Page 29 of The Opening Act is Death (The Carnival of The Damned)

Thirty One

Carnival Interlude IV — The Velvet Throne Bleeds

The Carnival stirs, not like a lover in tangled sheets, not like a dream rousing from slumber.

No.

This is a beast waking to the scent of betrayal in the air. A fucking god with blood in its teeth and theater lights behind its eyes.

She wrote the letter.

He didn’t read it.

But the act was enough. The silence, the weight, the way her pulse quickened when she bled onto the page…

The stage remembers.

Across the tents, the lights flicker not from wind, but from reverence . The tightrope snaps taut without touch. The calliope groans out a minor key.

They forget who she is.

She is not just the Ringmaster. Not just Madame Noire. Not just the girl who danced on broken feet until gods and ghosts wept.

She is the Queen of Knives.

And mercy? She was never built with that word in her mouth. The Carnival feels the shift, the ache in the floorboards when she hesitates. The rupture in Corvan’s chest when he realizes she knew his sins before he did.

It drinks it in. Some of the Carnies murmur behind curtains. Some wonder if she’s softening. Some whisper that love is weakening her crown. But The Carnival knows better.

It does not break its rulers.

It tests them.

She is still the one who built this place from grief and rot and velvet ash. Still the one who decides who stays—and who bleeds.

And the others? Let them try. Let them come for her throne. Let them think she’s distracted, unarmed, unguarded.

She is none of those things.

She is sharpening.

She is watching.

They will learn.