Page 8 of The Opening Act is Death
“I thought…” His words falter, caught between hope and heartbreak.
I step closer, breath cold as the night, and whisper, “You wanted it to be true. That doesn’t make it real.”
The silence between us stretches, thick and suffocating. I turn away before his next words, leaving him to wrestle with the shards of a trust I never gave. But the truth gnaws at me, more bitter than blood on satin. If I didn’t write the note…who did? And why? The Carnival’s shadows deepen, folding around us like a suffocating cloak. This place isn’t just feeding on pain anymore. It’s hunting. The thought claws through my resolve. Someone else is pulling strings in my name-twisting my voice into lies. I clutch the edge of the stage, nails digging into rotted wood. The memories crash over me-dancing on knives, blood blooming like cursed roses, the girl I burned alive beneath the floorboards.
She’s calling and I’m not sure if I want to answer. The scent of decayed roses and iron coils around me as I realize something chilling. This stage, this carnage, is no longer mine alone. The curtain will rise again, and when it does…we’ll all pay the price.
The note burns cold in my pocket, a secret wound I carry with me as I move through the hollow halls of The Carnival. The air is thick with the scent of old perfume and wet earth, of decayed roses pressed into memory. The walls seem to breathe a slow, rhythmic pulse, like the heartbeat of something ancient and hungry. I am not sure where I end and The Carnival begins anymore. The whispers follow me; voices half-heard beneath the dim of the night, carried by the bone chimes that tinkle like shattering glass. They tell secrets I don’t want to hear, truths wrapped in riddles.
I find myself standing before the Hall of Mirrors, the place where I first danced on the edge between who I was and who I became. My reflection fractures and multiplies, each shard showing a different version of me: the girl I buried, theexecutioner I wear like armor, the shadow that lingers just out of reach.
One mirror holds a flicker of movement; a silhouette stepping between the fractured reflections. I reach out, fingertips grazing cold glass, but it’s gone before I can touch it. A whisper curls around my ear, almost a breath:
“You cannot hide from what you buried.”
A shiver runs down my spine and I turn and stumble into the cold embrace of the backstage corridors, where old posters peel like dead skin and the scent of blood is always just beneath the surface. I sink to the floor, heart pounding like a drumbeat, and press my palms to my temples. The girl beneath the floorboards is awake. She claws at my mind with sharp nails of regret and pain. The fury I once tamed threatens to unravel, and I wonder if I can hold it back or if it will consume me whole.
The Carnival waits; patient, eternal, a predator circling its prey. I am the warden trapped inside its cage. A sound draws my attention - soft footsteps echoing from down the hall. I’m not alone. The door creaks open, and a sliver of moonlight spills across the floor, as he steps in.
Corvan.
His eyes are wary but unwavering, as if he can see through every lie I tell myself. I want to push him away, to hide the fractures in my armor. The walls are closing in, and the silence between us screams louder than any words. He kneels beside me, and for a moment, the ghosts retreat.
“Visha,” he says softly. “We don’t have to be prisoners of this place.”
The words hang in the air, fragile and dangerous. Can we rewrite the story we were given? Or are we doomed to repeat the dance of blood and betrayal? I look up at him, blades sheathedbeneath my sleeves, heart aching with a truth I’m too afraid to speak. Maybe… just maybe… the girl beneath the floorboards can rise again. And this time, she won’t be alone. The Carnival watches, waits, and whispers. The stage is set.
The final act has begun.
Thirteen
Corvan - Smoke Knows My Name
Even the bone-chimes whisper now. They say I belong to her.The petal’s gone when I wake. Not crumpled. Not dropped. Gone. As if it was never there. But I remember the way it pulsed in my palm, warm and wet, like the ghost of her touch. A memory etched in blood and perfume. The kind of thing that stays with you, no matter how much you lie to yourself. The tent is too quiet. The Carnival is never silent. Even in sleep, there’s always sound; murmurs behind velvet, the low creak of rope-swung lanterns, bone-chimes twitching in the breeze. But this morning, it’s as if the whole place is holding its breath.
I step outside barefoot, half-dreaming. The mist clings low to the ground, curling like fingers, and I swear it follows me. Not wind. Not air. Her. Somehow, her. I turn toward the Hall of Mirrors, like I’ve been called. The path is slick with dew and ash. My footsteps don’t echo, which unnerves me more than if they did. Even the birds, if there are birds in this place, aren’t singing.
The chimes whisper again.
“Escapist…”
No mouth says it, but The Carnival does. I hear it, feel it. In the way the shadows lean. In the way the glass hums when I press my palm to the mirror’s frame, and then I see her. Not in reflection, not in vision. In flesh. Visha stands on the other side of the glass, not quite real, not quite an illusion. Her hair is wild, curls tangled in thorns. Her dress is torn silk, stained at the hem like she walked through fire to get here. Her gaze? It’s the same one I saw the first night, the one that burned, judged, devoured. However it’s softer now. No less dangerous. Just… haunted.
“Why are you here?” she asks. The glass doesn’t muffle her voice. It slices through me.
“I could ask you the same thing.” I say back, longing to touch her.
She steps closer. The mirror doesn’t reflect her. It absorbs her. Light bends around her like The Carnival knows she doesn’t belong to any one world.
“You left the petal,” I say, my voice barely above a whisper. “You wanted me to follow.”
“I wanted you to fear me.” Visha says softly.
“Too late,” I answered. “I already do. But I’m still here.”
She presses a hand to the glass. Her fingers leave smears of something darker than shadow.
“You should run.”
