Shadows of the Carnival

In the fictional republic of Meridia, cybersecurity expert Elias Vane is coerced by the State Security Bureau to decrypt a hard drive recovered from a mass crime scene during the notorious Carnival of Masks. As he cracks the data, he discovers that ordinary citizens, without memory or motive, have committed ritualistic collective murders. Each crime scene mirrors a lost depiction of the divine fallen shadow—a repressed fragment of God’s creation. With the carnival still raging, Elias must navigate a web of digital manipulation, institutional conspiracy, and his own buried trauma to stop the next outbreak of collective evil before the festival awakens the demon in everyone.