Page 18 of The Opening Act is Death
Her eyes meet mine, hard, cold, but trembling with something unspoken.
“I didn’t need to,” she says. “Because I already know.”
The silence stretches between us, thick and heavy with the weight of years and pain.
“I see your guilt,” she continues, voice barely above a whisper.
“In the way you look away. In the way your hands shake when you think no one’s watching. I don’t wait for words. I wait for the truth.”
Her walls crumble, just a little, and in that moment, I see her. Not the queen, not the executioner, but the girl who learned to survive by becoming a blade. I reach out, hesitating. She doesn’t pull away, instead, she lets me. And for the first time, I think maybe we can be more than ghosts chained to this cursed Carnival. Maybe we can be something real. Something alive.
Together.
Her eyes hold mine, sharp, unyielding, but beneath the surface, a flicker of something raw, fragile. I reach slowly, hesitating, then slide a trembling hand toward hers. The knives lie heavy between them, cold steel, sharp edges, the tools of her power and her curse. Without breaking eye contact, she lets me close the gap. My fingers brush hers, grazing the blade’s edge, and a shiver shoots through me a sharp contrast of danger and trust. I swallow the lump in my throat.
“This,” I whisper, “is what you’ve carried alone. The weight of every broken promise, every sacrifice you couldn’t make me understand.”
Her breath catches, and for a heartbeat, the Queen of Blades is just Visha; the girl who learned to dance with knives in the dark to keep herself alive. Slowly, I slide my hand up, tracing a thin line along the blade’s spine, never touching the sharp edge, but close enough to feel its cold bite.
“Let me carry some of it,” I say, voice cracking.
She blinks, a single tear slipping free and trailing down her cheek; a drop of crimson that catches the faint light, as if The Carnival itself has stained her. For a moment, silence swallows us. Then, almost imperceptibly, she squeezes my hand. The knives fall from her fingers, clattering softly to the floor; a sound heavier than steel, a surrender more profound than words. She leans into me, just slightly, a fragile bridge across the chasm between us. And in that fragile closeness, I see hope, faint, flickering, but alive.
The Carnival still hungers, still watches. But maybe for this one fleeting moment, we’ve carved out a space where mercy isn’t a poison. Where pain doesn’t have to be the only truth.
Where two broken souls might begin to heal.
Twenty Four
Carnival Interlude II — The Feast of Shadows
I breathe. Slow, ragged like the last breath before a fall. I taste the blood spilled beneath my flickering lights, warm, sticky, the bitter pulse of sacrifice.
I savor the tension, thick and suffocating, as fear coils tight in the hearts of those who call me home.
They don’t know how much longer they’ll last. How many broken souls will be swallowed whole before the end.
I’m hungry.
I feed on the fracture lines, on the cracks widening between love and hate, loyalty and betrayal. Every whisper, every tear, every shattered promise, fuel for my endless appetite. The Ferris wheel groans under the weight of night, its rusted grin a cruel reminder: nothing here is safe.
I am the shadow behind every glance. The cold dread beneath every smile. The relentless hunger that never sates. And I am always watching.
Waiting.
For the moment when even the strongest will break.
Twenty Five
Visha - Where Her Knife Hesitates
She nearly killed me tonight, nearly. So why not finish the act?
The knives don’t feel like mine tonight. The cold steel resting in my palms, but heavier than ever. Burdened by every life I’ve taken, every promise I shattered, every scar etched into my soul. I move through the shadows of The Carnival, the crowd whispers a dull roar behind the velvet curtains. The show must go on. But inside me, something trembles.
A hesitation.
A crack in the armor I’ve worn for so long.
