Page 21 of The Opening Act is Death (The Carnival of The Damned)

Twenty Three

Corvan - Mirrors Break Me Backwards

The echoes of her knives still linger in the air; sharp, unforgiving, raw like a wound that refuses to heal. I heard the silence after the screams, saw the broken shape collapse beneath her merciless dance.

Visha; the queen of blades, The Carnival’s unyielding warden that never looks away.

Not once, not even when the blood stains her hands, when her eyes betray the weight she carries.

I stand in the shadows, heart heavy with a storm of guilt and anger.

Because this was never just punishment. It was a message, not just to the one who broke the rules; but to me.

To all of us shackled by The Carnival’s hunger.

It demands our loyalty. Our sacrifice. Our surrender, and yet, I still carry secrets.

Sins I never confessed. Not because I was proud.

But because I never had to. Not with her.

Visha sees everything, not with words, but with silence.

With scars, with the weight behind the blade.

She knows.

Always knows.

I wonder if she resents me for it, for hiding nothing yet bearing everything – For walking beside her with ghosts of my own.

I want to confess, to bare my soul and beg for absolution.

But the words stick like thorns. Unspoken.

Because what could I say that she doesn’t already feel?

That she hasn’t already punished me in her own way?

The Carnival demands blood.

But beneath the ruthless queen, I sense a fracture.

A sliver of something brittle, fragile, and I ache to reach it.

To break through the walls she’s built around herself.

I find her later, alone beneath the flicker of dying lights.

Her breath was shallow. Her knives rested by her side, but never far. I step closer, voice low and raw.

“Why did you never make me confess?”

Her eyes meet mine, hard, cold, but trembling with something unspoken.

“I didn’t need to,” she says. “Because I already know.”

The silence stretches between us, thick and heavy with the weight of years and pain.

“I see your guilt,” she continues, voice barely above a whisper.

“In the way you look away. In the way your hands shake when you think no one’s watching. I don’t wait for words. I wait for the truth.”

Her walls crumble, just a little, and in that moment, I see her.

Not the queen, not the executioner, but the girl who learned to survive by becoming a blade.

I reach out, hesitating. She doesn’t pull away, instead, she lets me.

And for the first time, I think maybe we can be more than ghosts chained to this cursed Carnival.

Maybe we can be something real. Something alive.

Together.

Her eyes hold mine, sharp, unyielding, but beneath the surface, a flicker of something raw, fragile.

I reach slowly, hesitating, then slide a trembling hand toward hers.

The knives lie heavy between them, cold steel, sharp edges, the tools of her power and her curse.

Without breaking eye contact, she lets me close the gap.

My fingers brush hers, grazing the blade’s edge, and a shiver shoots through me a sharp contrast of danger and trust. I swallow the lump in my throat.

“This,” I whisper, “is what you’ve carried alone. The weight of every broken promise, every sacrifice you couldn’t make me understand.”

Her breath catches, and for a heartbeat, the Queen of Blades is just Visha; the girl who learned to dance with knives in the dark to keep herself alive. Slowly, I slide my hand up, tracing a thin line along the blade’s spine, never touching the sharp edge, but close enough to feel its cold bite.

“Let me carry some of it,” I say, voice cracking.

She blinks, a single tear slipping free and trailing down her cheek; a drop of crimson that catches the faint light, as if The Carnival itself has stained her.

For a moment, silence swallows us. Then, almost imperceptibly, she squeezes my hand.

The knives fall from her fingers, clattering softly to the floor; a sound heavier than steel, a surrender more profound than words.

She leans into me, just slightly, a fragile bridge across the chasm between us.

And in that fragile closeness, I see hope, faint, flickering, but alive.

The Carnival still hungers, still watches. But maybe for this one fleeting moment, we’ve carved out a space where mercy isn’t a poison. Where pain doesn’t have to be the only truth.

Where two broken souls might begin to heal.