Page 36 of The Opening Act is Death
The Carnival bleeds around me, a fractured symphony of fire and rage. Corvan’s voice breaks through the storm, steady and clear:
“Visha, don’t lose yourself.”
I spin, blades raised, fury blazing in my eyes, but then I see him calm amidst the chaos, a steady flame. His hand finds mine, gripping tight, grounding. The knives fall silent, the dance falters. A flashback sears through me;
The first time I held a knife to someone’s throat, not out of hatred, but necessity,
to survive a world that would have swallowed me whole. His eyes, pleading. My hands, shaking. The cold rush of power and fear intertwined. I remember the silence afterward, the weight of what I had done and the brutal resolve that followed.
Corvan’s voice pulls me back.
“We can be more than this,” he says. The uprising is far from over, but in his touch, I find something softer, a fragile hope breaking through the storm of steel and blood. Together, we turn the tide, not just with blades, but with a reckoning of heart and soul. The Carnival roars its dark approval, a beast both fierce and beautiful, and in that chaos, I glimpse a future where fury and mercy dance as one.
Fifty
Corvan - Shattered Reflections
The mirrors don’t lie but sometimes, they reveal what we dread most: ourselves.
The air is cold and still in the Hall of Mirrors. A thousand fractured reflections stretch and twist around me like shards of a shattered past I’ve tried to forget. I catch glimpses of faces long gone, voices whispered through cracks in time, memories I locked away deep inside because some truths burn too bright to bear.
I see the boy I once was, eyes wide and searching, haunted by silence and absence. The man I became, wearing masks like armor, hiding wounds beneath layers of illusion. Fingers trace the jagged cracks on the glass, each one a scar, a secret, a lie I told myself to survive. No smoke and mirrors can shield me now, the illusions are breaking, and so am I. Trembling, I drop to my knees, heart raw and exposed. The Carnival’s silence presses in, a quiet witness to my unraveling.
I want to run to hide behind the tricks and shadows that once saved me. But something deeper calls me to stand to facethe fractured man staring back at me. There is no escaping the truth. No more hiding in reflections or illusions. So I breathe, slow and steady. I let the cracks in the glass become the cracks in my armor, and in that fragile breaking, I find the first whisper of freedom. The Carnival waits watching, waiting for the next move. Because the real risk isn’t breaking illusions. It’s what comes after.
The cold glass fades to black, and somewhere beyond the mirrors, I sense her, the Queen of Knives, the warden with a heart buried beneath scars. The reckoning between us is coming. And neither mercy nor cruelty will be simple anymore.
Fifty One
Visha - The Warden’s Mercy
Mercy feels like a betrayal but sometimes, it’s the only way to survive.
The Carnival breathes around us a living shadow pulsing with hunger and blood lust. I stand with knives still dripping, but my hands tremble, not from fear, but from the weight of what Corvan just said.
“Mercy isn’t weakness,” he told me, his voice low, almost a whisper against the storm. “But strength is disguised.”
I want to laugh bitterly, to cut through the softness of that truth with sharper edges.
“Strength?” I rasp, eyes burning.
“Mercy is the knife’s betrayal. It’s what kills us.”
He steps closer, closing the distance between steel and flame. His fingers brush against my wrist carefully, reverent as if holding something fragile.
“Maybe,” he says, “but it’s also what lets us keep fighting without losing ourselves completely.”
His gaze catches mine, steady, unyielding, full of something I don’t want to admit I need.
“I’m tired,” I confess, voice breaking for the first time.
“Tired of the endless fight. Of the blood, the knives, the silence.”
He cups my face, thumb tracing the line where scars and skin meet.
“Then let me fight with you.”
Before I can answer, The Carnival shifts the air thickens with menace. From the darkened edge, a chorus rises low growls and whispers. The damned are stirring again. More violent this time. Corvan’s eyes flash with steel.
