When gods go quiet, men start to sing.When demons dance, cities forget how to sleep.And somewhere between sleep and waking… a detective lights his last cigarette before the storm.
The city was humming again — not with life, but with static.
It was in the way the streetlights buzzed one beat too fast, and how the shadows under cars seemed to stretch just a bit too far before snapping back into place. Flickering neon signs blinked messages no one remembered programming. Radio stations skipped entire sentences mid-song, replacing lyrics with low, mechanical whispers. Even the air felt thick, charged, like the whole place was an exposed wire waiting for the wrong touch.
Asher Blackwood stood in front of the busted vending machine outside his decaying apartment, watching its screen flash:
LUCKY NIGHT — FREE DRINK.
He sighed and pressed the button anyway, because habit was a stubborn thing.
Nothing.
No clunk of a can, no fizz of victory.
Just a static hum and the flickering promise of something that never arrives.
"Yeah, sure. Lucky," Asher muttered, pulling out a cigarette with shaking fingers. He hadn't smoked in months—not since the last mess nearly burned him alive. But new season, new sins. He sparked the lighter, inhaling deep, and coughed. Cheap tobacco and regret—a flavor he knew too well.
Across the street, something caught his eye: a man in a mascot costume, dancing outside an abandoned storefront.
It should've been funny—this oversized fox with a cartoon grin—but the way it moved was wrong. Not a dance. A twitch. Jerky, like a puppet with tangled strings. The giant mascot head turned—too far—and Asher swore he heard bones creak under that ridiculous fur.
He shivered and muttered under his breath, "City's getting weird again."
As if it ever stopped.
The little radio clipped to his belt crackled, breaking the uneasy quiet. Rosa's voice came through, curt and urgent:
"Detective Blackwood. You're gonna want to see this. Carnival flyers popping up again. Basement levels, District 7. Looks like your kinda mess."
Carnival.
The word hit him in the gut like a sucker punch.
Images flashed, unbidden:Painted smiles that didn't fade, even after death.Eyes that bled confetti.And that awful music, looping endlessly like a record that refused to break.
He flicked his cigarette into the gutter, grinding it out with his heel."Yeah," he muttered. "Figures."
Meanwhile, beneath the city…
Down in Black Hollow's underbelly, in the places light and law forgot, flyers were sliding under doors like rats. Not just any flyers—these were bright, garish things, with bold fonts and sickly-sweet colors that felt… wrong, like candy laced with glass.
"The Carnival of Hollow Gods — One Night Only!Come see the divine and the damned perform!"
At the bottom, in a squirming script that seemed to shimmer if you stared too long:
"Entry Fee: A little piece of your soul (don't worry, you won't miss it)."
A kid, maybe eight, found one fluttering down an alley. He picked it up, curious, and winced as the paper sliced his finger. Blood welled up—and soaked right into the ink. For a second, just a blink, the grinning fox mascot printed on the flyer seemed to wink.
Back at the precinct…
Detective Rosa was already pacing when Asher stomped through the door. Her sharp heels hammered the cracked linoleum floor like gunshots.
"Blackwood, I swear to God, if you blow this off again—"
"I'm on it," Asher cut her off, grabbing his battered coat from the rack. The thing still smelled faintly of smoke and brimstone, remnants of the last time the city tried to swallow him whole.
Rosa's eyes burned into him. "This isn't just another crackpot cult. We've got people missing—again. And these flyers?" She slammed one down on the desk. "Tech ran it. Ink's laced with... something. Not magic, not tech. They're calling it organic glyphs. Whatever it is, it's alive."
Alive.
Asher's jaw tightened.He remembered the last thing that slithered into the city wearing a smile.It had teeth. Big ones.
"Guess I better get to work, then," he muttered.
Later that night…
The streets were slick with neon and rain, blurring together in a palette of sickly greens and bruised purples. Asher's boots splashed through puddles as he made his way deeper into District 7's maze of alleys.
That's when he saw her.
A tall woman in crimson heels, leaning against a flickering lamppost. Her silhouette was perfect, too perfect—like a magazine ad come to life. And if you squinted hard enough, just past the glamour, you could make out the faint outline of horns curling from her temples.
Seraphine.
The succubus informant he hated the most—and trusted the least.
"Long time, Detective," she purred, her smile cutting sharp as glass. She flicked a flyer toward him with a lazy hand, the paper slicing the air like a blade.
"This one's big, darling. Bigger than last season. The Hollow Gods are waking up… and you?" She stepped closer, trailing a claw down his lapel. "Still trying to play detective in a city that's already lost the plot."
Asher exhaled a plume of smoke into her face. "Good. I hate following plots anyway."
But his gut twisted all the same.
Because now—underneath the city's static hum—he could hear it.Soft. Far off.Calliope music.Off-key, broken.And getting closer.
In the shadows behind Asher, the fox mascot twitched again.Its painted smile stretched—just a little too wide.
[End Of Chapter 51]
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Chapter 52 — "First Ticket to Madness"
The Carnival opens its doors at last. Asher descends into the basement levels of District 7, where missing people, forgotten gods, and corrupted pleasures collide in a nightmare maze. But every ticket punched comes at a cost… and Asher's soul is already running a tab.