[Time skip a few days]
[Wednesday POV]
A few days passed since the ceremony. Inside the Addams home, nothing had changed — not in the family, not in my relationship with Perseus. But outside, the world had shifted.
Perseus was no longer seen as a stray Outcast. He was now the future husband of the Addams heir. Every step he took, every choice he made, would be seen as carrying the Addams name. Anyone who struck at him would be striking at us.
That was the point.
The ceremony had been my demand, after discovering certain documents while searching my mother's room for clues about the ritual and why I had failed it.
The documents were reports from our operations in the darker underbelly of society. Buried among the columns of names, debts, and disappearances, I noticed something troubling: Outcasts, and infamous monsters disguised as people had taken an interest in Perseus. Some wanted to recruit him. Others wanted to dissect him like an experiment.
I wanted to kill them myself, but before I could act, they were already dead — wiped out by a new faction calling itself the Tarot Club.
The Addams family has many branches and factions beneath us, but I had never heard of this one before. That alone was suspicious. And then I remembered Perseus's words, spoken when I was trapped inside the ritual: "The Magician writes the script, and the world performs it."
I began to suspect.
So, to cut short the whispers about Perseus being nothing more than a vulnerable stray, I made our engagement official. It wasn't romance, it was strategy. A shield of my own design.
As for the ritual itself… in the past days I revisited it. The truth became clearer. It wasn't that I chose one over the other. It was that I refused to make the cruel choice at all.
I would not sacrifice my parents for love. I would not abandon love for family. I will never admit it aloud, but the truth is simple: I would not commit to cruelty, and I would not commit to mercy.
But in doing so, I chose nothing. And because I chose nothing, I lost everything. That was my downfall. Not weakness, not incompetence — hesitation.
I refused to decide, and indecision is the most pathetic decision of all. I thought I was sparing myself the cruelty of choice — instead I proved myself a coward and lost everything.
That contradiction fueled my writing. Which is why I sat at my desk now, fingers striking the typewriter keys, filling page after page with characters torn between their ideals.
Until arms wrapped around me from behind.
Perseus.
He leaned close, warm breath against my ear, and bit the lobe lightly. "Why not write on the laptop I gifted you?"
"Because unlike the laptop," I said without looking up, "this obeys."
He chuckled, resting his chin on my shoulder, reading the words as I typed them. For a while, he simply breathed there, silent.
But the doubts gnawed at me. The Tarot Club. The whispers. The trail of corpses that only benefited him. And all of it pointed back to Perseus.
"How does your gift work?" I asked, keys still clicking. "Does it have something to do with the Tarot Club?"
He bit my ear, whispering, "Someone's been snooping in her mother's room. You know what they say… curiosity killed the cat."
I ignored him. The typewriter did not.
His voice, low and steady, slid into my ear. "When I trained with your mother, I tested everything. I pushed my gift until I found its limits. And from those limits, I discovered three paths I could take."
He loosened his hold on me and began to pace, hands brushing across the desk.
"The first path was the Path of Substitutes. I tried everything — elixirs that sharpened the mind, artifacts that promised endless stamina and mental strength, inks mixed with blood and mercury. But the cost was always greater than the gain. That path ends in addiction and slavery. Borrowed strength is no strength at all."
He turned his wrist, brushing his fingers across faint scars etched there.
"The second path was the Path of the Flesh. I carved my gift directly into myself. Tattoos. Sigils. Living circuits of ink burned into the soul. At first, it worked. A dagger etched into my shoulder could cut through anything I touched. A shield carved across my ribs absorbed blows that should have killed me.
But the soul and body aren't a canvas. They're fragile. The more drawings I carried, the more it drained me — until I was hollow, brain fogged, like I hadn't slept in days. I found the limit: two tattoos, no more, and nothing too complex. A dagger that can pierce anything, that much I can carry. But anything greater, and I consume more mental strength then I regenerate."
He stopped, an excited light seeping into his voice, as if the words themselves were burning through him.
"And then came the third path. The only path worth walking. The Path of Creation. Something permanent. Something alive."
His eyes glowed feverishly. "Because I discovered what mental strength truly is. It comes from the soul. The soul produces it, carries it, even after death."
The words left my lips before I could stop them. "So you drew one."
His smile split wide, wild. "Exactly. I drew an entity with the concept of a soul. Every day I poured mental strength into it, until it became more than ink. And when it crossed over… it stayed. A being that could think, act, evolve."
"And modifying them?" I asked, finally lifting my gaze to him.
"They don't break like us. A human soul destabilizes if changed too far, slips loose from its anchor until it drifts away, like the normies. But my creations are anchored to me. I can remake them endlessly. They only grow stronger."
The paper, the desk, the room itself dissolved into mist.
I blinked and found myself standing in a boundless expanse of gray fog. From the haze rose a dome, rebuilding itself piece by piece. Black pillars thrust upward like spears. At the far end, a throne emerged, jagged and imposing. At the center stretched a long table surrounded by twenty-two empty seats.
Perseus stood beside me, calm as a king in his rightful court.
"This," he said, eyes gleaming with mania, "is my masterpiece. Born as a sketch in my mind, now carved into existence. A place drifting between dreams and reality — and in dreams, everything is possible."
He spun in place, arms outstretched, laughter tearing through the silence — not joy, but the triumph of a child who had stolen the crown from the gods and lived to tell the tale.
The fog pulsed with his voice. "Here, my creations return. Here, they share knowledge, heal, experiment. A collective mind, all centered on me. A parliament of monsters."
He pressed his hand against the great table, his tone sharp, wild. "Do you see, Wednesday? They learn faster than humans ever could. They do not rest. They do not die. Every time one of them returns, the whole grows smarter, stronger. It is evolution at knifepoint."
Sanity is overrated. His frenzy proved it. I should have felt disgust. Instead, my pulse quickened. Madness clung to him like perfume, and I hated how intoxicating it was.
He spread his arms wide, voice echoing: "This is my kingdom. My Tarot Club. Twenty-two seats, waiting to be filled. Knights, beasts, gods."
The fog pressed in, heavy and silent.
He extended his hand toward me. "So, Darkling… want to join my club, my masterpiece?"
I stared at his hand first. Ink-stained fingers, steady despite the mania burning in his eyes. Then I looked at his face — fever-bright, unblinking, like a man daring me to refuse him. Finally, my gaze drifted to the empty seats, twenty-two shadows waiting to be filled.
"Yes," I said at last, lips curving. "But my throne will be beside yours."
The fog shuddered. Stone ripped itself out of nothingness, twisting and contorting until a second throne erupted next to his — jagged, grand, a twin to his own.
I let my gaze linger on it, then narrowed my eyes. "Smaller."
Perseus studied me in silence, then he nodded once. The throne groaned, stone grinding against stone, until it shrank.
"Which tarot do you want?" he asked, voice echoing through the fog.
I thought back to the ritual, to the words whispered across the veil by my older self: "The fool convinces herself she is chosen, yet dies forgotten."
My lips curved. "The Fool."
I walked toward the throne that had formed beside his. My steps echoed in the fog, each one deliberate, as though I were entering not a seat, but a verdict.
I let my hand brush the armrest before sitting, tracing the jagged carvings, feeling the pulse of power running through it — his power, sketched into being. Then I sat, crossing my legs with precision.
Perseus lowered himself into his own seat, eyes alight with fever and brilliance, equal parts genius and mania. In that moment, I realized something unsettling: I liked this side of him. The union of genius and madness. The fire in his gaze that made him look less like a boy and more like a lunatic, delirious and alive in a way sane men never are.
Dangerous. Unstable. Irresistible.
His voice echoed through the fog, heavy and absolute. I should have felt like prey. Instead, I smiled. Madness has never sounded so inviting. If this was insanity, then perhaps I had been sane for far too long.
"Arise, and welcome our new arrival… The Fool."
************
Author Note:
Big thanks to Luminaestro for suggesting and helping shape the logic behind why the ritual failed.
While writing this, a voice whispered to me. Write bonus chapters. Tell the tales of each entity that sits at the Tarot Club: their backstory, their curse, the madness that gave them form.
But here is the catch: you, dear reader, will write them.
Ever had a brilliant idea, a whisper of a story so sharp it feels like the gods themselves would cry hearing it, yet so brief it feels more like a curse than a blessing? This is your chance.
I do not care what you write. I do not care what horrors you spill or what monstrosities you conjure. Pour it out. Write with madness, with venom, with whatever you have in your chest. Post it here in the comments, or if it grows too long, send it to me on Discord.
(Some people have difficulties sending a friend request (Discord changed something with the new profiles), so I created a server for this instead.Here's the invite link: https://discord.gg/7UxkGhepQ6 )
If I like your creation, your nightmare, your fragment of brilliance, I will post it as a bonus chapter. A chapter written by you, sealed into this story for eternity. Hahaha
(My friends decided my nickname isn't Cesare or Uli anymore — it's Psycho. All because of this fanfiction. I wonder why...)