Page 49 of The Opening Act is Death (The Carnival of The Damned)

Fifty One

Visha - The Warden’s Mercy

Mercy feels like a betrayal but sometimes, it’s the only way to survive.

The Carnival breathes around us a living shadow pulsing with hunger and blood lust. I stand with knives still dripping, but my hands tremble, not from fear, but from the weight of what Corvan just said.

“Mercy isn’t weakness,” he told me, his voice low, almost a whisper against the storm. “But strength is disguised.”

I want to laugh bitterly, to cut through the softness of that truth with sharper edges.

“Strength?” I rasp, eyes burning.

“Mercy is the knife’s betrayal. It’s what kills us.”

He steps closer, closing the distance between steel and flame. His fingers brush against my wrist carefully, reverent as if holding something fragile.

“Maybe,” he says, “but it’s also what lets us keep fighting without losing ourselves completely.”

His gaze catches mine, steady, unyielding, full of something I don’t want to admit I need.

“I’m tired,” I confess, voice breaking for the first time.

“Tired of the endless fight. Of the blood, the knives, the silence.”

He cups my face, thumb tracing the line where scars and skin meet.

“Then let me fight with you.”

Before I can answer, The Carnival shifts the air thickens with menace. From the darkened edge, a chorus rises low growls and whispers. The damned are stirring again. More violent this time. Corvan’s eyes flash with steel.

“We don’t have much time.” I draw my knives again, but this time I don’t move alone.

Together, we step into the swirling chaos of two halves of a whole, fierce and fragile, bound by blood and something deeper.

The Carnival may demand cruelty, but in this moment, mercy is our rebellion and our salvation.