Chapter 465

The air in the grand theatre tasted of old velvet and anticipation. A single spotlight illuminated the center of the stage, where Alistair, the Magnificent, stood, a silhouette against the dark backdrop. He wore a simple black suit that seemed to absorb the light around him, making his tall frame appear even more imposing.

The crowd, a collection of the city's elite, held their collective breath, their corrupt hearts pounding with something they mistook for excitement.

Alistair smiled, a thin, cruel curve of his lips that did not reach his eyes. "Welcome," his voice, smooth as polished obsidian, resonated through the theatre. It was a voice that could lull you to sleep or summon nightmares. Tonight, it was both.

The opening act was standard fare: doves appearing from thin air, handkerchiefs turning to flames, cards that danced between his fingers. Each illusion, however, carried a subtle wrongness, a dissonance that prickled at the edges of awareness.

A wealthy banker, known for his predatory practices, coughed nervously, his expensive suit suddenly feeling too tight. Beside him, a politician who had sold his city's future for personal gain shifted in his seat, a growing unease tightening his jaw.

Alistair moved through his tricks, a predator among its prey, observing each fidget and panicked swallow with a detached amusement. The act progressed.

Alistair introduced the grand finale. A large, ornate wooden box was brought onto the stage by his stagehands. They looked like they hadn't slept in weeks with bags under their eyes, the colour drained from their skin.

They seemed to exist just to serve this man who towered over them with contempt, the way the banker saw the lower class.

"Now," Alistair announced, his voice deepening, becoming something ancient and powerful. "For my most marvelous feat, I will need a volunteer."

His eyes, like chips of ice, scanned the audience, settling on the corrupt politician, who suddenly found himself propelled onto the stage by unseen hands.

Panic flashed across the man's face. "I… I don't understand." He stuttered, but Alistair simply smiled that chilling smile and pulled the politician into the wooden box.

The heavy lid closed with a dull thud. The music swelled. The lights shifted and swirled around the stage. Alistair started the usual stage show banter, all to distract the growing dread filling the theatre.

For a brief moment, it seemed he might pull off another impossible trick, yet what happened was far from anything imaginable. A sickly green light started emanating from cracks in the box's wood.

The air grew cold, as the scent of decay and burnt metal slowly spread. A terrified scream pierced through the sound of the music, only to be quickly extinguished by a horrible, gurgling sound.

A single, dark red liquid started pooling out under the door of the wooden box. A collective gasp went through the audience.

Alistair simply smiled, letting it stain his hands as he lifted the door. Inside the wooden box, lay the remnants of the politician, broken and desecrated in a way not humanly possible.

It was as if all of the evil he carried with him had been taken and left out, empty and mangled like an animal's remains. He let the morbid scene linger for a long moment, watching their horrified faces.

"A slight adjustment," Alistair said, his tone flat, like a butcher showing off his latest cuts. "Sometimes things need to be refined. Purified, if you will."

Terror erupted in the theatre. People clamoured towards the exits, their greed and corruption temporarily overridden by sheer survival instinct.

But Alistair raised a hand, and invisible barriers rose in front of them. The ornate doors were like glass that only reflected the audience, screaming for their lives.

They were his captive audience, whether they enjoyed his stage show or not. "Do you think you can escape what you have wrought?" he asked, his voice reverberating in the room. "I'm afraid not."

"This show only has an encore performance. In this play you all are the cast, and your demise is my script." He pointed towards a woman who held shares of many corrupt land grabs in foreign countries.

A low growl resonated through the space. It wasn't a sound heard by an ear, but one felt within their very soul. The lights dimmed again, a red, hungry haze washing over everything.

The sounds of their deaths were far more brutal this time. A crackling, as though their bones were all being reduced to dust.

Their flesh became unidentifiable goo, as if their physical form was a burden they no longer needed. A strange guttural chanting filled the space, drowning out the pleas for mercy that Alistair so enjoyed.

His grin widened. He bathed in the fear they felt and his power grew stronger. He savored it.

A young woman, who worked at the theatre and had become captivated by Alistair's presence months before, stood at the back of the theater behind a velvet curtain. Her name was Clara.

She watched all of this happen, her eyes wide with a mix of horror and understanding. She had seen something in Alistair, something profound, something almost divine.

She'd excused his coldness as him simply being an introverted performer who kept to himself. Clara could see now what he truly was. It was horrifying, it was terrible, it was powerful, and all of it belonged to Alistair, the Maginificent.

Her devotion had become a trap she built with her own naïveté. Clara had always been an outlier, a dreamer in a world of pragmatists.

There had been a disconnect. She couldn't relate to others the way she longed to, no one shared the passion she held for stories, magic, and theatre.

When Alistair came to the theatre she was immediately fascinated. Here was someone whose passion rivaled her own.

They both sought greatness. They both dreamed in the theatre. But Alistair's dreams were built on something ancient, something powerful and unearthly. Now it was clear that they were different and that her passion would never reach him.

She slowly tried to retreat from her spot behind the velvet curtains, but her foot got tangled and she stumbled, producing a loud thud. All of her movement seized.

Everything stilled, the air turned heavy, and she felt all the attention of this god fix on her. "Clara," Alistair's voice, though low and intimate, sent a jolt of terror through her.

It sounded like she imagined a god to be when he looked at a creature not meant to know the secrets of the divine. His eyes glowed a faint green in the dimmed space, locking onto her, cutting through her veil of the dark.

"Come. I have been wanting to show you this." She shook her head, desperately scrambling for the exits that only moments ago had been blocked.

It was like a nightmare. She ran towards the heavy oak doors, hands slipping as she frantically attempted to get through. They remained an unyielding wall of glass.

Clara's chest tightened, a feeling of pressure started creeping down on her shoulders and settling in her throat. Alistair would be right there with her soon.

Clara turned, Alistair had been walking towards her, never breaking his calm, almost casual stride. He came closer, slowly, savoring the look of terror that bloomed on her young features. He stopped in front of her, and, with a strangely tender hand, lifted her chin. He studied her.

"You understand me, don't you, Clara?" He spoke, and his breath, a cold gust, sent shivers down her spine. She was a plaything, that's all she could see, in a world that could crush her like an insect.

She shook her head again. "No… No, please, you can't. You're not who I thought." A tear fell, burning a trail down her cheek.

She felt stupid, naive for having ever given this monster the time of day, for seeing him as something he never was. "What have you done?" She cried out, finally accepting she wouldn't be leaving this space alive.

Alistair's smile returned, predatory and knowing. He didn't answer her, instead, he guided her towards the stage. He set her on one of the many now abandoned velvet chairs and smiled once again.

The low growling and chanting had resumed once more, and it felt as if every wall was slowly inching closer to Clara.

"Don't be sad, child, be joyous," Alistair spoke again, his voice changing once more. This was his true voice, something more terrible than before. A low grating sound that made her ears ache with its weight.

"I will show you the true grand finale, as a special thanks to the only one here who saw any magic in my presence."

With a gesture, Alistair unveiled the last trick: a mirror. Not an ordinary one, but one that swirled with iridescent colours, something deeper than human comprehension could hope to grasp. A dark liquid swirled inside of it, with little light points flickering at its edges, almost like galaxies trapped in glass.

As Clara watched, her reflection began to distort. The happy, optimistic young girl with kind eyes slowly grew monstrous, her own form shifting and growing grotesque features.

She saw claws coming through her fingers, teeth elongating, and eyes turning black as coal. She looked away, shaking her head again. This wasn't real, none of this could be real.

She was dreaming. She felt the pressure return to her, almost as if something inside of her was begging to get out. "What have you done to me?" She croaked.

Her throat burned, her hands ached and felt bigger, and she saw the bones of her wrist twist and turn before her very eyes.

Alistair chuckled, the sound sending shivers through the young girl who looked at him, in terror. "I have opened you to your potential, just as I had done with them," he gestured to the horrific scene surrounding them.

"This form has always existed inside you, little dreamer, just as much as the darkness existed within them. Your destiny has come at last, you and I will rewrite the world into something… better."

The reflection within the mirror shifted into that of a being. It seemed to pulse, something ancient, something born of pain, longing, and desire.

Something just as alone as she felt and now just as powerful. It took shape and climbed out, through the mirror, as if pulling itself through dimensions. And it was her.

The darkness took all of her parts and reshaped them, changed them. "Now," Alistair finished, placing a cold, sharp hand on her newly created shoulder.

"Our performance is only just beginning." A sharp pang shot through Clara's brain. It wasn't hers.

She was gone now. It felt like someone had replaced the soft shell around her heart with something much colder and filled it to the brim with pure power and endless, terrible rage. They began chanting, Clara's body followed the movements, with an understanding it should never have.

It stepped through the mirror as her body fully transitioned into something not human, but something far worse. Alistair had succeeded in doing to her what she dreamed of her entire life.

He helped her become something amazing and otherworldly, but it wasn't good, it wasn't something joyous. All she had become now was a pawn for a God's terrible play. The mirror rippled and then showed the now-empty theatre, reflecting the empty chairs back at it like they are still being used by a non-existent audience.

The theatre lights turned out and with a single crash everything came crashing down around them. All of it was in shambles, a perfect canvas for this monster to play with once more.

The mirror broke down and showed Alistair alone, with the theatre fully intact and with a slight smile upon his face, before the light flickered off entirely.