Chapter 10

The crew jogged through the forest, boots thudding against damp earth.

Faint cackles echoed through the trees.

Now and then, a clown burst from the underbrush—only to be met with a stake to the heart and left tumbling to ash on the ground.

“Mabel,” Liza grunted, driving her elbow into the throat of the next one,

“I think we’re gonna need a new kind of stake.”

Mabel had just finished blasting another one dead center, its grin shattering on impact.

Its eyes went flat—like a predator caught mid-hunt.

“Alright—yeah, alright. What do you have in mind?”

Mabel had just finished blasting another one dead center, its grin shattering on impact.

The eyes went flat—like a predator caught mid-hunt.

“Alright—yeah, alright. What do you have in mind?”

Liza pointed to her lamp, still bouncing light with every stride.

“I need you to imagine our lanterns,” she said. “That bright light?

Now imagine all of Deadfall had theirs on—every single one, lit at once.”

She glanced ahead, breathing steady.

“Trees go white as snow. Mountains turn into teeth on the horizon.

You feel that? Like we dragged the sun down on Faltenia itself.”

Mabel closed her eyes.

That faint blue glow—the telltale shimmer of gathering mana—had overtaken her body.

“Yeah, sis,” she said quietly.

“Yeah, I got the gist of it.”

Her eyes opened, glinting.

“What are we gonna call it?”

Liza looked forward.

The trees were thinning now—opening into something worse.

The carnival grounds stretched across the clearing like a carcass mid-feast.

Tents loomed in unnatural shapes—

sharp at the edges, like folded blades.

Some leaned too far. Some stood too tall.

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One of them breathed.

Liza looked back at Mabel.

“…Lumina.”

Mabel echoed it, voice steady.

“Lumina.”

She raised Heartpiercer high—

and fired.

The white streak shot upward and burst—

white light searing into the shadows of the fairgrounds.

It hung there.

A new moon of raw light.

It bathed the fairgrounds below in stark white, as if dragging the truth out by force.

The tents weren’t just sharp—they were ruined.

Canvas flayed open. Poles cracked like broken limbs.

Some pitched forward as if trying to crawl. Others pulsed.

Blood soaked the walkways in uneven lines—

not pools, paths.

A clown spun in slow circles on a warped unicycle, juggling two severed arms like pins.

Another crouched in a corner, daintily brushing a corpse’s hair with a fork.

One waved from a half-collapsed booth, grinning with too many teeth—its chest split open like a peeled fruit.

The ground was pockmarked with footprints. Bare. Human. Wrong.

Some ended in nothing. Others trailed off into the dark with fingers clawed into the mud.

The light refused to blink.

It didn’t hide anything.

Everything was laid bare.

And they were still jogging toward it.

Zina muttered behind them, voice low, almost reverent.

“What the forge…?”

Beatrice, already gripping both hammers, grinned like she’d been waiting all day.

One was her own.

The other—shorter, blood-slick—had belonged to someone who didn’t need it anymore.

She didn’t look ready.

But she was smiling anyway.

The crew marched into the din, boots crunching through dead grass and old straw.

The main archway loomed ahead—collapsed on one side, sagging like a snapped jaw.

Paint peeled. Ribbons fluttered from rusted nails.

A faded banner still clung to life, the words barely legible:

“Redgrave & Daughters: A Show To Die For!”

The light from Lumina washed everything in white.

Sound pierced the white.

A voice shattered the stillness—

rolling through the clearing like thunder forced through brass.

Up ahead, a figure loomed atop a splintered ticket stand,

framed by the sagging archway.

He held a long, tarnished speaking trumpet, flared like a flower made of brass.

“Step right up, one and all!”

The crew slowed.

A lime light sputtered to life above him,

its glow sharp, white-hot—but tinted red, like it had passed through blood.

Still, the voice carried on, lilting like a man smiling through a slit throat.

“Tickets are pain! Admission is fear!

Come test your luck in the house of mirrors and meat!

We’ve got games for the guts, rides for the reckless,

and prizes you’ll never forget—because they’ll never leave you!”

“Clowns! Corpses! Curiosities!

One night only—‘cause none of you are making it to morning!”

He swayed atop the arch.

Once.

Then never again.

Smoke was already curling from Heartpiercer’s barrel.