Page 22 of The Opening Act is Death (The Carnival of The Damned)

Twenty Four

Carnival Interlude II — The Feast of Shadows

I breathe. Slow, ragged like the last breath before a fall. I taste the blood spilled beneath my flickering lights, warm, sticky, the bitter pulse of sacrifice.

I savor the tension, thick and suffocating, as fear coils tight in the hearts of those who call me home.

They don’t know how much longer they’ll last. How many broken souls will be swallowed whole before the end.

I’m hungry.

I feed on the fracture lines, on the cracks widening between love and hate, loyalty and betrayal. Every whisper, every tear, every shattered promise, fuel for my endless appetite. The Ferris wheel groans under the weight of night, its rusted grin a cruel reminder: nothing here is safe.

I am the shadow behind every glance. The cold dread beneath every smile. The relentless hunger that never sates. And I am always watching.

Waiting.

For the moment when even the strongest will break.