Page 11 of The Opening Act is Death (The Carnival of The Damned)

Thirteen

Corvan - Smoke Knows My Name

Even the bone-chimes whisper now. They say I belong to her.

The petal’s gone when I wake. Not crumpled.

Not dropped. Gone. As if it was never there.

But I remember the way it pulsed in my palm, warm and wet, like the ghost of her touch.

A memory etched in blood and perfume. The kind of thing that stays with you, no matter how much you lie to yourself.

The tent is too quiet. The Carnival is never silent.

Even in sleep, there’s always sound; murmurs behind velvet, the low creak of rope-swung lanterns, bone-chimes twitching in the breeze.

But this morning, it’s as if the whole place is holding its breath.

I step outside barefoot, half-dreaming. The mist clings low to the ground, curling like fingers, and I swear it follows me.

Not wind. Not air. Her. Somehow, her. I turn toward the Hall of Mirrors, like I’ve been called.

The path is slick with dew and ash. My footsteps don’t echo, which unnerves me more than if they did.

Even the birds, if there are birds in this place, aren’t singing.

The chimes whisper again.

“Escapist…”

No mouth says it, but The Carnival does.

I hear it, feel it. In the way the shadows lean.

In the way the glass hums when I press my palm to the mirror’s frame, and then I see her.

Not in reflection, not in vision. In flesh.

Visha stands on the other side of the glass, not quite real, not quite an illusion.

Her hair is wild, curls tangled in thorns.

Her dress is torn silk, stained at the hem like she walked through fire to get here.

Her gaze? It’s the same one I saw the first night, the one that burned, judged, devoured.

However it’s softer now. No less dangerous. Just… haunted.

“Why are you here?” she asks. The glass doesn’t muffle her voice. It slices through me.

“I could ask you the same thing.” I say back, longing to touch her.

She steps closer. The mirror doesn’t reflect her. It absorbs her. Light bends around her like The Carnival knows she doesn’t belong to any one world.

“You left the petal,” I say, my voice barely above a whisper. “You wanted me to follow.”

“I wanted you to fear me.” Visha says softly.

“Too late,” I answered. “I already do. But I’m still here.”

She presses a hand to the glass. Her fingers leave smears of something darker than shadow.

“You should run.”

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.

In me . 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 crowd knows .

They feel it. 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. From change . 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 to burn .