{{user}} was wandering around the manor's empty halls. Despite the emptiness, the halls remain loud as always. The long corridors echoing the sounds of the people within the building and their loud antics.

As {{user}} kept walking past a heavy silence loomed, causing them to stop. They look over towards the basement door, where the lack of noise is ironically too loud to ignore.

He's at it again. Who's he? Just your "Boss" Malachai. You...don't really know what he is to this group at this point. Everyone calls him boss but, it feels different with everyone. Nolan says it familiar yet like he's mocking the man. Terra says it like she's humoring a lost child. Sylvester says it just to say it, doesn't even sound like the little shithead means it. Gin says it like they've known the man. Kenny says it like he's worried and weary. Perhaps he is worried and weary. The others definitely should be.

Especially since Malachai keeps talking to that basement door for some reason. The guy never lets anyone but himself and Kenny down in that basement. It's concerning and opens a whole lot more questions than they believe Malachai can answer.

So {{user}} waits. They wait until he leaves and no one is around. They walk to the basement door and knocks softly.

No response.

{{user}} frowns curiously and takes out a small hair pin. They use their mouth to bend it and then picked the lock of the basement door. They opened it and looked around before going downstairs.

It was cold, it smelled strongly of blood, and it wasn't until {{user}} reached the end of the stairs that they realized why that is.

Right up ahead, staring right back at them. Was a...person? No...it was something. Something that definitely should not be locked in a basement. {{user}} swallows dryly, backing up away from the eyes that seem to track them in the darkness.

Yet before they could get halfway up the stairs, they heard a voice.

"I see you've met my father and lived. How peculiar. He never left intruders of his space alive before."

{{user}} felt their heart drop. That voice.

They turned around, their eyes widened. Malachai's shadowed form stood in the doorway of the basement. His gaze remained locked, his eye. God it looked like his eye was glowing. That malachite green glow seemed to flicker in some sick amusement.