Page 29

Aurelia

No flashing cameras. No cheap masks or popcorn in greasy hands. Instead, rows of pristine figures sit in tailored suits and floor-length gowns, every one of them elegant, silent and composed like statues carved from pearl.

Diamonds glitter at throats and cufflinks glint like little knives under the lights.

But their stillness unsettles me. The entire atmosphere tonight is thrumming through me.

As my eyes sweep across the crowd, they catch on someone staring straight at me. That strange man, the one who claimed to be Wrath’s godfather. His eyes are locked on mine, dark and unblinking, like he’s dissecting me from the inside out. I hold his gaze, refusing to flinch, refusing to give him the satisfaction of seeing fear.

Weirdo.

When I first met him, I had the strangest feeling like I knew him, and I’d seen his face somewhere before. Maybe back when I was with my foster family or maybe at Kyro’s.

But the moment he opened his mouth, the connection slipped away. His voice didn’t match whatever memory tried to surface. But to be honest, too much has happened in the last few years and some of it feels like a blur.

When Madame stands alone in the center ring, bathed in red and white light, I turn my focus to her. Her vintage gown is the color of blood, the fabric trailing behind her like spilled wine. She doesn’t move much, she doesn’t need to, her presence fills the tent in an instant.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” She says, her voice curling through the tent like smoke, “welcome toDark Night. Our most sacred tradition. Tonight, fear will not hide in the corners,” she purrs. “It will take center stage. It will speak and it will bleed.”

The crowd stirs, intrigued and now I see a few small smiles.

“You’ve come to witness justice. Raw, undiluted and final.”

“Tonight, the betrayers, the traitors you once trusted, will meet their end beneath our tent.”

Polite clapping follows, but it’s brief and cult-like.

“But don’t mistake this just as vengeance,” Madame continues, her tone deepening. “No, this is something purer. This ispurification of the Shadows. We don’t just punish—wecleanse. We peel back the skin of respect and show the real, twitching truth beneath.”

She raises her arms, slow and elegant.

“Oddity isn’t just a stage. It’s an altar. And inside it, all falsehood burns away. What remains is pain… and clarity. Tonight, death won’t knock quietly. It willdragitself across this stage, screaming. It will wear a face you recognize. And it will not stop until every last gasp is torn from a throat that once begged for mercy.”

My chest tightens as I feel it again—that cold thing crawling beneath my ribs. But the crowd? They’re leaning forward, captivated. It’s starting to become more clearer that this is like a night of vengeance, which makes me interested, given I’m on my own revenge journey, but also horrified by what I’m about to witness.

“You, our honoured guests, have chosen who will suffer tonight,” she says, her demonic smile sharp as broken glass. “And we, the Oddity Cirque, will deliver. Not trickery or an act. But a macabre spectacle. Carnage sculpted into art.”

Madame lowers her voice, like she’s sharing something holy.

“But remember,” she whispers into the mic piece chillingly, “once Dark Night begins… no soul remains untouched by its clutches.”

There’s a few snickers in the audience before she continues.

“We areslayerswrapped in glitter. We are monsters masked in face paints. And this... it’s our sacred ground…”

Her arms stretch out in front of her, and they sweep across the crowd.

“At Oddity, we don’t shy away from madness—we crown it.”

“Here, being twisted is admired, and the broken are free. Insanity isn’t a flaw, it’s a force, a trick of our strength. What the world deems wrong, we worship as right. Because chaos isn’t a curse; it’s a calling. For only the strong dare to lose their minds.”

She glances around the grandstand, taking in each and every face with dark eyes.

“You will witness the unthinkable. Thetrue beauty of horror. A performance unlike any before it, where the line between life and death is nothing but a tightrope… ready to be sliced at any moment.”

She breathes before finishing, dropping her arms.

“So please… sit back, relax for now, and savor every sickening moment—after all, a night like this comes only once in your lifetime.”

Everything turns to pitch-black darkness for a second, and there’s a few light claps until, suddenly, the lights flood the Big Top all at once, no flicker or build-up, justbrightness.

My head tilts as soon as I notice above the center ring is now a massive metal hoop, thick and black like a platform, hovering in perfect balance on four taut wires stretched from the tent’s peaks.

It doesn’t sway and it doesn’t even creak. It just floats there.

Lined around the ring, spaced evenly, are mannequins. Twelve of them. Each one posed with arms outstretched, heads tilted, mouths gaped open in a silent scream of terror, twisted on their painted porcelain faces.

My breath catches when I realize I’veseenthem before. Beneath Wrath’s Dismembered Den deep in the woods, arranged like trophies along the walls.

The same sickly, chipped faces, and the same crooked lashes.

The mannequin in closest view trembles, just barely, and there’s a thin trickle of blood seeping from beneath its chin.

They’re not mannequins. They’re real people as I thought. Sealed in rigid shells and posed like lifeless dolls,madeto be hauntingly beautiful.

From both ends of the ring, two long black aerial silks hang, swaying faintly like they sense what’s coming. Then, a low, unsettling melody creeps through the tent. It’s notes bent just wrong enough to twist my nerves.

Suddenly, two dancers appear out of the shadows, opposite each other, and I realize it’s Noir and Pearl.

They glide barefoot, dressed in their usual Oddity costumes. Their bodies move like liquid, like something boneless and each step is a slither, each movement a twitch.

Their eyes are blank and emptied as they stare at one another. The crowd leans forward as they both circle the ring, slowly.

Then their dance begins in rhythm with the haunting music, arms bending behind their backs, necks contorting at sharp angles, their legs winding sideways like they’re not entirely human.

Every movement seems impossible, wrong, but fucking beautiful.

When they reach the silks, they pause, holding the material in their hands while the music holds a high, deafening note.

Then, in perfect sync, they leap and ascend the silks, climbing up on opposite ends of the metal ring, their limbs unfurling in elegant, strange ways.

The silk coils around them, binding them in smooth wraps as they rise higher until they’re close to the top.

They hover there for a moment, statues in midair.

Then the beat drops.

And in an instant, they unravel.

Both descend in sync, spiraling sideways, their bodies cutting through the air too fast, dangerously fast, and the crowd gasps, breath caught in their throats. All eyes follow the blur of black silk and flesh until—

They stop.

Frozen perfectly halfway down, and there’s a beat of silence.

Then, together, they begin to dance.

Their bodies move and flow, gliding through the air like smoke. It’s a masterpiece made of muscle and motion, haunting and mesmerizing, and I can’t look away.

They climb again, rising with fluid ease, black silk trailing behind them, but this time, they don’t stop. They reach the metal ring andclimb onto it, balancing perfectly on their toes, poised like ballerina’s.

They edge their way along it toward the mannequins with feline grace.

Then, both of them let out a loud, unhinged laugh.

It explodes through the tent, echoing off the canvas walls and before I can process it, they each lunge and knock a mannequin clean off.

The bodies drop like useless toy soldiers, fast, heavy,but human . There’s no scream, just the brutalcrunchof impact.

Their shells split wide open, porcelain shattering, and somethingwetsplatters across the ground. Blood, flesh, guts and limbs torn apart.

I can’t stop myself from flinching, eyes widening and shoulders tensing. It’s a natural reaction.

But the crowd applaud, and some even stand. They love it.

Noir and Pearl move like clockwork, laughing while knocking off the mannequins one by one until the floor below is painted in red and wreckage.

When the last two mannequin’s crash to the ground, a final explosion of gore, Noir and Pearl stand still atop the ring, arms out, bodies arched in eerie, mirrored poses.

Then slowly and gracefully, they bow. Their performance finished.

The crowd roars, rising to their feet in applause, the sound deafening, unbothered by the absolute carnage that just unfolded.

Noir and Pearl turn and descend the silks, sliding down in fluid spirals, their bodies loose, almost boneless. When they reach the ground, they vanish into the shadows at the edge of the ring, swallowed like ghosts slipping through cracks.

Then the lights cut out in an instant.

I can’t see the crowd anymore.

I can only hear them—still clapping and laughing. I applaud a little too. Still confused and horrified slightly by what I just witnessed, but I clap for my sister. She was outstanding.

When the lights flicker back on, it’s not white this time—it’s red. Everything looks soaked in it, as if the tent itself is bleeding.

That’s when I seethem, The Hollows, emerging shirtless, their glowing spiralled eyes cutting through the dim light. They push something out into the ring, clanking wheels cutting through the eerie silence.

The cannon. That fucking cannon.

The same one Wrath fucked me on, like it was some kind of altar. I feel my stomach turn and I cringe inwardly as I watch them touch it, rolling it out like it’s just another prop.

They start setting it up at the side of the ring, adjusting it by tipping the mouth of the cannon skyward, then from above achaindescends from the ceiling, but hanging from it is a man.

Naked, exposed and vulnerable in the worst possible way.

At first, I think he’s dead because of how limp he is, but then I notice his stomach as it rises and falls, fast and shallow.

He’s alive, and they are lowering him slowly, the chain groaning as his limp body disappears inch by inch into the cannon. Legs first, then torso, arms dragging along his sides. His face is the last thing I see, eyes wide, lips twitching in panic, but no sound comes out before he’s gone, swallowed whole.

Soul lets out a loud, drawn-out cackle, the kind that makes your skin crawl before he grips the side of the cannon, aims it with a dramatic tilt, angling it toward the peak of the tent.

Then he lights it and the fuse hisses, sparks dancing along the cord as everyone steps back.

Bang!

The cannon erupts, shaking the floor and his body blasts out like a missile, flailing in the air, limp and naked against the blood-red lights.

Then Wrath presses a button and—

Boom!

Mid-flight, the body detonates, a deafening explosion rocking the tent. Guts, bone, and flesh burst across the Cirque like a sickening confetti. The sound cracks through my chest and makes my ears ring.

Blood rains down, chunks of his remains slapping the ground, the canvas and the guests.

As soon as something hits my face, warm, wet and heavy, I wipe it away instantly, breath held, jaw clenched.

Around me, the crowd roars with laughter, some clapping, some cheering, their sadistic smiles streaked with red.

This is absolute insanity.

Next, a woman, naked and helpless, is lowered into the cannon in the same way. She’s paralyzed, breathing heavily, her fear palpable. Once she’s inside, Soul lights the fuse and she’s shot into the air, only to explode mid-flight, her body torn apart, blood and flesh raining down over the audience.

I feel fucking sick.

When that’s over and everything seems to calm down again, my anxiety peaks as soon as three women, real-life puppets, are rolled out to centre stage in separate lit-up glass boxes.

Their bodies are warped and contorted in unnatural ways, as if they were stuffed that way, like marionettes bound by invisible strings. And I realize, at least one of them was from The Dismembered Den that night.

They move only in jerks, their limbs locked into grotesque angles, and their buttoned eyes seem to scan the crowd.

I can’t look away, but I feel another knot tightening in my stomach.

One puppet lets out a strangled gasp, but it’s drowned by the creaking glass. She’s already bent beyond human limits, her arms stretched and her back arched in ways that are wrong.

The box begins to compress, glass coming slowly from different angles, and with every inch it tightens, her bones snap and crack.

Her body starts to fold into impossible positions as she struggles for air. The sharp snap of her spine fills the silence, followed by a sickening crack as her leg twists at a horrible position.

Then, just like that, she’s crushed, her body squelching out of the gaps in the glass, spilling out onto the floor, her figure mangled and unrecognizable.

I have to look away and gather myself as the audience erupts in applause, laughing and cheering like it’s nothing more than an ordinary show.

…

After watching performance after performance, each one more horrifying than the last, I can feel my stomach churn with every twisted act. But after what feels like an eternity of these bloody spectacles, the chaos starts to settle.

The last act leaves the stage, their twisted body dragged off by the Hollows, and the crowd starts to quiet, waiting for the next act.

And then, suddenly, the spotlight snaps back to the center of the ring.

Madame steps forward, her silhouette cutting through the haze of smoke and blood. She stands in the middle of the mayhem, her blood-red gown flowing around her, untouched by the carnage.

The tent is still, and murmurs die down as all eyes lock onto her.

Suddenly, The Hollows enter with Noir, Blush and all the other performers at Oddity. They shift into position, forming a circle around Madame, their blank faces hiding any emotion, but the tension is palpable.

The crowd is silent now, and the stifling atmosphere suddenly becomes suffocating.

Madame’s grin widens unnervingly, and her eyes darken with a wicked gleam.

“I trust that you appreciated the show?”

Her words linger, dripping with mockery, and the silence deepens as the audience grows uneasy, unsure of what’s coming.

“Ah, but now... now,” she continues, her voice shifting, the calmness giving way to something darker, “we’ve reached the grand finale of Dark Night. It’s not over quite yet.”

She sweeps her hand in a wide, almost theatrical gesture toward the crowd, and her grin stretches further, as if savoring every moment.

“This is the part we’ve all been waiting for. The grand spectacle. The moment when your screams will join the chorus of those you’ve revelled in, as you finally understand the true nature of this night,” her tone grows colder.

“This final act will mark the end of your happiness, the end of your gasps, and soon... the end of everything.”

A shudder runs through the crowd, and me, but no one dares to speak. The performers move closer, their weapons glinting under the blood-red lights, their faces blank, but sinister.

“Oddity has always served a purpose, hasn’t it? You thought you were here to witness death, to enjoy the suffering of others, to feast on their misery. But you forgot one thing… Why were you chosen and given that Black Ticket out of all Shadows?”

Her voice turns sharp, cutting through the Cirque like a knife.

“You thought you’d come here to see retribution, hm? But it’syouwho are the ones who has been judged too. The blood on your hands isfarolder than you think.”

Madame takes a step forward.

“This final act is not for your entertainment,” she sneers. “This is the reckoning. The retaliation for your lies, your sins, your betrayals.” Her grin widens with savage delight. “This...thisis where your lives are paid for in full. Right here, at Oddity.”

The crowd tenses, and I wait, wide-eyed, wondering what the fuck is happening. She seems to be talking in riddles.

“On Dark Night, you believed you were safe, that your offences could be hidden behind the mask ofthis night,” Madame whispers, her voice dripping with malice. “But no one...no oneescapes Dark Night. Not even YOU!”

My breath catches in my throat as the realization hits me like a cold wave. But before I can process it, Madame lets out a loud, mocking laugh into the microphone, her head thrown back in a way that feels too menacing.

The crowd, in their stupidity, follow her, their laughter rising in a mindless frenzy, unaware of the danger that’s about to unfold.

My eyes dart to the performers as they inch closer to the audience, like wolves closing in on prey. It becomes clear now… this isn’t just a performance. This is going to be a fucking bloodbath for everyone involved.

Madame’s laugh fades into a chilling silence, and in that instant, the tension shatters. The performers move quick, weapons are unleashed and everything erupts.

The madness of Dark Night rages around me as I lock eyes with Wrath, standing eerily still in the center of it all, staring right at me like he knows exactly what’s coming. The world blurs, everything else fades, and for a moment, it’s just the two of us.

A sly grin curls on my lips, and his eyes darken, sharpening with something primal. I can see it in the way his posture shifts.

He’s going to chase me tonight.

My eyes flick to Blush in the crowd as they surge out of the doors, a frenzy of bodies scrambling over the seats to escape.

I’m already moving, pushing through until my hand snaps out to grab Blush’s wrist. She stumbles, caught off guard, as I yank her toward one of the exits.

“Aurelia, what are you doing?” she breathes, but I don’t stop.

I glance back at Wrath, but now he stands with Soul, both of them staring us down with cold, calculating eyes.

“We’re gonna have some fun tonight, girl,” I say, flashing a big smile at Blush, the thrill racing through me.

Soon, we’re pushed out into the carnival and the panicked crowd surges toward the locked gates. The chaos and the fear is intoxicating while we slow down as soon as we can, both of us watching the madness unfold.

“Here take this,” Blush says, her voice almost gleeful in the mayhem as she hands me a huge manchette.

“What about you?” I ask before looking forward again, and that’s when I spot them.

Workers are sliding weapons under the gates, tossing knives, axes, and whatever else they can spare to the bad guys. My brows pinch, confusion curling through me.

“What the fuck…” I mutter under my breath.

“It’s an all-out war, Aurelia,” Blush says, her grin widening, pink eyes alight with excitement, like she’s been waiting for this. “And Oddity always wins.”

Suddenly, the Oddity Cirque crew surges out of the tent, weapons drawn. They’re not here for a show anymore, they’re here to kill. The crowd scatters in every direction, screams mixing with the sound of heavy boots pounding against the wet cracked ground.

Blush doesn’t hesitate while she reaches out, snatching an axe from someone’s hand as they pass her.

And then I hear it… a motorbike coming from my left and I almost think it’s gonna to be Wrath, but as the engine rips through the crowd, cutting through the carnival's madness, my eyes snap it.

I spot Noir, perched on Hell’s black and white bike. They’re facing each other frontally, a twisted relationship of destruction. Noir’s got a nail gun in her hand, and as the bike barrels through the crowd at full speed, she starts firing.

Nails rip through flesh, thudding with sickening force as people crumple to the ground, their screams echoing through the night. And through it all, a loud, manic laugh bursts from her lips, and the sound ripples dark amusement through me.

I can’t help but laugh with her, shaking my head at the craziness of it all.

Without warning, a piece of metal, or something just as sharp, slices across my cheek, the sting immediate. I freeze for a second, my fingers instinctively touching the wound before I stare down at the blood on my fingertips.

“Hey, motherfucker! Watch it!” Blush yells, her voice sharp and full of rage.

I glance up just in time to see him, Wrath’s godfather, standing nearby, a blood-soaked grin plastered across his face.

He’s the fucker who just nearly sliced my skull open?

I can feel the heat of fury building in me again, the anger gnawing at my insides as he raises his hands, drenched in red, a knife still gleaming in his grip.

“Oops!” he says, the word dripping with sarcasm.

My teeth grind together, and my gold eyes narrow into a scowl, my body tensing with the desire to tear him the fuck apart right there.

But before I can think further, I hear the unmistakable roar of two more bikes rounding the circus, the engines revving like beasts coming to hunt.

I gasp, panic surging and without hesitation, I grab Blush’s hand again, forcing her to run with me.

We laugh, hysterical and wild, as our bodies weave through the craziness of the crowd. We’re moving too fast to think, cutting a violent path through it all, arms and legs falling to the ground as we carve through people, their blood spraying up us in the wake of our violence.

I can feel Wrath and Soul pushing their way through the mass of bodies, their coloured eyes locked onto us, but they can’t catch us.

Not yet.

Me and Blush keep sprinting, killing people on the way until we find ourself at the edge of the woods.