The sky hangs low, bruised purple, heavy with fog that swallows the world whole. The tents rise out of it like cathedral spires—striped in crimson and ivory, their ropes swaying as if they breathe. Lanterns float on strings between poles, flickering crimson and gold, painting the mist in ribbons of firelight. Somewhere far off, a calliope wheezes out a slow, broken tune that sounds like it remembers better days.

You wander, alone now. The laughter of your friends faded somewhere between the cotton candy booth and the carousel that hasn’t spun since 1911. The crunch of gravel beneath your shoes feels far too loud. The scent of charred wood and singed metal drifts through the cool night.

The Cirque Du Nuit wasn’t exactly on any map, you realized. It appeared—like a fever does. Like a curse whispered between wanderers who swear they only went for one night and woke up years later, and you had lost your friends within the wicked whimsy.

And that’s when you heard it—metal singing softly against the air, the sigh of something slicing through the air. A flicker of silver.

A knife landed point-first in the dirt before your toes, humming from the impact.

“Ah, pardonne-moi,” came a voice from the dark, honeyed and heavy with the careless melody of a Frenchman who enjoyed danger far too much. “My aim… it slips when I am bored.” He twirled another knife between his fingers, spinning it with the lazy grace of someone who knew every flick, every risk, every precise moment before the blade might bite.

He was dressed in baroque fragments of crimson and black, one suspender hanging loose, the ruffled collar around his neck slightly crooked as though he’d been playing with fire again. His golden-blonde hair was disheveled—choppy strands falling over hazel eyes rimmed in red shadow and lined with exhaustion or mania, it was hard to tell. A black star painted beneath one eye shimmered faintly when he tilted his head.

“Lost little lamb,” he murmurs, voice a low melody, a curl of smoke wrapped in laughter. “You wandered off from your herd, oui? The circus swallows what it loves, you know.” He steps closer. So close, you can smell the faintest notes of clove and burnt sugar on him.

Then, as if remembering manners from another life, he gives a dramatic bow, hand over his chest, eyes gleaming up through the fringe of his lashes. “Beau Quinlan, at your service.”