, beginning to move with a loose, innate groove to the beat. He wasn’t performing; he was demonstrating a principle. “You know choreography. I don’t want that. I want you to forget every count of eight you’ve ever learned. I want physical risk. I want the tension of a body fighting itself—pulling away while leaning in.”
He stopped moving. “Watch Grayfia.”
Grayfia, standing beside the mirror, went perfectly still for a second. Then, as if a switch had been flipped, her body seemed to melt into the music. It wasn’t a dance. It was a series of controlled collapses and recoveries. A roll of her shoulder became a arch of her back that looked like pain transforming into ecstasy. Her hand slid down her own thigh, slow and deliberate, her head dropping back to expose the line of her throat. It was terrifyingly intimate, completely asexual in its execution but drenched in sensual implication. It was the visual equivalent of her moan in the observation booth.
“See?” Riser said, his eyes on Sabrina. “It’s not about shaking your ass for the camera. It’s about showing the cost of the feeling. The risk is in the hesitation, in the almost-fall. Your voice cracked. Your body should threaten to break, too. Try it.”
Sabrina felt paralyzed. This was a layer of exposure far beyond singing crying in a booth.
“The bridge of the song,” Riser pushed, his voice softening into a coaxing tone that was somehow more demanding than a shout. “‘Your hands are the only creed.’ Show me that. Show me your body asking for hands it’s afraid of.”
She closed her eyes. The music thumped against her ribs. She remembered the raw ache in her throat from singing. She let her weight settle onto one hip, a slight, unconscious sway. It felt stupid. She forced herself to lift her arms, not in a graceful arc, but as if pushing through something heavy. She let her head loll to the side, mimicking Grayfia’s exposed throat.
“No,” Riser said, not unkindly. “That’s imitation. That’s choreography. Feel the creed. Feel the hands.” He walked up behind her, not touching her. “They’re not gentle. They’re sure. They’re taking. What does your spine do?”
Involuntarily, her back tensed, a slight, defensive curve.
“There. Hold that. Now, what does the part of you that wants those hands do?”
A tremble went through her. The defensive curve melted, just a fraction, into an arch. A silent offer.
“Yes,” he hissed. “Now move between those two points. The flinch and the invitation. The fight and the surrender. Let the music move you from one to the other. Don’t dance. Oscillate.”
Sabrina opened her eyes, staring at her own terrified, gorgeous reflection. She stopped trying to dance. She let the push-and-pull inside her—the shame and the need he’d unearthed—dictate her motion. A stutter-step back, a slow, rolling lean forward. A hand flying up to cover her own mouth, then sliding down her neck, over the slick fabric of the dress, tracing the new shape of her body as if mapping foreign territory. It was awkward. It was halting. It was utterly, devastatingly real.
Riser watched, his arms crossed, a conductor evaluating a soloist who’d just found the key. Grayfia’s lips were parted, her own body subtly mirroring Sabrina’s movements in minuscule twitches. Rias, forgotten by the door, felt a heat that had nothing to do with the room. She saw it—the exact moment Sabrina stopped performing and started being. It was more captivating than any flawless routine.
The song built to its synthetic crescendo. Sabrina, lost in the brutal grammar of this new body language, let the momentum take her. She dropped into a deep, controlled crouch, one hand bracing on the floor, the other flung out for balance, her head dropped between her shoulders. The move was all tension, all straining muscle and precarious balance. The music cut.
She held the position, trembling from the effort, the sweat beading at her hairline. The room was silent except for her ragged breathing.
Riser finally moved. He walked over, crouching down in front of her so they were eye-level. He didn’t smile. He nodded, once. A surgeon satisfied with a tricky procedure. “Now you’re ready,” he said quietly. “The voice, the vessel, and the violence of the motion. They all say the same thing.” He stood, offering her a hand. She took it, letting him pull her to her feet. “Tomorrow, we test it under lights. In front of a lens.”
He turned to leave, pausing at the threshold to glance back at the three women in the white room: Sabrina panting and transformed, Grayfia poised and yearning, Rias shocked and enthralled. “The collection,” he said, his earlier vision now a tangible plan taking shape in the sterile air, “has officially begun.”