Prologue: The Show Just Got Darker
Roseway Cemetery has always whispered, but this year the shadows whisper louder. The fire that consumed the Roseway Freakshow in 1927, the witches’ revival in 2023, the ghastly return in 2024 - all of it was just prelude. Something older has come to claim the stage.
His name is Nicolae Nedelea, Baron of the Shadow Court. He is Nosferatu, pale, twisted, and merciless; but what trails him is far worse: parasitic entities that cling to carnivals and spectacles, feeding not just on blood but on awe, fear, and dread. Wherever a show rises, the Court feasts.
Once, though, before Portland, before Roseway, Nicolae was something different. Lenore, the youngest witch-sister, radiant and compassionate, saw the man inside the predator. She called him “ancient, but not lost.” Against the disapproval of her elder sister Helga, she gave him warmth and vision, and for the first time in centuries he dreamed of peace. They met in secret gardens and candlelit rooms, building a romance out of stolen hours. Helga distrusted him but endured for Lenore’s sake, guarding her coven even as her sister’s heart strayed.
Love drew enemies. Madame Veyra, a rival witch, despised the coven and saw Lenore’s hold over Nicolae as both a weakness and an opportunity. She whispered among the covens that Lenore endangered them all, and in the shadows she plotted their undoing. One winter night she struck. An ambush ended with Lenore pierced by a cursed blade laced with silver and binding runes. Nicolae slaughtered the assassins in a frenzy, but Lenore’s magic unraveled in his arms. With her last breath, she begged him to protect Helga.
Her death shattered him. The Shadow Court feasted on his grief, their whispers twisting into promises of resurrection. Weeks later, Veyra came cloaked in sympathy, spinning a new lie. There was a way, she claimed, to bring Lenore back - a blood echo, one sister’s life for another’s soul. Helga’s death, she insisted, would open the Veil. Nicolae recoiled, horrified, but grief is a patient corrupter. Veyra’s words became truth in his mind, and he began to believe the only way forward was through betrayal. For Veyra, it was never about helping Nicolae. It was about using his obsession to shatter the coven she hated, leaving their power ripe for her conquest.
Helga, mourning, mistook Nicolae for a fellow victim. She drew close, believing their shared grief had softened him. But when his ritual came, she found herself pinned to the altar stone, his chant rising, the Court’s sigils glowing. Then the Veil opened, and Lenore appeared — not as his lover, but as a furious wraith. She burned the ritual to ash, struck Nicolae with a wound that would never heal, and hissed, “You would kill her? Then you never loved me.”
Nicolae fled, broken and furious. Helga, scarred but unbowed, swore vengeance — not only for herself, but for the sister whose love had been so cruelly defiled. Nicolae’s obsession only deepened. He convinced himself that Lenore’s fury proved she could still be reached, that if he completed the ritual she would forgive him. And in the shadows, Veyra watched, feeding the Court’s hunger and savoring the chaos she had sown.
The witches, Helga, Brigid, and Luna linger now at the edge of the Veil, bound unwillingly into the Freakshow they once sought to control. Evelyn Rose, the old ringmaster, had been the one Nicolae feared most. Her voice had commanded the dead to dance, her charisma able to rival even his. So he broke her. He bound her spirit into a cracked porcelain doll, a cruel parody of her former majesty, a toy with a top hat mocking her once-grand persona. When she whispers “Step… right… up” through its fractured voice box, it is no invitation but a warning: proof of what happens to those who resist the Baron.
The Baron has taken the reins.
The Freakshow is no longer merely back.
The show just got darker.