Book 4 - Carnival of Glass

Chapter One: The Laughing Moon

⸻

The TARDIS landed with a soft chime, the usual wheezing vworp-vworp exchanged for a sound like wind chimes fluttering in a spring breeze.

It stood at the edge of a hill, beneath a violet sky pricked with gold. Below, in the valley, the crystalline city of Miridell shimmered like a jewel on a spinning plate.

Tents spiralled like ribbons of flame. Ferris wheels spun with prismatic spokes. Glass walkways caught the sun and threw it skyward. And everywhere — laughter.

⸻

Inside the TARDIS, the Doctor was halfway into a patchwork coat he’d clearly just rediscovered in the wardrobe.

It was long, dramatic, and somehow looked like it belonged on the cover of a circus poster.

Ava leaned against the console, arms crossed.

“You look like a piñata at a tea party.”

“Excellent!” the Doctor grinned, tugging the final sleeve. “Then I’m dressed appropriately. This moon hasn’t hosted the Carnival in a thousand years. The Crystal Conclave only aligns when the three suns converge at the solstice apex. Quite rare. Quite beautiful. Quite… disruptive.”

Anna poked her head around the corner, brushing dust off her sleeves. “Disruptive how?”

“Oh, nothing dreadful,” the Doctor said breezily. “Reality gets frilly.”

⸻

Cal stepped out of the armory with a water bottle and a look that said “Why am I dressed for a parade?” He wore a blue vest with tiny silver bells stitched into the trim.

“No weapons?” he asked.

“No need!” the Doctor beamed. “Miridell is a neutral joy zone. Harm is psychically filtered through the moon’s refractive lattice.”

“…The what now?”

“If you try to punch someone, you end up apologising and offering them cake.”

⸻

They stepped outside.

The air was warm. The ground beneath their feet sparkled like crushed pearls.

At the base of the hill, music drifted upward — strings, whistles, and a pipe-organ calliope playing a song that made your ribs tingle.

Anna laughed before she realised it, then clapped a hand over her mouth.

“It’s fine,” the Doctor said, glancing skyward. “Just… don’t laugh too much.”

⸻

They reached the carnival gates.

A towering arch of red glass shimmered into place as they approached.

A mechanical figure bowed from the entry post — thin as a reed, with eyes like kaleidoscopes.

“Welcome to the Carnival of Glass,” it intoned. “Laughter is currency. Joy is tribute. Mirrors reveal the soul.”

Then it bowed again.

Its smile never moved.

⸻

Ava leaned in.

“I don’t like how it didn’t blink.”

“Mirrors never do,” the Doctor said quietly.

⸻

Inside, the carnival was breathtaking.

Tents of translucent silk billowed without wind.

Stilt walkers made entirely of suspended crystal limbs marched in perfect unison.

Sweets were sold in floating orbs, bursting with clouds of colour when touched.

But the mirrors… were wrong.

They didn’t reflect what was there.

They reflected what you wanted to see.

Cal’s showed a uniform he’d left behind.

Ava’s showed a small flat on Earth, clean and quiet.

Anna’s… showed nothing at all.

Just an empty field of stars.

⸻

The Doctor’s mirror shimmered violently — the image struggling, as though trying to settle on one identity out of too many.

He turned away before it could finish.

⸻

Then a scream cut through the air.

One of the acrobats dropped from mid-air — not falling, but folding, like a piece of paper being turned inside out.

The laughter around them did not stop.

No one screamed.

No one noticed.

Except the Doctor.

And the child in the corner, watching with wide, hollow eyes.

⸻

“There,” the Doctor whispered.

“Something’s feeding.”

Chapter Two: The Jester’s Smile

⸻

The child was gone.

Vanished between moments.

One second, the little boy was staring up from the base of the glass trapeze tower, eyes wide as moons, mouth slightly open. The next — nothing but wind, and a single silver balloon drifting upward.

The Doctor stared for a long moment, the tips of his fingers brushing his lips.

“That’s the second disappearance I’ve seen in as many minutes,” he murmured. “And no one’s even blinking.”

Cal moved forward, scanning the crowd. “I see families. Performers. Locals. But it’s like they didn’t notice the kid vanish. Like their memories… skipped.”

“Selective dissonance,” Ava said grimly. “The kind you get when you’re inside something more powerful than a perception filter. Like being edited from your own dreams.”

Anna didn’t say anything.

Because something was whispering.

⸻

She turned slowly.

A path of mirrors lined the lane beside the candyfloss spiral.

Each mirror slightly warped.

Each showing slightly different reflections.

The third one showed someone in the background — a person standing beside Anna’s reflection.

A man.

Dressed in motley silks and checkerboard trousers.

Face painted in long white lines, mouth frozen in a jagged grin.

As Anna turned to look behind her—

—he was already there.

⸻

“Hello, Little Ghost,” the jester said, crouching down to eye level. His voice was a soft, velvet rasp — not threatening. But not human, either.

Anna froze.

“I’m not a ghost.”

“Not anymore,” he replied. “But parts of you… still echo. Especially in the funhouse.”

His grin widened.

“Mirrors remember.”

“Even when people don’t.”

⸻

The Doctor appeared beside her, a hand on her shoulder.

“Pardon me,” he said politely. “But who are you, exactly, and why are you trying to scare my friend?”

The jester blinked.

Slowly.

Deliberately.

“I am Carnavas, Harlequin of the Hollow Carnival.”

“And this moon is no longer your friend.”

⸻

He vanished.

Not in a swirl of smoke or a burst of light.

He just wasn’t there anymore.

No displacement. No teleport signature. No trace.

Anna stared at the mirror.

Where her reflection still stood.

But she wasn’t in front of it.

⸻

Later, at the Laughter Wells.

The wells were pools of refracted energy where laughter was harvested, processed, and dispersed into the crystal lattice of the moon.

Joy as energy.

A clean, renewable source.

Theoretically.

The Doctor inspected the nearest one.

The glass beneath his fingers pulsed — but the laughter inside was wrong.

Not joyous.

Forced.

Echoing with a rhythm too precise to be real.

“These wells aren’t collecting laughter,” he said aloud.

“They’re manufacturing it.”

Ava frowned. “But why?”

“Because something’s feeding,” the Doctor said.

“And it doesn’t want reality.”

“It wants a performance.”

⸻

Meanwhile, Cal had found the first real witness.

A carnival glass-crafter named Selin, whose daughter had vanished the previous morning.

“She went into the House of Many Faces,” Selin said, trembling.

“She never came back.”

“And I— I can’t even picture her face anymore.”

He wept.

And his tears turned into glittering confetti on the wind.

⸻

Back in the TARDIS, the Doctor ran a scan of the entire moon.

Only two anomalies returned.

The first was the core — a mirror chamber sealed centuries ago by the founders of Miridell.

The second?

Anna’s heartbeat.

It pulsed at double time.

One for her.

One for a memory that shouldn’t exist.

Chapter Three: The House of Many Faces

⸻

The Carnival didn’t sleep.

It pulsed.

Even in darkness, the glass walkways shimmered. The air was warm with pipe music and unseen chimes. But something beneath the harmony was starting to fray.

The Doctor stood before the House of Many Faces — a sprawling structure of interlocked mirror walls. The building had no clear entrance, only reflections that sometimes offered a way in… and sometimes watched back.

Anna clutched a folded map from one of the vendors. “This wasn’t here yesterday,” she said.

“It wasn’t,” the Doctor replied, studying the shifting reflections. “It’s quantum-temporal. Builds itself around memory. Or imagination. Whichever’s louder.”

“So it’s alive?”

“It’s… theatrical.”

⸻

Meanwhile, Ava and Cal had taken a side path lined with paper lanterns that flickered like fireflies. The air was warmer here. More intimate.

They were searching for the laughter trail — energy signatures the TARDIS had marked as “deviant emotional harmonics.” Which was a long way of saying: laughter that doesn’t belong.

Cal stopped by a stall selling masks.

He picked up a harlequin one — gold and white, with half a smile.

“Used to love stuff like this as a kid,” he said. “Carnivals. Costumes. Pretending to be someone else.”

“And now?” Ava asked, watching him.

“Now I pretend not to be someone else,” he said, then gave a lopsided grin. “Progress, maybe.”

Ava smiled, a little longer than she needed to.

⸻

They reached the edge of the fairground.

The laughter trail ended at a stage.

An empty one.

Except for the flowers.

All the seats were filled with bouquets.

Every stem wrapped in mirrorfoil.

“An audience of ghosts,” Ava whispered.

And then a projector clicked on behind them.

⸻

In the House of Many Faces, the Doctor and Anna stepped through what appeared to be a reflection of the carnival gate — only reversed, and upside down.

Inside, the rooms rearranged themselves like thoughts.

In one, a corridor of mirrors showed versions of Anna — tall, regal, grinning in a court of stars. In another, a single mirror showed the Doctor as an old man with a cracked pocket watch and no face.

“This place feeds on identity,” the Doctor muttered. “The more uncertain you are… the more it grows.”

“Why am I here, then?” Anna asked.

“Because you’re the only one who can find the real exit.”

“How?”

He touched the edge of one mirror. His own hand didn’t reflect.

“Because you’re the only one whose reflection doesn’t know what to become.”

⸻

Back at the projector, Ava and Cal watched in stunned silence.

The film flickered onto a white sheet.

It was footage of the carnival — but from above.

Thousands of people laughing. Dancing. Disappearing.

One by one.

The screen panned up.

To reveal a single, massive eye in the sky.

Watching.

Always watching.

The film melted mid-reel.

But the laughter didn’t stop.

Because it wasn’t from the film.

It was behind them.

Chapter Four: Curtain Rises

⸻

The empty stage.

Ava and Cal turned.

Slowly.

Behind them stood six figures in faded costumes — clowns, dancers, masked ringmasters — their eyes glinting like old crystal, smiles stretched into just a little too much.

They did not speak.

They bowed.

And in perfect unison, raised hands with fingers like polished porcelain.

A voice echoed from the speakers above:

“You have been chosen.”

“For the performance.”

“Your audience awaits.”

The stage lights flared.

And then they were gone.

⸻

The House of Many Faces.

Anna wandered alone now.

The Doctor had disappeared — or perhaps she had.

She moved through a hall of tall, thin mirrors that made her legs stretch for metres, her face curl at odd angles.

Each mirror whispered her name.

Not just “Anna.”

But other versions:

“Ananke.”

“Spectra.”

“The Girl Who Didn’t Turn Away.”

And one… just said “Host.”

She paused.

“What does that mean?”

But the mirror only smiled.

⸻

In another corridor, the Doctor stepped through a curtain of shimmering thread into what looked like a simple study. A fireplace flickered. A chessboard sat mid-game. Bookshelves climbed the walls in an impossible spiral.

And in the armchair —

— a version of himself.

Older.

No beard.

Eyes that burned with a colder fire.

“Oh no,” the Doctor muttered. “Not him.”

The other Doctor looked up.

And grinned without humour.

“Did you really think the Carnival didn’t have stand-ins?”

⸻

Back on the stage, Cal blinked.

He and Ava were seated now — opposite each other, spotlights shining down.

A painted audience surrounded them. Static. Glimmering.

Waiting.

A placard hovered above: “Tell your Truth. Make them Laugh.”

A bell chimed.

Ava stood slowly. Her voice trembled slightly.

“I was supposed to be married.”

The audience leaned in.

“He was kind. Brilliant. And then one day, he… he changed. Not in a big way. Just little things.”

“I kept laughing. Pretending. Because it was easier.”

She looked down.

Then looked up again, eyes hard now.

“But laughing didn’t stop the lies. It just covered them in velvet.”

Silence.

Then, applause.

Mechanical. Relentless.

⸻

Cal’s turn.

He stood, hands clenched.

“I ran from everything. War. Family. Choices.”

“I pretended I was helping people so I wouldn’t have to stay anywhere long enough to be needed.”

He hesitated.

Then looked at Ava.

“But I stayed. For Berlin. For you.”

“That was real.”

More silence.

This time, the applause felt… warmer.

Almost real.

⸻

The lights dimmed.

A door opened at the back of the stage.

A way out?

A way deeper in?

They didn’t hesitate.

They took it together.

⸻

In the study, the older Doctor circled the younger one.

“You perform now,” he sneered. “You let them in. That girl — Anna — she’s already connected to the Audience.”

“You’ve let it feed.”

“You’ve let it watch.”

The Doctor didn’t reply.

He simply stepped forward, placed a hand on the chessboard…

…and turned it upside down.

The entire study dissolved into a kaleidoscope of mirrors.

And he fell through.

⸻

Anna stood before a single, circular mirror.

In it: a throne.

On it: the Jester — Carnavas — now wearing a crown of broken laughter.

“The Carnival never ends,” he whispered.

“And the Audience is hungry.”

“But if you host it… if you channel it… no one else has to be forgotten.”

She shook her head.

“I’m not a conduit.”

“I’m a person.”

The mirror cracked.

And for the first time, Carnavas looked afraid.

Chapter Five: Refraction

⸻

The doors to the House of Many Faces burst open with a thunderclap of wind and glitter.

The Doctor stumbled through, his coat torn at one sleeve, hair tousled, expression thunderous.

Behind him, the hall twisted, convulsed, and then sealed itself shut as if it had never been there at all.

Waiting for him in the centre square were Ava, Cal, and Anna — all pale, all silent.

The Doctor looked at them each in turn.

Then gently, seriously:

“Did any of you agree to anything?”

Anna blinked. “To what?”

“Anything. A question. A riddle. A dance. A contract. A joke.”

“The Carnival doesn’t ask with words. It offers. It invites. And if you play… you belong.”

“Even if you don’t know it yet.”

⸻

They returned to the TARDIS in a rush of unease.

But as soon as the Doctor unlocked the doors, he stopped dead.

The central console room had changed.

Slightly.

Subtly.

Mirrored surfaces shimmered faintly across the walls. Not installed — grown. Polished nodes of reflection, like bubbles formed in the coral structure of the ship itself.

Anna stepped forward first.

“No,” she whispered. “No, this is… inside me.”

⸻

The Doctor activated a field scan.

The results made no sense.

The Carnival had followed them.

Or more accurately — had stuck to them.

Trace psychic particles.

Quantum hooks.

Ava and Cal bore faint traces of memory alteration, but Anna…

“You’re refracting,” the Doctor said softly.

“What does that mean?” Anna asked.

He hesitated.

Then knelt before her.

“It means… you’re starting to split.”

“Whatever Carnavas did — whatever you did in that mirror chamber — it’s stretching you between two selves.”

“One who remembers being Ananke…”

“And one who was never supposed to exist at all.”

⸻

Later, in the TARDIS kitchen — a space designed to resemble a London flat with an unreasonable number of kettles — Cal handed Ava a cup of steaming herbal tea.

She accepted it with a faint smile.

“That stage… what we said… was that…”

“Real?” Cal asked.

She nodded.

He took a breath.

“Yes. All of it.”

“And if we get out of this alive, maybe we talk about what’s next.”

Ava didn’t speak right away.

But she didn’t look away either.

⸻

Meanwhile, the Doctor stood alone in the corridor outside Anna’s room.

His reflection didn’t match him.

The man in the mirror had no eyes.

Just spinning glass where his soul should be.

And he was smiling.

Chapter Six: The Curtain Inside

⸻

The TARDIS.

She hummed, but off-key.

Lights flickered in odd patterns. Doors no longer opened into rooms they were supposed to. Sometimes, the same corridor turned left… twice in a row.

“It’s inside her now,” the Doctor said, pacing furiously around the console.

“The Carnival’s psyche. The infection isn’t just following us — it’s inhabiting us. And her.”

“She’s not infected,” Ava replied, arms folded.

“She’s… entertained.”

The Doctor flinched.

“Yes. That’s worse.”

⸻

Anna’s room.

She sat cross-legged on the floor, surrounded by dozens of floating reflections.

Each one showed her in different lights, different ages.

In one, she was in a school uniform, smiling with a friend she didn’t remember.

In another, she was wearing ceremonial robes on a world of spiral suns.

And in one — the one closest to her — she wasn’t smiling at all.

She was staring directly back, head tilted, eyes calm.

“You can’t keep both,” the other Anna said softly.

“One of us has to go.”

⸻

Cal.

He opened a door expecting the console room.

He got a battlefield.

The smell hit him first — fire, metal, ash.

Bodies were scattered in the dust, faceless and glassy-eyed.

He stepped through instinctively… and heard his name.

“Lieutenant Calderon!” a voice barked.

He turned.

A man stood in uniform, burnt and cracked but unmistakably familiar.

“You left us,” the soldier hissed. “We held the line. You ran.”

“You made a life telling people you were a hero.”

“But I died in that trench, and you shined boots on starships.”

“Say it.”

Cal’s fists shook.

His voice broke.

“I ran.”

The soldier vanished.

And the door reopened.

This time, it led where it should.

⸻

Ava.

She walked into a forest.

No trees — just glass sculptures of trees.

Each one hummed softly with a different voice.

They all said her name.

Over and over.

Until she covered her ears.

A single figure stood in the clearing: her old fiancée.

“I never hurt you,” he said gently.

“Not with fists. Not with words.”

“But you left me like I had.”

She stepped back.

“Because you never saw me.”

“Only the version you liked.”

She blinked.

The forest shattered around her.

She was in the corridor again.

⸻

The Doctor.

The mirror in the TARDIS library refused to show anything.

He stood in front of it.

Waited.

And finally, it cracked.

The figure within was tall, still.

Eyes hidden behind dark lenses.

Wearing a coat of spun obsidian.

The Doctor knew him instantly.

“The Valeyard,” he whispered.

“You shouldn’t be here.”

“Neither should the Carnival,” the shadow replied.

“But you brought it.”

“Every time you left someone behind.”

“Every time you lied to save a planet and ruined a life.”

The Doctor reached forward.

Touched the glass.

“I remember every one.”

“That’s why I win.”

The reflection smiled.

“We’ll see.”

And vanished.

⸻

The Console Room. Later.

They all gathered again.

Bruised. Shaken. Changed.

Anna sat a little straighter.

Ava and Cal didn’t stand so far apart.

And the Doctor…

He stared at the time rotor.

“We have to go back,” he said finally.

“Back to the Carnival.”

“Back to the Core.”

“Because this isn’t about joy. Or illusion.”

“It’s about something deeper.”

“Something hungry.”

He looked at them each in turn.

“And it knows all our names now.”

Chapter Seven: The Deal

⸻

Return to Miridell.

The TARDIS landed with less ceremony this time.

No musical chime.

No sparkle.

Just a soft thud, like a coffin being shut.

Outside, the Carnival of Glass had changed.

No longer a dazzling celebration — now it stood still. Silent. Tent cloths sagged, colours bled pale. Crystal stilts cracked and leaned like dying trees.

No one laughed.

No one danced.

And every mirror — every single one — showed only one thing:

Anna.

⸻

Ava stepped out first.

She held her sonic close — a long, dark bronze model the Doctor had made for her months ago when they escaped a collapsing time pocket in 13th-century Kyoto.

It had twin buttons and an extendable scanning rod. Cal called it the “stingray,” for the way it flared when activated.

She scanned the empty streets.

No life signs.

No heat.

But massive chronotemporal drag — as if time had been arrested mid-step.

“They’re waiting,” the Doctor said quietly.

“The Carnival knows we came back. And now it wants payment.”

⸻

A figure waited in the central plaza.

Tall.

Thin.

Wearing a theatre mask of bleached bone.

He bowed as they approached.

“You’ve crossed the fourth curtain,” he said. “You cannot leave freely again.”

“A performance has been watched.”

“A debt must be paid.”

“One must stay. One must perform.”

Cal frowned. “Perform what?”

The figure didn’t blink.

“The self. Again. And again. Until the Audience is full.”

“If no one chooses… then all of you belong.”

⸻

Silence.

The Doctor stepped forward.

“No deal. This was never a contract. We were misled. Manipulated.”

“Worse than that, you turned joy into currency.”

“You fed on souls in exchange for applause.”

The figure tilted its head.

“And you—Doctor—have fed on admiration, legend, and myth.”

“You’ve performed for centuries.”

“Your story is delicious.”

⸻

Anna trembled.

Because somewhere, just beyond her thoughts, a low murmuring had begun.

Not words.

Applause.

Soft, rhythmic, endless.

“Doctor,” she whispered. “I hear them.”

“The Audience.”

⸻

Later, in the TARDIS, the team argued.

Ava wanted to scan for weak points in the Carnival’s structure.

Cal wanted to sneak into the mirrored core and shatter the system from within.

The Doctor… was uncharacteristically quiet.

Anna stood by the doors, staring at her reflection in the hexagonal window.

It didn’t move when she did.

It smiled first.

⸻

That night, the Carnival lit up again.

Tents re-erected themselves.

The music resumed — but wrong, off-key, dragged.

The Doctor set the TARDIS to lockdown and paced the console room, adjusting levers and murmuring calculations.

Ava watched him from the upper deck.

Cal joined her, arms folded, quiet for once.

“He’s scared,” Cal said.

“He’s always scared,” Ava replied. “He just doesn’t always show it.”

They stood in silence a moment longer.

Then Ava took his hand.

Cal didn’t let go.

⸻

Anna didn’t sleep.

She sat at the end of her bed, mirror in her lap.

And from within the glass, Carnavas whispered:

“You were always the star.”

“You just forgot the stage.”

Chapter Eight: The Audience Must Be Fed

⸻

The TARDIS doors were wide open.

No breach alarm. No sonic trip. No warning.

Just air drifting in from the Carnival — stale, sweet, too warm.

Anna was gone.

Her bed neatly made.

Her sonic badge left on the side table like a discarded ticket.

The Doctor stared at the doors for a long time, silent.

Ava moved to speak.

He raised one finger without looking.

“No. No speeches. Not yet.”

Cal checked the interior logs. “She walked out. Alone. Two hours ago.”

“No pressure breach?”

“None.”

“Then she wanted to be taken.”

“No,” Ava said, softly. “She wanted to protect us.”

⸻

Inside the TARDIS, things were dying.

Whole corridors — gone.

Rooms sealed with laughter-loop echoes. The library flickered with translucent pages. The wardrobe room now showed only costumes from Carnival acts, never anything the Doctor had actually owned.

Even the console was dimmer.

The coral roots on the ceiling had gone dull, calcified.

The Doctor closed his eyes and leaned his forehead against the monitor.

“You’re fighting it, old girl. I know.”

“But we’ve got to go deeper.”

⸻

He led them out again, not in a rush but with dreadful intent.

No detours. No investigation.

Straight through the Carnival to the mirror gate.

At the centre of Miridell.

A door that wasn’t there before.

A gate of black glass taller than a cathedral, rippling with impossible faces — the collected reflections of everyone the Carnival had ever devoured.

Ava paused.

“Are we coming back from this?”

The Doctor didn’t answer.

Instead, he lifted a small device from his coat: a thin sliver of compressed light, a refractor key.

“Anna gave me this,” he said. “Or a version of her did. She said it would open the curtain.”

“She said… the Audience has never been seen.”

“And that’s why it’s still hungry.”

⸻

They stepped through the mirror gate.

⸻

Inside the Core.

Glass stretched in every direction — a fractal cathedral, curving upward and downward at once.

But it wasn’t empty.

Dozens of versions of people flickered in and out of existence — duplicates of Ava, Cal, even the Doctor — each acting out moments. Laughing. Crying. Performing.

And above it all: a great stage.

No walls.

No props.

Just one chair at its centre, facing the void.

The Doctor turned slowly.

And saw them.

Not a creature.

Not even a being.

But a presence.

A suspended ripple of light and time, shaped like an audience — a million overlapping faces, eyeless and grinning, hands raised in infinite applause.

They didn’t speak.

But he heard it.

“We watched the birth of fire.”

“We watched the fall of stars.”

“We watched you, Doctor.”

“You gave us endless episodes.”

“But now you’ve grown boring.”

“We want a new star.”

⸻

The Doctor stepped forward, defiant.

“She’s a child.”

“She’s human.”

“You don’t get to feed on her.”

The Audience tilted.

Just slightly.

“We do not feed.”

“We witness.”

“We elevate.”

“And when you are not enough… we find one who is.”

And suddenly, there she was.

Anna.

Dressed in silver-white robes of Carnival silk, a mirrored mask in one hand, her expression blank.

But her eyes…

Still hers.

Still frightened.

Still fighting.

⸻

Ava started forward — but Cal stopped her.

“She’s not in control,” he said.

“If we break the ritual too soon, we lose her.”

“If we wait too long—”

“We lose everything,” the Doctor finished.

He turned.

Faced the stage.

Faced the Audience.

“Then let’s give them a performance they’ll never forget.”

Chapter Nine: The Infinite Act

⸻

The Doctor stood beneath the glittering throne, looking up at Anna.

She hovered now — not literally, but emotionally — suspended between presence and performance. The mask dangled from her fingertips, a sliver away from her face.

The Audience pulsed in hunger, or anticipation. It was hard to tell which. A thousand hands clapped slowly in overlapping rhythms, like thunder caught in echo.

He bowed.

A single, low bend of the waist.

“Ladies and gentlemen. Entities and ephemera. Consciousnesses across concept and continuum…”

“Tonight, I present for your… dwindling attention…”

“A story.”

The clapping stopped.

The Audience leaned closer.

⸻

The Plan had been simple in theory.

Run a recursive, endlessly looping story structure — like trapping a parasite in its own digestive tract.

Only the most experienced time minds could execute it.

And only one person was foolish enough to try.

⸻

“Once upon a time,” the Doctor began, pacing in a wide circle, “there was a traveller who told a story.”

“The story began with him telling a story.”

“That story was also about a man telling a story.”

“And inside that story…”

“He told a story about a traveller who told a story…”

⸻

The mirrors cracked.

The Audience rippled.

Some of the hands fell limp.

Others began to twitch.

One face blinked out entirely.

Another rewound into itself.

⸻

Meanwhile, Ava and Cal slipped behind the mirrored curtain lining the core’s perimeter, looking for Anna’s tether — the heart-thread that bound her performance to the stage.

Time was erratic inside the fold.

Cal’s wrist display spun endlessly.

Ava’s sonic only worked when she wasn’t looking at it.

But together they moved silently, closer, closer—

And found it.

A single filament of light reaching from Anna’s spine to the centre of the mirror throne.

It pulsed with the rhythm of applause.

⸻

Back on the stage, the Doctor spun in wide theatrical arcs.

“And in that final story… the story changed.”

“It became a farce. A parody.”

“It lost coherence. It became boring.”

“Predictable.”

“Dull.”

He whispered the last word like a curse.

And waited.

⸻

The Audience began to groan.

A low tremor.

Faces folded.

Voices splintered into static.

A chorus of displeasure — ancient and annoyed.

The light in the Carnival Core dimmed.

“Stop,” Anna whispered.

The Doctor turned.

She looked down at him — eyes full of sudden fear.

“They’re not leaving, Doctor.”

“They’re getting ready to replace you.”

“With me.”

⸻

Ava struck the tether with her sonic.

The pulse shattered like glass wind.

Anna fell forward—

And the Doctor caught her mid-collapse.

The mirrors cracked.

The Audience screamed.

Not from rage.

From withdrawal.

The theatre structure began to shake, ripple, disintegrate like burned film.

⸻

“RUN!” the Doctor shouted.

The four of them bolted across the fractal floor.

The Doctor tossed a black disc — a “boring bomb,” he called it — over his shoulder. It exploded in a puff of paperwork, tax returns, and elevator music.

The Audience fled.

⸻

Moments later, they stumbled into the TARDIS, breathless, bleeding light.

Doors slammed shut.

The central column surged to life.

The Carnival—

Gone.

⸻

They didn’t speak right away.

Cal sat on the steps, breathing hard.

Ava collapsed against the railing, eyes damp.

Anna stood in the console’s reflection… watching her face slowly stop flickering.

The Doctor set coordinates silently.

His face unreadable.

But when the TARDIS finally landed—

He turned to them.

“One chapter left.”

“Then it’s curtain call.”

Chapter Ten: Curtain Call

⸻

The coordinates were unmarked.

No planet. No date. No history.

Just a patch of void between stars, where the timelines hummed in nervous silence.

The TARDIS materialised with a whisper instead of a roar.

Outside was… nothing.

But it wasn’t empty.

“Residual psychic heat,” the Doctor murmured, scanning with his screwdriver. “The Carnival left a footprint.”

“Is it coming back?” Ava asked.

“Not exactly,” he said. “It left a… final act. A kind of backup. One last question to resolve.”

“What question?” Anna asked.

The Doctor looked at her.

Soft. Sad. Honest.

“You.”

⸻

The platform hung in the void like an abandoned stage.

Six floating mirrors circled it — cracked, but still pulsing faintly.

At the centre: a glowing version of Anna.

Not a copy. Not a clone.

A consequence.

This version wore the Carnival’s crown. Her eyes were filled with mirrored galaxies. Her voice, when she spoke, echoed like the applause they’d heard for days.

“You left me,” she said.

Anna stepped forward, breathing slowly.

“You weren’t me.”

“I was the version of you who said yes. Who let them in. Who stayed. Who belonged.”

“And what happens now?” Anna asked.

The mirrored self tilted her head.

“You decide.”

“We can merge. I can vanish. Or I can… take over.”

“There’s still an audience somewhere. Waiting.”

⸻

The Doctor placed a gentle hand on Anna’s shoulder.

“This isn’t a test. There’s no correct answer. Only… who you want to be.”

She stepped forward alone.

She looked her other self in the eyes.

And whispered:

“You’re not me.”

“You’re a part of me.”

“But I get to choose who I am.”

She reached out.

Touched the mirror-self’s hand.

And gently pulled it inward — into herself.

The crown fell.

Shattered.

The mirrors dissolved.

And the platform cracked apart.

⸻

They tumbled into the TARDIS — which caught them like an old friend.

Anna collapsed in the console room, blinking tears, her face her own again.

“It’s over,” Ava said, kneeling beside her.

“Yeah,” Cal added. “I think the Carnival’s really done.”

Anna looked up at them.

“They still whisper,” she said softly. “But I think they’re leaving.”

⸻

Later, the Doctor stood at the console alone.

He held a mask in his hands — the one Carnavas had worn.

It had appeared in his coat pocket after they left the void.

He turned it over once.

Twice.

And then set it down on the console.

“No more curtain calls,” he said.

“No more performances.”

He looked up, saw Ava and Cal talking near the stairs — close now, quieter, no need for drama.

He saw Anna in the reading room, sketching in a journal.

He smiled.

⸻

Then the TARDIS chimed.

A new signal.

Strange, distant, funny.

The Doctor looked at it.

Then looked toward the others.

“Anyone fancy a trip to a planet that thinks it’s a hat?”

Anna blinked. “What?”

“Or maybe it’s a hat that thinks it’s a planet. Honestly, I’m not sure. But it’s insisting we help.”

Cal laughed. “I’m in.”

Ava smiled. “Let’s go.”

The Doctor pulled the lever.

The engines groaned. The lights brightened.

And with one final whoosh—

They were gone.

Onward.