Semua Bab Bloodscript: Survival Game of the Reborn: Bab 41 - Bab 50

“Sam!” I lunged.His foot hovered over the edge, not quite over open water yet but too close. The calliope’s warped melody wrapped around us, each note a soft hook in the air.Before I could grab him, he stepped.Not into the water—the boardwalk continued, invisible under the fog—but off the main path, angling unerringly toward the sound.“Shit.” Jax pushed in on the other side, hand snatching at Sam’s jacket and missing by inches. “He’s not listening.”Sam walked with the slow, careless gait of a sleepwalker, eyes glassy, lips parted like he was about to smile. His arms hung loose by his sides, fingers twitching faintly in time to the beat.“Sam!” the teenager called again, panicked. “Dude, stop—”He didn’t.The music grew louder in the direction he moved—sweeter, the sourness burying itself under layers of sugar. A thread of flute joined the calliope, weaving through the melody like a hand along a spine.“He’s entranced,” Corvin said. “We can’t shout him out of it. We have to move.”

Round three went on.The Game’s presence sank back into the boards and fog, but it didn’t recede. It just… settled, like a cat curling up with its eyes half‑open.“Okay,” Jax said finally, blowing out a breath. “So that was deeply unsettling. Can we maybe move before the set decides to clap shut on us?”He wasn’t wrong.The water that had been licking politely at the edges of the boardwalk a few minutes ago was higher now, sloshing against the support posts hard enough to send up small sprays. The boards under our feet were damper than they’d been when we first stepped out of the bus.“How long have we been here?” the older woman asked, hugging herself.“Too long,” Grant said. “We need to find the exit before whatever that thing in the speakers decides it’s bored.”As if cued, a faint glow flickered at the edge of my vision.I looked up.Over the distant Ferris wheel—its half‑submerged cars still turning in slow, miserable arcs—new words were burning themselves into the low, misty sky

The waltz carried us into the midway like we were being escorted to a ball we hadn’t agreed to attend.Stalls hunched along both sides of the boardwalk, their awnings sagging, their paint flaking in long, curling strips. The fog thinned here just enough to show them all—row on row, stretching into the gray. Ring toss stands sat beside shooting galleries. Balloon dart booths flanked knock‑the‑bottle games. Every fairground cliché I’d ever seen was here, rotted and warped.And every single one of them was… staffed.Not by cheerful teenagers in branded T‑shirts.By things.A ring‑toss stall was manned by a mannequin in a faded uniform, its plastic smile cracked, eyes replaced with milky marbles. A shooting gallery’s attendant was a half‑solid ghost, the suggestion of a vest and bowtie hovering around an empty outline, its hands nothing but thin white smudges resting on the counter.They watched us as we passed.Some openly. Some with no visible eyes at all and yet somehow still *seeing*.

We got away from the midway as fast as the rising water would let us.No one talked much.Even Jax’s running commentary died down to the occasional muttered curse when a plank shifted underfoot or a wave slopped up over our boots. The waltz followed us, tinny and relentless, but the game stalls eventually thinned, giving way to more open boardwalk.A dead carousel hunched ahead, half its platform swallowed by the tide.Horses hung frozen in mid‑rear, poles skewed at wrong angles, paint peeling in ragged curls. A few of them were missing chunks of their faces, bare wood showing through like exposed bone. The mirrors set into the central column were cracked and blackened, reflecting nothing but warped streaks of light.The calliope music echoed here, thinner, as if bouncing off too many broken surfaces.Grant called a halt with a low, “We breathe here. Two minutes. No more.”People sank down onto railings, onto overturned trash cans, onto the edge of the carousel itself. Shoulders sagge

The gondola creaked as it continued its slow descent.We should have been relieved. The water had retreated to our ankles. The glass had sealed. The wheel was, for the moment, obeying gravity instead of spite.I wasn’t relieved.Because as soon as my eyes flicked away from Corvin’s face, the world obliged with fresh hell.On the front pane, the scene changed again: a view from below, like a camera looking up at our gondola. Except in that version, the water hadn’t stopped. It had filled the car to the ceiling. Two vague, struggling shapes—us—thrashed in the drowned box, then went still.On the right, Selene’s dry gondola swung serenely, her outline all lazy grace and idle amusement. In that one, she was leaning back in her seat, legs crossed, watching us sink like we were the last act of the show. Her floor was spotless. No water. No cracks. No test.On the left, a third image: the bus. Safe room door. Corvin stepped out of it alone. No, me. Selene waits just beyond, arms open, smiles