Page 47 of Chaos Carnival (Cirque de Sanguine #2)

Chapter 46: The Void

Tess

I watched our defensive formation snap into place, a dance we'd practiced until it burrowed in our bones. Maverick's shadows, Stone's barriers, Lux's glamours.

Perfect. Precise. Everything according to plan.

“Go!” The command tore from my throat as the first wave of hunters crashed our outer wards. But something shifted—seven hunters breaking from the main force, moving with unnatural synchronization. My strands hummed a warning as they formed a perfect circle in the heart of our carnival grounds. Their wings carved sigils in the air, voices rising in a harsh arcane language.

“Something's wrong.” Discordant energy set my teeth on edge.

Beside me, Baphomet went rigid. His wings snapped open. “No—STOP THEM!”

Too late. The ritual circle blazed, and my webs began to unravel.

Not breaking—dissolving.

Each strand screaming as it disappeared into nothing.

“What is it?” I tried to gather the fraying edges, but they slipped through my fingers over and over.

“A summoning pattern.” Baphomet's voice ruptured with ancient terror. “From before the first wars—” Golden light erupted from the fracturing ground, molten metal burning through the fabric of existence. The hunters' chanting peaked, their wings blazing with celestial fire. But it was wrong—everything was wrong. My senses reeled as futures collapsed, presents shattered, pasts vanished.

“The patterns,” I choked out, “they're not just breaking, they're...”

Darkness emerged from the tear. But darkness wasn't the right word. Darkness was something.

This was nothing.

Absolute nothing.

Where it touched, reality didn't break or change—it ceased to exist.

Even between spaces had substance, had pattern, had meaning.

This entity was an absence, a cancellation of everything that was or could be.

“What is this?” I demanded.

Baphomet's wings unfurled, casting a tide of black that seemed to devour light itself. “Something older than both demons and seraphim has returned. Something that hungers for the power and magic you've gathered here.”

Beside me, Baphomet—ancient, powerful Baphomet—fell to his knees. His immortal force flickered like a candle in a storm. “The Null God,” he whispered, fear stripping away his arrogance. “They've awakened what should have stayed sleeping...”

The hunters' chanting faltered and the Null God's presence expanded, methodically devouring the universe thread by thread, leaving perfect emptiness in its wake.

Baphomet's claws dug into my arm, drawing blood. “We can't fight this. Even at the height of our power, the demons could only seal it away.”

Our circus—my carefully crafted sanctuary—began to disappear. Not destroyed.

Erased.

As if those spaces had never existed at all.

A hunter slammed into Baphomet, celestial blade singing. He batted the attack aside, but another hunter phased behind him, forcing him to spin and defend. Their clash sent the air rippling, and in the chaos, Baphomet vanished behind a wall of golden flame.

The Null God moved.

No—movement wasn't the right word.

One moment it loomed by the summoning circle, the next it existed elsewhere.

My senses screamed as I tried to track it. There were no paths between points, no lines connecting its positions.

It quite plainly was and wasn't, each location a separate violation of existence.

I reached for my power, gathering infinite tendrils into a lance. The attack left my hands with enough force to shatter dimensions, but it passed through the Null God like it had never existed.

I tried again. And again.

Wove death and chaos from fundamental forces into my strikes. Each attempt slid into that perfect emptiness and disappeared, leaving no trace, no impact, no echo in the fabric of reality.

Ice spread through my blood as understanding hit. You can’t fight something that exists outside the rules of existence.

The Null God's attention turned to me and oblivion pressed against my mind. Anti-matter wrapped around my limbs. No, not anti-matter.

Anti-everything.

Where it touched, sensation itself ceased to exist.

I tried to phase away, to slip between dimensions like I'd done countless times before.

The chords wouldn't respond.

I reached for my fail-safes, the contingencies I'd woven throughout the carnival grounds, preparations for every possible future.

They dissolved at the entity's touch.

Panic clawed up my throat, sharp and primal.

I unleashed everything.

Every scrap of energy, every forbidden technique, every fundamental force I could grasp.

Each attack vanished into that perfect oblivion, consumed by the thing that should not be. I thrashed against its hold, my senses reeling as I tried to process what was happening.

Where the null touched me, pieces of myself simply... stopped.

“No, no, no—” Power ignited through me like dynamite as I tried everything, anything. But my careful preparations, my woven patterns, my mapped futures—they all depended on my understanding of the universe.

This thing existed where reality broke down. I'd become a being of infinite possibility, and now I faced something that negated possibility itself. The Null God’s grip tightened. More pieces of myself unraveled.

I watched, helpless, as my family fought an enemy I should have seen coming. Maverick's shadows touched the Null God and dissipated into nothingness. Stone's crystalline barriers ceased to exist. Lux's glamours vanished, taking with them even the memory of their casting.

The weight of my own hubris crushed down on me. I'd been so certain, so arrogant. I'd thought I was choosing to break to save them all.

Instead, I might have led them to their doom.

Our performers executed their battle formations with desperate grace. The Sisters sliced through hunters until they hit the void and vanished. Lilith's creatures sought purchase against an enemy that negated their existence.

Above us, Maverick soared through golden light, engaging three hunters simultaneously. His shadows formed razor-sharp weapons, wielded with ruthless precision. He phased between dimensions, appearing behind one hunter to drive shadowed blades through their wings before vanishing again. The hunter plummeted, but Maverick was already moving, locked in his aerial dance of death.

“You have to stop this!” Baphomet's roar carried terror as his waves of darkness crashed uselessly against the Null God. His eyes kept darting to where I was trapped, his attacks growing wild and unfocused. A hunter's blade sliced his arm, drawing immortal ichor, because he'd been watching me instead of his opponent. I tried to scream, to warn him, but where the Null God touched me, even sound ceased to exist.

My chest constricted as I watched them fight. Maverick's shadows piercing hunter after hunter, Stone's crystal spears singing through the air, Lux's glamours, all of it meaningless when faced with the void.

The shame burned like acid through my bones. I'd led them here, convinced them to trust my plan. My certainty, my arrogance, my belief that I saw every possible future—it had doomed everyone I loved.

Something snapped inside me.

Energy surged through my body—not the careful weavings of fate, but something deeper, more primal. I reached beyond patterns, beyond possibility itself, drawing on the raw foundations of existence.

My senses screamed in protest as time buckled around me.

“I won't let you take them.”

Blood trickled from my nose, my ears, my eyes as magic ripped through me.

Every cell in my body began to tear apart, unable to contain what I was channeling. My skin ruptured like porcelain, golden light spilling from the fissures. Bones shattered one by one, organs liquefied, muscles tore themselves to shreds.

The pain was beyond comprehension, but I refused to let go. I was always going to die here; this Null God didn’t change anything for me.

But I'd make sure my death meant something.

“Tess, stop!” Maverick's voice broke as he tried to reach me. “Please!” I turned toward him, meeting his desperate gaze through eyes that wept blood.

My throat filled with blood, lungs collapsing, but I forced the words out: “I'm sorry.”

The energy built beyond anything I could control. My consciousness fragmented, pieces of my mind burning away like paper in flame.

I tried to reach for Maverick one last time, but my arm crumbled to ash at that movement.

Reality split into kaleidoscope patterns as my heart finally imploded, unable to withstand the strain.

My final thought was not of power or possibilities or fate.

It was of Maverick's smile that first night at Devil's Delirium, when everything was terrible and wonderful and new. When I still believed I could hate him.

Then everything went dark as my body gave out, consumed by the very forces I'd tried to wield.