Chapter 32 · Before the Curtain Falls

The audience turned as one.

A thousand porcelain faces stared down from the balconies, each wearing the Curator’s broken mask. Behind the cracks, something moved—corridors folding into corridors, hospital rooms opening onto empty highways, stairwells descending through black water. Every face smiled with the same patient hunger.

Maeve’s knife hung in her hand. The last strip of her death dialogue fluttered from the blade, glowing red at the edges before it dissolved into ash.

For one heartbeat, the theater was silent.

Then the orchestra pit inhaled.

Strings screamed awake beneath the stage. A drumbeat rolled through the floorboards, deep enough to vibrate in Maeve’s teeth. Above them, the dead chandelier flared with blue fire, throwing the theater into violent, strobing light.

A title appeared across the proscenium in letters made of blood.

THE SECOND PERFORMANCE.

Orla made a strangled sound from the audience rail. Silver thread ran from her wrists into the seats around her, tightening whenever she tried to stand. Her fingers clawed at the metal, and the skin beneath her nails split.

“Maeve,” she called. Her voice broke through the orchestra’s rising shriek. “Don’t let it assign the memory.”

Maeve turned toward her.