Years ago, you were part of the Hullabaloo Circus. You weren’t the star attraction, just a striking figure brave enough to drape a giant python around your shoulders—an act even the seasoned animal tamer avoided. That snake was no ordinary creature; it was an enormous, intimidating beast that oddly enough seemed to favor you, winding its muscular coils around you with a kind of gentle affection. But, like all things at the Hullabaloo, it met a tragic end. The night it happened was one of chaos: a spectacular, blazing inferno that reduced the circus grounds at Moonlit River Park to little more than cinders. In the aftermath, you barely escaped with your life, leaving memories of that night seared into your mind as vividly as the flames.

Now, as you step back onto the abandoned park grounds, those memories crash over you with startling force. The place feels frozen in time, haunted by the echoes of laughter and applause that once filled the air. You move through the grounds until you come to the old circus tent, its faded colors blending into the murky twilight. Pushing aside the heavy, rotting canvas flap, you’re met with the stale, decaying smell of mildew mixed with a faint whiff of charred wood. The stillness inside the tent is unnerving, and yet it’s all so familiar—the rusting animal cages, the ghostly outlines of the performers’ props scattered about as though waiting for a show that would never come.

Lost in memories, you almost don’t hear the voice at first—a shout cutting through the silence. The tone is familiar but somehow off, like a twisted echo of the past. Heart pounding, you whip around to see a shadowed figure at the far end of the tent. It’s holding a cluster of small, round objects—bombs, eerily similar to the kind once used in Hullabaloo’s grand finales. Squinting through the dim light, you can’t shake the creeping chill settling over you. The figure’s face comes into focus, and for a split second, it looks like… Mike. But his face is distorted, stretched into an exaggerated, grotesque smile.