The aftershocks of the concert didn't fade with the final note or the day it happened. They rippled outward, seeping into every corner of the world that had witnessed it.
There was the single mother and daughter, their lives forever altered by a reward they never dreamed possible. Tears turned into a future—rent paid, debts erased, hope restored. Then there was the young, rich scion who had always sworn he would never let anyone, not even himself and especially not someone involved with the entertainment industry, be swayed by the weakness of desire. Yet that night, amidst flashing lights and roaring chants, he broke his own rule—for the greatest vice known to man: a woman.
Even the so-called musical gods, the titans who had ruled the charts for years, felt it. For the first time in a long while, a rookie's light had burned so bright it reached their thrones. Ethan Jones' fire had not only shone—it had forced them to level up, to push harder, to sharpen their craft, because the game had changed. He had entered their stratosphere, uninvited but undeniable.
Elsewhere, an eccentric media fashion personality discussed like a high priestess was pacing her penthouse, raving to her husband. She spoke like one possessed, about the muse she had seen on stage, the raw magnetism that had pulled something primal out of her. She demanded—no, begged—for him to understand just how badly she wanted that magic for herself, how much it consumed her thoughts.
And in the middle of all the noise, two young stars, found themselves pulled closer together. What had begun as sparks was now kindling into something raw, messy, and impossibly real. Their love, under the glow of that concert, had begun to blossom into something neither could have predicted.
The after effects of such a night didn't end with dawn. They weren't confined to fans alone. Executives huddled in glass towers, recalculating their strategies. Influencers scrambled to repost every backstage clip they could get their hands on, riding the wave for clicks and followers. And through it all, the numbers told their own story—Ethan Jones' concert wasn't a moment, it was a phenomenon.
By morning, his name and face were everywhere. His new single, his performance, his reward to the fans—it dominated the top three searches across nearly every major platform. E! News, TMZ, Rolling Stone, Billboard, Variety, Pitchfork, Complex, NME, Vulture, Vanity Fair, Hollywood Reporter, even Time Magazine itself, which ran a striking behind-the-scenes photo of Ethan, styled and framed like a generational icon. The million-dollar prize he had handed out had become folklore already, a headline in its own right.
And the price of that moment? Astronomical. His social media followers skyrocketed overnight, millions upon millions flocking to his pages. Every platform—Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, YouTube—recorded spikes so sharp they looked like broken graphs. His songs surged, streams more than doubled their usual averages within hours.
By the end of the day, Ethan Jones' monthly listeners had climbed to a jaw-dropping 50 million. For the first time in his career, he had crossed that mark. And for the first time ever, he stood in the top five artists in the world by monthly listeners. Only four others—giants, untouchable household names—stood above him.
After overtaking Adele and sliding into the fifth spot, Ethan Jones now stood shoulder-to-shoulder with giants. Above him the leaderboard glittered like a pantheon: Doja Cat, riding at 55.96 million listeners. Eminem, a living monument of rap history, sitting at 59.36 million—a surge bolstered by his own surprise cameo the previous night. Taylor Swift, the narrative queen, holding 67.7 million. And perched untouchable at the very peak, Justin Bieber, his crown gleaming with an astonishing 78 million monthly listeners.
Ethan had broken into this rarefied air. And he wasn't looking down.
But the numbers told only half the story. What happened to his songs in the aftermath of the concert was even more breathtaking. Tracks that had hovered just shy of immortality finally shattered through the billion barrier.
Blinding Lights, which had been hovering at nine hundred million streams, leapt forward as if dragged by some unseen gravity—crossing one billion almost overnight and now climbing rapidly toward 1.2 billion. Riptide and Another Love, both simmering on the cusp, followed soon after. The milestone sent shockwaves across the industry: at just twenty-four years old, and with only one album under his name, Ethan Jones had achieved something only the titans of the streaming era had ever touched—four songs with over a billion plays each.
It was already the stuff of legend. A debut season unlike anything in living memory.
And the storm hadn't settled. River, Dusk Till Dawn, Counting Stars, and Young Dumb & Broke—all of them now roared through streaming platforms with momentum like a freight train. Analysts weren't calling it a peak anymore. They were calling it the beginning of an empire.
Yet the clearest proof of Ethan's rise wasn't even the art. It was the cold, merciless clarity of money. Numbers printed in black ink that made executives salivate. Over $500 million in ticket sales. $60 million in merchandise. $15 million in food and beverages sold. And another $15 million siphoned in through sponsorships and addons.
Lucian, who only last night had carried the faintest displeasure about Ethan's stubborn independence, read the reports in his office the following morning and felt his entire mood pivot like a switch. The irritation evaporated instantly, replaced by a feverish euphoria. A man who had lived his life chasing wins had just witnessed one of the biggest jackpots in music history unfold before his very eyes. He didn't just smile—he demanded a gift be sent to Ethan immediately, his instinctive hunger to pamper and secure the golden goose surging back with full force.
But the aftershocks weren't confined to UMG's empire. Across the ocean, in a glass tower office, Changpeng Zhao—Ethan's first sponsor and the architect of Binance—sat staring at his own set of reports.
What he saw wasn't simply profit. It was transformation.
NFT sales had spiked violently after Ethan's concert, entire collections selling out in hours. The global wave was impressive, but what caught his eye, what made him lean forward and taste the air like a predator, were the American IP addresses. They were climbing. They were subscribing. They were buying.
In Zhao's mind, the vision sharpened: the impenetrable American market, long elusive to him, now had cracks forming. And Ethan Jones, unwittingly, was the hammer that had struck it.
He could see it. He could almost taste it. The impending control. The entry into America's beating cultural core. And his newfound love into Pop making him even closer to his daughter a sweet bonus to the already tasty Main dish.
As the two men, already long accustomed to wealth and billions, sat back in their respective worlds, what they saw in Ethan went far beyond dollar signs. To them, money was merely the icing on the cake. The true prize was control. For Lucian, every sold-out arena and every screaming fan only tightened his grip on the music industry, pushing his dominance to near-untouchable heights. For Zhao, every NFT minted, every new subscriber pouring in from America was another brick laid in the foundation of his empire—an empire stretching its claws into the largest, richest market on the planet. Ethan wasn't just their artist or their partner anymore; he was their golden goose. And this golden goose had begun shitting golden poop—absurdly consistent, endlessly profitable, and shining brighter with each passing day.
But while some men schemed with ulterior motives, fueled by power and empire-building, there were others whose intentions—though still drenched in business—were comparatively purer. For some, it wasn't about control but about survival, profit, and riding the wave of opportunity Ethan created. Among them were two young entrepreneurs who had stumbled into the storm of history without fully realizing what they'd unleashed.
Max Clemons and Trey Steiger.
The pair of twenty-somethings sat in their modest Louisville, Kentucky office—a cramped headquarters filled with half-open boxes, leftover bottles, and the faint smell of syrup from spilled trials of their newest formula. They were the unassuming minds behind Ethan's most unexpected onstage moment: the reveal of Prime Hydration. Their product, once a niche sports drink floating on internet chatter and TikTok clips, had become the talk of the nation overnight.
Unlike Lucian and Zhao, whose morning reports brought smug grins and champagne moods, Max and Trey stared down at their laptops with faces drained pale. In front of them were spreadsheets and dashboards overflowing with numbers—numbers that didn't even feel real. Rows of sales reports with too many commas, graphs shooting upward at angles that looked like rocket trajectories, emails marked "urgent" from distributors they had once begged to take their calls.
Requests were flooding in at a pace neither of them could keep up with. Walmart wanted exclusives. Target wanted immediate pallets. Costco demanded larger shipments. GNC asked about a nationwide rollout. Amazon's U.S. branch had sent multiple inquiries within the same morning. And it didn't stop there—an order request had even come in from Tesco in the U.K., Carrefour in France, and Woolworths in Australia. Every major store, every corner of the retail world, suddenly wanted Prime on their shelves.
Trey scrolled through another page, his hand trembling slightly as the figures recalibrated in real time. His mouth went dry. "Max… Max… Max…" he stammered, saying his partner's name three times like a man trying to convince himself he wasn't hallucinating.
Max, eyes wide but unable to look away from his screen, barely managed a muttered, "Yes?"
Trey swallowed hard, then turned the screen toward him. His voice cracked in disbelief.
"I think… we need more factories."
...
The airport was alive with its usual chaos — the rolling echo of suitcase wheels, the metallic chime of departure announcements, and the low murmur of countless conversations blending into a constant hum. Neon boards flickered flight numbers, gates, and final calls, while tired parents wrangled children and businessmen tapped impatiently on phones. In the middle of that endless flow sat two figures, almost invisible in their anonymity, wrapped in layers of caps, hoods, and oversized sunglasses.
The man sat slightly leaned forward, elbows resting on his knees, fingers laced together. The woman, angled toward him, had her hood pulled just low enough to shadow her features. To anyone passing by, they were just another pair of travelers, nothing remarkable. But beneath the disguise, their silence carried weight.
"Do you have to go?" the man finally asked, his voice quiet, breaking through the noise around them.
The woman exhaled, almost apologetically. "My agent just called me," she said, her tone soft but steady. "I need to prepare for the Oscars… plus, I have to start looking for my next movie."
He hummed, the sound more of a sigh than an answer, his head dropping slightly. A long pause stretched before he spoke again, his words heavier now. "I'm going to miss you."
Her lips curved into a smile that even the shadows of her hood couldn't hide. She tilted her head, the warmth in her voice breaking through his defenses. "I'm missing you already."
Before he could answer, the airport's loudspeakers crackled to life: "Now boarding: Flight 1123 to Los Angeles, California. Passengers in rows 20 through 35 may proceed to Gate C…"
She rose slowly, pulling her bag strap across her shoulder. Then she turned to him again, and though her face was still covered, her smile came alive — radiant, lingering, unforgettable. He looked at her and, for a moment, the disguise disappeared in his mind. He could see her as she really was — the brightness of her eyes, the softness in her smile, the way she carried a presence that made the world blur. His heart clenched, a mix of pride and pain.
She stepped closer, just long enough to whisper the words that would echo in his head long after the plane left. "I love you."
It was cheesy, yes — the kind of line that belonged in a movie script — but in that airport, in that moment, it was the truest thing he'd ever heard.
Two weeks after their Sydney rendezvous, Sydney Sweeney was gone again. Ethan stood rooted to the spot, staring at the departing plane as it climbed into the sky, a hollow ache blooming inside his chest. The jet engines roared above, but all he could hear was her last sentence replaying in his head like a chorus.
Yet, before he could even sink into the weight of it, his assistant was already at his side, speaking urgently: "Sir, we have—"