Page 42 of The Opening Act is Death

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10.The Ring mistress’s Tent– Forbidden, pulsing, alive.

4. SUPERNATURAL RULES, TABOOS, AND SECRETS

You don’t break The Carnival’s rules. You bleed them.

•Never perform the same act twice.

It awakens the dead performers. They get jealous.

•Never speak your real name onstage.

The tent will wear your skin and perform in your place.

•If you fall in love, you must confess before the final act.

Otherwise, one of you will be consumed to preserve the tent’s power.

•The Audience isn’t real… unless it looks at you.

If one removes their mask — you become the next mask.

•The tent hears lies.

The last person who lied grew roots and became a support pole.

Sixty

WELCOME TO THE CARNIVAL

You don’t remember arriving.

One moment you were walking — maybe running — through a back alley soaked in rain. Or maybe it was blood. The memory is vague, like a bruise half-faded. Then the wind shifted. The sky split open like theater curtains. And there it was:

The Carnival of the Damned.

The tent is impossible — too tall, too wide, its stripes flickering between red and black like breathing skin. Its fabric isn’t cloth. It’s hide. Stitched with thread you pray isn’t hair. A sign arches over the entrance, swinging in a wind you can’t feel:

“Admit One. Perform or Perish.”

There’s no queue. Just you.

But you step inside anyway.

Sixty One

II. THE RULES OF The Carnival

Etched in bone above the entrance arch, in a language you feel rather than read.

1.Perform or perish.

2.No one leaves unless the crowd is satisfied.

3.You may fall in love, but the tent will punish you.

4.Every act must cost you something.

5.The audience is not human. Do not look at them.

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