Page 42 of The Opening Act is Death (The Carnival of The Damned)

Forty Four

Visha - Embers in the Dark

The Carnival’s breath is slow tonight, a pulse beneath the velvet, like a beast dreaming of escape. I stand in the Hall of Mirrors, fingertips tracing the jagged cracks, each fracture a line in the story I refuse to finish telling.

“I don’t want to be the queen anymore,” I whisper to the silence, my voice barely louder than the flicker of flame behind me. A breath, a presence, and Corvan’s voice, soft but steady:

“You don’t have to be.”

I turn, his eyes hold no judgment, only the weight of everything we’ve lost. And maybe, for a moment, the hope we might still save.

“Then what am I?” I ask, voice cracking.

“A monster? A ghost? Someone broken beyond repair?”

He steps closer, reaching out without hesitation.

“Someone who’s still here,” he says.

“Someone who’s trying.”

I want to believe him, but the cold in my chest tells me otherwise. The warden inside me claws for control, for distance, for sharp edges that keep pain at bay.

“Why do you stay?” I demand, voice sharp like a blade.

“When everything around us is falling apart?”

He swallows, eyes flickering with a pain I recognize all too well.

“Because I don’t want to lose you.”

For a heartbeat, the mask slips, I see him, the man who’s haunted by his own shadows, just like me.

“I’m scared,” I admit, voice trembling.

“Scared that if I let go, I’ll disappear completely.”

Corvan steps forward, closing the distance, his hand warm as it cups my cheek.

“Then don’t let go,” he murmurs.

“Hold on to me. Let’s find our way back together.”

The mirrors catch the faintest glimmer of something new, not strength or control, but something fragile, like embers glowing beneath cold ash. And for the first time in a long time, I think maybe that’s enough.

The Hall of Mirrors is a maze of fractured reflections, each shard splintering the woman I thought I was or needed to be.

I trace the jagged edges with trembling fingers, each crack a wound reopened, a truth I tried to bury.

Cold air seeps into my bones, but the deeper chill is inside the weight of the warden’s armor I wear like skin, unyielding and sharp.

I am the queen of knives, the mistress of pain and control.

But beneath the mask, beneath the dance of blades, there is a flicker, fragile and raw.

Memories haunt me. The girl who once danced barefoot on broken glass, laughing despite the blood.

The girl who believed in light, even when the shadows pressed close.

But that girl is buried beneath years of betrayal, silence, and survival.

I built these walls to keep her safe or maybe to keep everyone else out.

Corvan’s voice pulls me back from the edge of myself, soft as a promise.

“I don’t want to lose you.”

Those words break something open. I want to scream, to run, to hide.

But I want to believe. To feel. I remember the nights before The Carnival, the ache of loneliness, the cold that no fire could chase away.

I remember the knives, sharp, honest, and certain, the only things I could trust. Now, his hand on my cheek feels like a question and an answer.

“Hold on to me,” he says, and maybe, just maybe, I want to.

The mirrors reflect a woman torn between the queen and the girl, between control and surrender.

Between silence and the desperate, trembling hope that I can be more than The Carnival’s warden.

The embers glow faintly now, threatening to become a blaze.

And for the first time in a long time, I don’t want to snuff them out.