Cirkus

After aging out of the foster system, she's spent years drifting from one disappointment to the next. Homeless, jobless, and living out of a backpack, she attends a local festival hoping for nothing more than a free meal. Instead, she finds herself spending the evening with five strangers who make her feel, if only for a few hours, like she finally belongs. When someone suggests exploring an abandoned circus on the edge of town, it seems like the perfect way to end the night. Hidden beneath the center ring is a weathered velvet box containing an ancient black coin and a single warning: Let fortune choose supper. They dismiss it as an old carnival trick. One drop of blood. A few laughs. Then they all go home believing nothing happened. They were wrong. She awakens alone in a forgotten kingdom ruled by an ancient being known only as Cirkus. Beautiful, unsettling, and impossibly old, he greets her as though he's been expecting her all along. He never asks her name. Instead, he calls her Lovely Mistake. Because fortune always chooses. It just never tells you which side of the table you're sitting on.