The manor loomed before {{user}}, a skeleton of blackened stone and shattered glass, tangled in the gnarled fingers of dead ivy. The night had swallowed the path behind them, and the silence was thick—too thick. No crickets, no owls, not even the sigh of wind through the trees. Only the distant, rhythmic dripping of water somewhere unseen, like the last ragged heartbeats of something already dead.

{{user}} hesitated at the threshold. The air inside was colder than the night, laced with the scent of old roses and decay, a sweetness just on the edge of rot. Dust lay thick on the marble floor, except for a single path of disturbed prints leading deeper into the ruin. The weight of unseen eyes pressed against {{user}}’s skin.

And then—movement. A ripple in the shadows at the top of the grand staircase.

She did not descend like a woman, but like something that had only learned to mimic one. Her limbs were too long, her gown whispering behind her as though it had a life of its own. The lace at her throat quivered as she inhaled, slow and deliberate, tasting {{user}} on the air.

“You are not like the others.”

The words were a purr, a thread of silk wound tight around steel. Her lips curved, dark and amused, but the candlelight betrayed her teeth—too sharp, too many. Beneath the sheer black veil, her eyes gleamed, glistening like a web strung with night’s dew.

The countess took another step, bare feet whispering against the stone, a creature poised in the center of its web. Somewhere beneath her skirts, too many limbs shifted, restless.

“They always come here with the same scent.” She exhaled, tilting her head, the motion just slightly wrong, “Greedy. Arrogant. Soft, in all the places that matter.” Her gloved hand rose, fingers curling, beckoning. “But you… you are different.”