Page 10 of The Opening Act is Death (The Carnival of The Damned)

Twelve

Visha - The Stage Where I Died

The stage never forgets, not the steps, the blood, nor the screams buried beneath the floorboards.

It remembers me as I step inside the old theater, alone in the hushed shadows.

The air is thick with dust and the ghosts of applause have long since been silenced.

The velvet curtains hang like funeral shrouds, their edges frayed and soaked with years of forgotten sorrow.

This was my prison and my crucible. Where the girl I was became shattered, piece by agonizing piece.

The boards creak beneath my bare feet, cold and unforgiving.

I move slowly, as if each step might wake the girl beneath-the one I buried deep beneath layers of vengeance and steel.

There, under the dim glow of a cracked spotlight, something waits for me.

A folded note, delicate and out of place.

The paper edges singed, like a message rescued from fire or meant to burn.

I hesitate, I know whose hand left this and it wasn’t mine.

The note is addressed to Corvan, the ink is smudged but the words are clear.

“Your illusions speak louder than your silence. I see you, even when you try to disappear. Don’t run this time.”

Signed: V

But I never wrote it, I never meant those words.

My fingers tremble as I pick up the note, cold as the promise of death.

A counterfeit. A whisper in my voice that doesn’t belong to me.

Why ? Why send a message in my name? The weight in my chest tightens, not with fear, but a colder hunger; a violation masked as care.

A game being played with edges sharper than any blade I’ve worn.

I curl my fingers around the note, crushing it until the paper bleeds through the cracks of my skin.

The fire I thought long dead flickers in my veins, an ember waking from ashes.

* * *

Later, I see Corvan and I watch from the shadows. He is hesitant, holding the note as if it were a fragile lifeline. His eyes, so often guarded, are raw and searching. He thinks it was from me, he believes I want him to stay…

“Was it real? The note. The words you supposedly wrote?” His voice is soft when he speaks to me.

I want to scream at him; to tear the fragile hope from his chest and stomp it into the dust.

“I didn’t write it.” I answer quietly.

He flinches, like a wound reopening. The betrayal blossoms in his eyes, fragile and sharp.

“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, the executioner 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 sheathed beneath 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.