Page 101 of Chaos Carnival

Stone crept closer, his crystalline armor dulled and spiderwebbed with cracks. “Maverick...”

“Don't.” A black shadow erupted around him, lashing out with primal force. “She's not gone. She can't be gone.” He pressed frantic kisses to my face, my lips, as if he could force lifeback into me through sheer will. The mate bond flared wildly, searching for a connection that no longer existed in physical space. “Please,” he begged against my skin. “I'll do anything. Take anything from me. Just come back.”

His agony resonated through every fragment of my scattered consciousness. I had foreseen this moment in countless futures, knew how it played out in infinite variations. But nothing had prepared me for the reality of watching him break, of his desperate grief echoing through a world I couldn’t touch anymore.

From my formless state, I watched Baphomet and Lilith confer at destruction's edge.

Their true forms bled through. Baphomet's horns casting shadows, Lilith's skin rippling with runes older than time.

“But the price...” Lilith's eyes settled on Maverick cradling my empty shell, her fingers frantically gathering threads.

“Yes, yes, they might not want to pay it.” Baphomet's claws slashed impatiently as he began burning symbols into the air at a pace that betrayed his urgency. “But look at him. Have you seen a bond like that since the First War? He'd tear the universe apart to get her back. They all would. Now help me with this sigil before her essence scatters away.”

“You haven't spent enough time with mortals lately, brother.” Lilith's hands moved in a blur, weaving chords I could no longer touch. “To secure her back into existence, they'd need to create a self-contained supernatural ecosystem. All of them would have to be part of it.”

“Do it,” Maverick rasped. “Whatever it is, do it.”

Everyone else lowered their heads in agreement, a silent acknowledgment that they’d do anything for me. But they didn’t know what they were agreeing to.

“This carnival of theirs is perfect, you know that.” Darkness pooled around Baphomet's massive form as he examined thecircus grounds, his movements just a touch too quick to match his casual tone. “They're already harvesting fear, they'll just need to do it more enthusiastically. Now where did you put the grave dust?”

“They'll need to feed almost constantly.” Lilith tossed him a vial of something dark, her voice maintaining its dry amusement even as her eyes darted anxiously to the fading moon. “And the human girl...”

“She’ll have to feed like the rest of them.” Baphomet caught the vial without looking, his eyes flashed with something dark and dangerous, as he worked. “It's not as if humanity is all that precious. Hurry up with those candles, we're losing her.”

“Do it,” Addie whispered, tears coating her cheeks.

“No, no! Tell them what you’re doing!” I tried to scream but had no voice to speak with.

Baphomet began drawing the ritual circle, his claws leaving burns in the air. Lilith gathered components. Candles weeping blood, herbs and crystals from Hell, pulsing with their own heartbeats. Each item she placed formed part of a pattern I recognized.

A closed loop, a perfect cycle, a system that would feed upon itself if given enough energy.

“The ritual must be completed now. Ahead of the next moonrise,” Lilith instructed. “After that, her essence disperses across dimensions.”

I watched helplessly as they prepared the impossible.

My family would sacrifice their fundamental nature for the mere chance of bringing me back.

And even if they succeeded...

The power that tore me apart had reshaped my essence. Whatever returned wouldn't be entirely intact.

The ritual's pull caught me like a cosmic whirlpool, fragments of my consciousness spiraling inward against my will. Mavericklaid my body in the center of Baphomet's burning sigils, his hands trembling as he stepped back. Stone and Lux flanked him, their seraphim grace blazing bright.

Addie knelt at my feet, her humanity glowing like a beacon. The price they would pay shuddered through what remained of my consciousness, their freedom and futures offered up as sacrifice.

I wanted to stop them, to scream that the cost was too high. But I had no voice. No choice. No way to prevent what was about to happen.

Baphomet's chanting built like a storm, each word distorting the air around us. Lilith wove pure shadow, black silk that singed through where it touched them.

Their blood fell onto my cold flesh—first Maverick's, then Stone's, then Lux's, each drop igniting with hellfire that sank beneath my skin. The pain hit like creation itself being born. My consciousness slammed back into physical form, every cell screaming as it was torn apart and remade. My spine arched off the ground as energy surged through dead flesh, ancient and terrible.

I heard screaming—my own voice, but wrong, inhuman. Then I felt them breaking, their pain ripping through us all. Maverick cried out first, a sound that was different from mine—-deeper, more primal. The air around him radiated with desperate hunger, a need so intense it felt like its own entity. Stone and Lux followed, their forces warping and twisting into something new that surged in time with the circus's heartbeat.

Addie's transformation hit like a collision of confusion, something ancient and hungry waking in her eyes. Their combined essence poured into me, raw and overwhelming, weaving us all into something completely new and different.

The first thing I felt was hunger. Not just mine, but all of ours, echoing between us like a symphony of darkness. Myeyes snapped open as I drew my first new breath. Maverick's face hovered, stunning and fiendish with need. Something fundamental had changed in all of us, and I knew with bone-deep certainty that we would never be the same.

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