Page 26 of The Opening Act is Death (The Carnival of The Damned)

Twenty Eight

Carnival Interlude III — When the Gods Are Disobeyed

The Carnival does not forgive. It remembers.

They broke the script, and the ringmaster dropped her blade. The illusionist refused to vanish, the dance faltered and the world noticed.

I felt it. The moment the blood did not fall. The breath they shared when it should have been a scream. It tasted like rebellion. Like rot in the center of a sugared apple. They do not yet understand.

This Carnival is no stage.

It is not a performance.

It is a fucking god —old and starving.

I made them. I raised them in velvet and thorns, steel and bone. I gave them roles.

Pain to bear. Masks to wear. Scripts to follow, and still, they turn from me. They think love is a weapon sharper than obedience. They think their hearts can burn brighter than the spotlights I lit for their destruction. But I will show them.

Let the tents twist. Let the mirrors fracture and the performers bleed until their screams become music again. The Carnival does not die.

It devours.

It bends.

It becomes.

And now?

Now I write a new act.

No mercy.

No curtain calls.

Only ashes.