Page 5 of The Opening Act is Death (The Carnival of The Damned)

Seven

Corvan — The Escapist Doesn’t Escape

They say The Carnival chooses you, yet I’m not sure it’s a choice at all.

A Ringmaster, a man who wears half a mask and half a smile, offered me a place after the tests.

A home, he said. A refuge for lost souls still clutching threads of magic, and I wanted so hard to believe him.

So I built Illusions. Smoke, mirrors and shadows, my currency.

The first was simple, bleeding skies, crimson clouds swirling across a starless night.

The crowd gasped, breath held tight like they feared the sky might fall.

Hell, I could almost believe the moment was mine, that I controlled light and dark.

Another night, I conjured a garden of glass roses, fragile petals shimmering in the candlelight.

They shattered in slow motion, revealing the faces of the trapped souls staring out, mouths open in silent screams.

I was no longer Corvan, I was The Escapist, yet every illusion I built was a cage. Every cheer tightened the chains.

Between the shows, I stalked The Carnival’s twisted corridors, desperate for answers, desperate to know why I didn’t need to confess.

I just became. I followed whispers, fragments of song, scraps of conversation caught on the bone-chimes.

Old scars on stage floors, like fingerprints pressed into blood and dust. I sought her, Visha, Madame Noire.

The ballerina who danced with knives and death, the woman whose eyes burned through my soul that night.

One night, behind the Hall of Mirrors, I found a torn scrap of a journal page, pinned to the wall by a black thorned rose. The ink was faded, edges singed.

“…they called me a monster before I even knew my name. The blood I spill is not mine but theirs. The Carnival is my curse and my cradle.”

The signature was gone, but I knew the penmanship was hers. I traced the thread deeper, past old performance posters scrawled with warnings.

“Beware the Spider’s Dance” with a cracked photograph showing a younger woman in tattered ballet shoes, eyes haunted but fierce. Fire burned deep in her.

The Carnival folk watched me, silent and knowing.

A fire breather spat flames near the tents, smoke swirling like smoke snakes. He nodded once, I couldn’t tell if it was out of respect or warning.

The Marionettist, thin and pale, weaved through the shadows, strings dangling from his fingers like spider legs. His eyes met mine briefly, a silent question lingering between us.

“You’re digging where you shouldn’t.” I refused to answer the silent question.

One night, the Ringmaster himself pulled me aside, voice silk and steel.

“Magic’s a bargain, Corvan. This place will take what it wants. You will learn to give and take.” He smiled, a slash of moonlight in darkness.

“The choice isn’t yours,” he said.

With that I’m starting to understand, The Carnival isn’t just a refuge. It’s a prison and Visha is its warden.

The Ringmaster’s tent was a cathedral of shadows and mirrors. His voice echoed, soft but unforgiving.

“You ask about Madame Noire,” he said, eyes glittering beneath the brim of his hat.

I swallowed my fear.

“What is she? Why does she watch me like I’m prey?”

He smiled—sharp, like a blade drawn slowly from a sheath.

“She is The Carnival’s heart and its blade. A guardian of its laws and a dispenser of its justice.”

I swallowed again.

“She sees what others cannot. And you… you’re a story yet to be finished. Tread carefully.”

I wanted answers, but what I heard was a warning.

Back on stage, my illusions started to falter.

The crimson sky bled too much. The glass roses cracked before their time.

Faces appeared twisted in agony rather than beauty.

The crowd’s gasps turned to murmurs. I felt the weight in my chest grow heavier with every failed trick.

Was it that The Carnival was punishing me? Or was it me unraveling?

One night, while performing, I caught a glimpse in the mirrored hall, Visha standing still behind a curtain, watching. Her eyes met mine, no fear, no surprise. Just recognition. Yet there was something else, a promise.

The Carnival’s grip tightened, as did my resolve.

The nights grow longer here. Not by the clock, but by the shadows that creep under my skin.

My illusions betray me like traitors. The crimson sky I once commanded fractures into shards of angry fire.

The glass roses explode too soon, cutting the faces trapped inside into splinters of despair.

The crowd’s awe turns to restless whispers.

Some stare, others turn away. I hear their doubts like knives slicing through flesh right in front of me.

I clutch at the fraying edges of my control, but The Carnival doesn’t want me to hold on.

It wants me broken .

In the Hall of Mirrors, I see her again.

Visha. The shadow ballerina. She moves without sound, blades catching the dim light, dancing on the edge between grace and death.

Our eyes lock through the glass. She smiles; not cruelly, but like a queen granting mercy to a subject on the brink of ruin.

She moved past me, inches away. Not a glance, not a word.

The air shimmered. I smelled rosewater and rust. Her blade brushed a lock of my hair like a whisper.

I should’ve flinched. I didn’t. I want to speak.

To ask her why she haunts me. But the mirrors twist, and she disappears.

“The choice isn’t yours.” The Ringmasters voice echoes.

I know now, this place is a cage disguised as a sanctuary. With Visha holding the key.

One night, after a faltering performance, I stumbled into the backstage corridors.

The walls whisper secrets in voices I almost recognize.

There, pressed between old posters and velvet curtains, I find another torn photograph.

Her ; young, fierce, dancing in tattered ballet shoes.

I trace her face with trembling fingers.

A fragment of a memory flashes; a laugh, a scream, a broken promise.

I wonder what made her this way, and if there’s still something left of the woman behind the blade.

The Carnival is watching me. Testing me.

And I’m running out of illusions to hide behind.