Page 48 of Chaos Carnival (Cirque de Sanguine #2)

Chapter 47: Dimensional Sacrifice

Tess

I watched my own death unfold from everywhere and nowhere, my consciousness scattered across dimensions like sand.

The Null God's form rippled, its edges blurring.

Without my alchemy to feed on, to define itself against, its presence began to unravel. I understood then. It had used me as an anchor point, my manipulation of the universe giving it something to negate, to exist in opposition to.

Waves of anti-matter flowed outward.

The circus tent ceased to have ever existed. The ground cracked, revealing not earth but pure nothingness.

My family scrambled back, but there was nowhere to run. This thing would consume everything, everywhere, everywhen.

Time warped.

Maverick was both yards away and directly beneath the void, Stone's crystals both striking true and passing through empty air, Lux both standing and falling through a non-existent floor.

The laws of physics crumbled, gravity reversed, then vanished. Light bent impossibly, showing glimpses of other dimensions bleeding through reality's thinning walls.

Then Baphomet's true form emerged.

His horns spiraled out of his head, wings of pure darkness unfurling across the sky. Ancient power radiated from him in waves that made everyone pause.

He abandoned his fight with the hunters, moving with mysterious grace toward the spreading emptiness.

Using clawed hands, he traced burning symbols through the tatters, each gesture forcing existence back into focus for precious seconds. The hunters seized their chance, charging with celestial weapons blazing. But my family moved as one, acrobats diving through fractured space, knife throwers' blades singing through dimensional tears, fire dancers weaving walls of flame.

“Keep them back!” Stone's voice echoed, his armor reflecting in all directions. Baphomet began to chant in a language I’d never heard, each syllable vibrating through the atmosphere.

The Null God writhed, its formless mass contracting and expanding as the demon's influence fought to contain it. I tried to reach for Maverick, forgetting for a moment that I no longer had form. My consciousness rippled through the space where my hand should have been, and I watched him shudder as my essence passed through him like a cold wind.

“Whatever you're doing, hurry!” Lux's barriers of pure light strained against the hunters' assault. The world fractured around us.

“The banishing must be completed.” Baphomet's voice resonated across dimensions. “Or all realities collapse.”

A hunter burst through our defenses, blade aimed at Baphomet's exposed back. Maverick materialized from darkness, tackling them away.

The ritual's power built like a storm.

Dark energy swirled around Baphomet's true form as he fought to contain the enemy. Our performers moved in perfect synchronization, keeping the hunters at bay while existence crumbled around them.

Reality buckled. The air grew thicker.

My consciousness stretched across multiple planes as pressure built to impossible levels.

Baphomet's words thundered.

The Null God imploded.

The shockwave hit like creation itself being born again. Pure force rippled outward, through every plane of existence.

The timeline flexed and snapped back like a cosmic rubber band.

My family scattered like leaves, Maverick phasing between shadow and solid as he fought to stay upright, Stone's armor spider webbing with cracks, Lux's barriers dissolving into prismatic mist.

Hunters tumbled through the air, flickering and dying. The ground liquified and reformed in impossible patterns. Trees bent, their leaves cycling through colors.

I felt the wave pass, like being unmade and remade a thousand times in a single instant.

Then silence.

The universe itself seemed stunned, holding its breath as it settled back into proper alignment.

Where the Null God had been, nothing remained. Just space, healed and whole.

But I remained scattered, formless.

Maverick stumbled through the wreckage, his movements were jerky, uncoordinated, nothing like his usual predatory grace. Blood soaked his torn shirt from wounds already healing, but he didn't seem to notice. He fell to his knees beside my empty shell.

“No, no, no...” His voice shattered on each word. “Tess, baby, please.” His hands trembled as he gathered what remained of my body into his arms. My skin had turned ashen, entire chunks of my body missing, seemingly cauterized.

My eyes—once burning with cosmic power—stared unseeing at the sky, dull and empty. “Wake up.” He pressed his forehead to mine, tears falling onto my cold face. “You can't do this. You can't leave me.”

Each word tore from his throat, bleeding and raw. I tried to reach for him, to touch him, to let him know I still existed somewhere in the spaces between moments. But I had no substance, no way to bridge the dimensional gap.

I could only watch as he clutched my corpse closer, rocking like a child.

“We were supposed to have more time.” His words crumbled like our shattered dreams. “You promised me forever. In every time and place, you said you chose me.” His voice dropped to a desperate whisper. “So choose me now. Come back.”

Stone crept closer, his crystalline armor dulled and spiderwebbed with cracks. “Maverick...”

“Don't.” A black shadow erupted around him, lashing out with primal force. “She's not gone. She can't be gone.” He pressed frantic kisses to my face, my lips, as if he could force life back into me through sheer will. The mate bond flared wildly, searching for a connection that no longer existed in physical space. “Please,” he begged against my skin. “I'll do anything. Take anything from me. Just come back.”

His agony resonated through every fragment of my scattered consciousness. I had foreseen this moment in countless futures, knew how it played out in infinite variations. But nothing had prepared me for the reality of watching him break, of his desperate grief echoing through a world I couldn’t touch anymore.

From my formless state, I watched Baphomet and Lilith confer at destruction's edge.

Their true forms bled through. Baphomet's horns casting shadows, Lilith's skin rippling with runes older than time.

“But the price...” Lilith's eyes settled on Maverick cradling my empty shell, her fingers frantically gathering threads.

“Yes, yes, they might not want to pay it.” Baphomet's claws slashed impatiently as he began burning symbols into the air at a pace that betrayed his urgency. “But look at him. Have you seen a bond like that since the First War? He'd tear the universe apart to get her back. They all would. Now help me with this sigil before her essence scatters away.”

“You haven't spent enough time with mortals lately, brother.” Lilith's hands moved in a blur, weaving chords I could no longer touch. “To secure her back into existence, they'd need to create a self-contained supernatural ecosystem. All of them would have to be part of it.”

“Do it,” Maverick rasped. “Whatever it is, do it.”

Everyone else lowered their heads in agreement, a silent acknowledgment that they’d do anything for me. But they didn’t know what they were agreeing to.

“This carnival of theirs is perfect, you know that.” Darkness pooled around Baphomet's massive form as he examined the circus grounds, his movements just a touch too quick to match his casual tone. “They're already harvesting fear, they'll just need to do it more enthusiastically. Now where did you put the grave dust?”

“They'll need to feed almost constantly.” Lilith tossed him a vial of something dark, her voice maintaining its dry amusement even as her eyes darted anxiously to the fading moon. “And the human girl...”

“She’ll have to feed like the rest of them.” Baphomet caught the vial without looking, his eyes flashed with something dark and dangerous, as he worked. “It's not as if humanity is all that precious. Hurry up with those candles, we're losing her.”

“Do it,” Addie whispered, tears coating her cheeks.

“No, no! Tell them what you’re doing!” I tried to scream but had no voice to speak with.

Baphomet began drawing the ritual circle, his claws leaving burns in the air. Lilith gathered components. Candles weeping blood, herbs and crystals from Hell, pulsing with their own heartbeats. Each item she placed formed part of a pattern I recognized.

A closed loop, a perfect cycle, a system that would feed upon itself if given enough energy.

“The ritual must be completed now. Ahead of the next moonrise,” Lilith instructed. “After that, her essence disperses across dimensions.”

I watched helplessly as they prepared the impossible.

My family would sacrifice their fundamental nature for the mere chance of bringing me back.

And even if they succeeded...

The power that tore me apart had reshaped my essence. Whatever returned wouldn't be entirely intact.

The ritual's pull caught me like a cosmic whirlpool, fragments of my consciousness spiraling inward against my will. Maverick laid my body in the center of Baphomet's burning sigils, his hands trembling as he stepped back. Stone and Lux flanked him, their seraphim grace blazing bright.

Addie knelt at my feet, her humanity glowing like a beacon. The price they would pay shuddered through what remained of my consciousness, their freedom and futures offered up as sacrifice.

I wanted to stop them, to scream that the cost was too high. But I had no voice. No choice. No way to prevent what was about to happen.

Baphomet's chanting built like a storm, each word distorting the air around us. Lilith wove pure shadow, black silk that singed through where it touched them.

Their blood fell onto my cold flesh—first Maverick's, then Stone's, then Lux's, each drop igniting with hellfire that sank beneath my skin. The pain hit like creation itself being born. My consciousness slammed back into physical form, every cell screaming as it was torn apart and remade. My spine arched off the ground as energy surged through dead flesh, ancient and terrible.

I heard screaming—my own voice, but wrong, inhuman. Then I felt them breaking, their pain ripping through us all. Maverick cried out first, a sound that was different from mine—-deeper, more primal. The air around him radiated with desperate hunger, a need so intense it felt like its own entity. Stone and Lux followed, their forces warping and twisting into something new that surged in time with the circus's heartbeat.

Addie's transformation hit like a collision of confusion, something ancient and hungry waking in her eyes. Their combined essence poured into me, raw and overwhelming, weaving us all into something completely new and different.

The first thing I felt was hunger. Not just mine, but all of ours, echoing between us like a symphony of darkness. My eyes snapped open as I drew my first new breath. Maverick's face hovered, stunning and fiendish with need. Something fundamental had changed in all of us, and I knew with bone-deep certainty that we would never be the same.