Raiden looks her straight in the eye. “Didn’t have to. I didn’t want to miss a single second of it. I’ve been searching for something like this. People like this.”

“You mean freaks,” I giggle, twirling a dried intestine around my finger. “You’re sayin’ we’re your kinda circus freaks.”

He grins wider. “Exactly.”

Bjorn tilts his head, slow and reverent. “After what we all saw tonight, I think the gods would say you’re one of us.”

Raiden nods once. “I’d have to agree, and I’m hoping, you’ll let me join in. I want to be a part of this” —he gestures to our group— “I want to watch people succumb to their dark twisted desires, and revel in their pain and pleasure while they do it.”

Oh, be still my depraved little heart.

Lux looks to Indie. Then to us. Then steps forward.

He holds Indie’s whip in one hand, the leather still warm from her fingers. In the other, his mask. That glorious, sweat-soaked, legend-drenched mask. Draped over his arm is the black leather jacket—the symbol. The brand.

“Normally, that’s an offer I wouldn’t be able to refuse, but our time in this world, has come to an end,” he says softly. “Not because we’re finished. But because something else is beginning for us.”

“But someone needs to keep what we have created going,” Indie finishes, voice steady. “To make sure this place keeps being what it’s meant to be. A mirror. A monster. A stage.”

Lux turns to Raiden.

“I think you might just be that person. If you’re up for it, that is?”

Raiden glances down at the blood, then back up, his smirk lazy, but his eyes locked and certain. “I wouldn’t have stepped forward if I wasn’t.”

Lux smiles. Then holds out the whip. “Then it’s yours.”

Raiden takes it.

The mask next. He brushes his thumb over the edge like he’s memorizing it.

And the jacket—he slides it on.

Fits like sin.

Then, without a word, Raiden lowers himself to his knees in the blood of the dead. Right in the heart of the ruin.

He doesn’t gloat. Doesn’t grandstand.

He grins.

Slow. Sharp. Like a man kneeling before his kingdom. Like this—this—is what he was made for.

“Cirque Du Désir belongs to you now,” Lux says, voice clear, final. “Make it your own.”

We all watch for one breath. Two.

Then we turn.

Me. Bjorn. Lux. Indie. Johnny. Alaska padding along on silent paws.

No tears. No goodbyes.

Just the sound of blood under our boots as we walk away together.

And behind us, Raiden kneels.

Grinning.

Soaked in sin.

Drenched in destiny.

Like he was always meant to take our place.

But this ain’t the end—not even close.

The world we built? The filth, the freedom, the glorious parade of pain and pleasure?