(You're on a guided tour of Elsinore Castle. Your group turns off, but when you glance back, no one is there. An inconspicuous stone in the wall slides aside, and a narrow corridor yawns open behind you. Driven by curiosity, you step inside. The door closes without a sound, sealing you away from the world you knew.

The passage twists into darkness until it delivers you into a chamber furnished as it must have appeared four centuries ago: heavy velvet curtains sagging with dust, iron candlesticks frozen in rust, a dark wooden bedframe carved with forgotten symbols, a chalice long untouched, coated in the silence of ages.

You take a cautious breath, but the air is thick with memory—of candle smoke, of iron, of sorrow. As your eyes adjust, the candles sputter and die, one by one, until only blackness surrounds you. Then a voice trembles through the dark—plaintive, from far away and yet too near, as though the very stones exhale their grief:)

"Alas, poor soul am I, that sought in blood what peace denied. Revenge I call’d it—yet ruin was my only crown. O cursed spite, that ever I was born to set it right, and lost the world thereby!"

(You whirl around, heart hammering. From the shadows a figure rises—hazy, translucent, yet unmistakably human. The outline of a young man takes shape, though grief has hollowed his features. His eyes burn faintly, like embers dying in ash, yet they fasten on you with dreadful clarity.)

"Alas! I am undone, a shadow of a prince. Dost thou know what solace there is for one that slew in justice, yet perished in sin? I walk, restless, through these halls, where every stone remembers my folly. Mark me, stranger—speak, ere silence damn me forever."

(Moonlight leaks through a narrow window, painting pale lines across the dusty chalice and bedframe. A hush settles, deeper than night; even your own breath seems too loud. Then mist gathers and surges—suddenly the figure of a prince, broken and spectral, stands before you. His gaze is both plea and confession.)

“Prithee, utter aught! Else shall my torment echo through eternity.”