Chapter 3: The Doll Breaks
Halloween night falls heavy over Roseway. The Freakshow is in full swing, but there is no joy, no festivity — only dread. The booths glow with unnatural fire, the witches’ voices rise above the noise, and the Jesters mock every living guest with threats of hunger. The Baron watches it all with satisfaction, but his eyes return again and again to Helga.
“You will give her back to me,” he whispers, though no one is sure if he means Lenore or Helga herself.
And then, a sound. The doll’s porcelain face cracks. The whispers swell to screams: “La-dies and… gentle… men…”
From the edge of the midway, the doll begins to move. Evelyn Rose’s porcelain vessel trembles in its place. Her top-hatted head turns, her cracked lips part. The words come at first as a whisper, then louder, cutting through the freakshow cacophony: “Ladies… and gentlemen… the show is mine.”
The porcelain shatters, the doll bursts apart. Evelyn’s spirit erupts — no longer bound, no longer silenced. Not ally, not foe, but something older, sharper, hungry for her stage again.
Evelyn’s spirit bursts free in a blaze of spectral light, swirling above the midway. For the first time since Nicolae’s arrival, the Baron staggers back. The Shadow Court writhes, confused, caught between feeding and retreating.
The performers falter. Some bow their heads to Evelyn. The witches watch in shock as the doll’s shards scatter across the ground like bones.
Nicolae snarls, raising his claw to strike, but Evelyn only smiles. “You bound me once. Never again.”
At that moment, Lenore appears fully — not because Nicolae summoned her, but because Helga’s desperate cry reached her. She looks only once at Nicolae — a look filled with disdain — before turning to shield her sister. With that, she fades again into the veil, leaving Nicolae humiliated.
The Shadow Court stirs uneasily. Their Baron is diminished. The rooftop vampires dissolve into the shadows, abandoning him to his shame. Nicolae roars, a sound more grief than fury, clutching at the wound in his chest that never healed. For a heartbeat, he looks ready to fling himself at Helga, to finish the ritual in blood and spite. But Evelyn’s light sears across the midway, and the Court itself pulls him back, their whispers a chorus of rebuke. They drag at his cloak, his limbs, forcing him into retreat even as he thrashes against them.
As he is swallowed by the mist, his voice cuts through the chaos, low and ragged:
“This is not the end. The Veil will open. She will be mine, again.”
The words cling long after his figure vanishes, a curse carried on the smoke.
The wind howls. Lanterns extinguish. The Freakshow begins to drift back into mist. The witches vanish with it, and the performers flicker.
For a heartbeat, the entire cemetery plunges into silence. And then — nothing. The midway is empty. The booths stand deserted. The fire gutters to ash.
But Evelyn Rose remains, her spirit untethered at last.
And the Court… still hungry.
The curtain falls. The audience disperses.
But the laughter lingers. As the crowd stumbles away into the night, one shard of porcelain glimmers in the dirt. A tiny painted eye, still moving, still watching.
And deep within the fog, where the Court coils around its broken master, Nicolae whispers her name — Lenore — like a vow. Next Samhain, the stage will rise again.