Every October, when the tides turn restless and the wind hums like a dirge, the Veiled Carnival arrives in Harbor’s End.
Its tents are stitched from storm clouds, its calliope sings in thunderclaps, and its carousel spins on a wind that smells of salt and sorrow.
Finn had never trusted it.
Not since the night he drowned.
He had been 12 when the sea swallowed him whole. They said it was a miracle he survived. But ever since, his skin had glowed—soft and golden, like lantern light beneath his freckles.
This year, as he wandered through the carnival’s shifting pathways, the glow beneath his skin flickered. Uneasy. The air crackled with something colder than the autumn wind.
Then he saw them.
The carousel horses.
Their glassy eyes. Their carved wooden faces.
His neighbors’ faces.
Panic tightened around his ribs. He backed away, breath shallow, only to collide with someone behind him.
Seraphina.
A contortionist with flame-red hair and shadowless eyes. She moved like smoke, her body bending in impossible ways.
“The carnival feeds on stolen souls,” she whispered, her voice like a candle’s dying breath.
Finn’s throat tightened. “Then it has my father.”
She nodded. “And it will take you next.”
The truth unraveled in pieces.
To free the town, Finn had to extinguish his glow—to fuel a ritual that could break the carnival’s hold. But Seraphina hesitated, her fingers twisting in the fabric of her costume.
“There’s something you don’t know,” she murmured. “You glow because Dad traded his soul to save you.”
Finn’s pulse pounded.
Tears welled in Seraphina’s eyes, dissolving into smoke before they could fall.
“I would’ve glowed, too,” she said, voice raw. “But he traded me first.”
His stomach dropped. “What?”
“I’m your sister, Finn.”
The revelation cut through him like a cold wave. She had been here, trapped in the carnival’s grasp, while he had lived under the illusion of being saved.
The truth tasted bitter.
But there was no time to mourn.
Under the hollow moon, the carnival’s heart began to pulse—a mirrored Ferris wheel spinning impossibly fast, its reflection warping and twisting with every stolen soul inside.
The final showdown had begun.
Finn turned to Seraphina. “We do this together.”
She smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes.
When Finn poured every last drop of his glow into the ritual, the Ferris wheel shattered, glass and starlight bursting like a thousand untold stories. Souls spilled out in a cascade of light, returning to the town—returning home.
But the carnival always took its due.
As the smoke cleared, Finn turned—searching, hoping—
Seraphina was fading.
The carnival had claimed her in return.
Her form flickered, unraveling at the edges. Still, she smiled, voice barely a whisper.
“Tell Mom I kept you bright.”
Then she was gone.
When dawn broke, Harbor’s End looked unchanged. The town stood. The sea was calm. The wind carried no echoes of the carnival.
Only one thing was different.
Finn no longer glowed.
But when he looked up, past the quiet waves and the thinning mist—
A new star burned bright above the sea.