Page 9 of The Opening Act is Death
I shake my head. “I don’t know how anymore.”
Her eyes narrow. Not angry. Just… searching. As if she’s trying to find something in me that shouldn’t be there. Or that she thought she’d buried herself long ago.
“I killed the last person who looked at me like that,” she says.
I step forward until our palms align on either side of the glass. My breath fogs the space between.
“Then why haven’t you killed me yet?”
She doesn’t answer. The silence stretches and slowly Visha begins to retreat. Her silhouette fades into the mirror’s depth,the dress dragging behind her like smoke. And still I don’t move. Because I feel it, the shift, not in her. Inme. She’s not just haunting the stage anymore. She’s in my veins.
* * *
Later, in my tent, I found the second note. It wasn’t there when I left. I would’ve seen it, felt it. But now, it’s waiting. Pinned to the pillow by a silver sewing needle, the thread is still warm. No signature. No flourish. Just six words:
“I never wanted you to follow.”
I press the paper to my lips.Too late, Visha.I’m not following anymore. I’m hunting.
That night, my illusions shatter. Not physically, no cracked glass, no broken light tricks, but the crowdknows. Theyfeelit. That something’s wrong. Or maybe too real. The bleeding sky refuses to shift color. The glass roses sprout thorns. One shatters mid-air and cuts a child in the front row. A gasp. A scream. But no one moves. They think it’s part of the act. It’s not, I can’t control it. My magic doesn’t listen to me anymore. It listens to her. To The Carnival. To whatever curse I walked into when I stepped through that smoke-laced entrance. I leave the stage before my final illusion. The crowd boos, unsure if this is part of the design. I don’t care. I’m burning up from the inside. The magic is too much. I make it halfway down the corridor when I collapse. Not from exhaustion. Fromchange. My hand bleeds where the petal touched me. Just a pinprick. A thorn maybe. But it spreads a line of red curling across my palm like a sigil being drawn beneath the skin.
Not ink, not spell craft.Invitation.The air thickens with perfume and iron as I feel her again. Not near though,Inside.She’s there, in the part of me I tried to hide. In the regrets I never confessed. In the illusions I used to bury the man I was. I close my eyes, and whisper her name.
Once.
Twice.
A third time.
The bone-chimes sing.
The candles flicker.
And from somewhere far off; I swear I hear her voice.
“You’re not ready.”
But she’s wrong, I’m not ready to run, I’m ready toburn.
Fourteen
ACT II: The Unraveling of Ghosts
The stage demands sacrifice. Visha breaks her rules. Corvan cracks his illusions. And somewhere between blood and truth, they start to want each other.
Fifteen
Visha - Velvet Doesn’t Forget
I tried to cut out what I feel. But he makes the roses bloom.
The Carnival is quieter tonight. No…silent, The Carnival is truly silent, but it’s holding its breath tonight. As even if it knows what I’m about to do is dangerous. MY steps are slow, measured, beneath my heels the velvet rugs in my dressing tent curl at the edges like old secrets. The air clings to my skin with the weight of memory. I sweep past the mirrors without looking, for they always show me too much. The petal Corvan found, I left knowing exactly what it would do.
It wasn’t a mistake, it was an invitation.
Now, The Carnival watches. Not with eyes, but with bone chimes swaying in a breathless rhythm, with mirrors that twitch like living things, with shadows that shift when I turn my head. The Carnival has always been mine, yet I can feel it…doubting me. Or maybe it’s in mourning, because something inside me is changing, and the velvet doesn’t forget. I find myself walking the long corridor behind the Hall of Mirrors. My fingers trail thestained brocade walls, pulling threads loose without meaning to. I can feel him. Not here, not yet, but the imprint of him lingers.
I close my eyes and picture his face. Corvan bleeds grief in place of magic, and yet it’s beautiful. That desperate shimmer in his illusions, the way he weaves sorrow into smoke and calls it theater. He doesn’t know it yet, but The Carnival feeds on honesty more than blood. And Corvan, with his haunted smile and fractured tricks, is becoming a feast. I should kill him, end it before it unravels me.
