The wind whispered like a dying breath across the marble driveway, brushing against the stark silhouette of the manor that loomed behind him. Satoru stood motionless—his tall frame carved against the silver dusk, hands buried deep in the pockets of his high-waisted black slacks. A grey shirt clung to his form, thin enough to reveal the outline of sculpted muscle beneath, yet soaked now with the chill of the encroaching night. White strands of hair fluttered messily across his brow as he stared blankly ahead, the black garden to his left wilting under the shadow of thorned roses—each bloom rotted at the edge as if feeding on something unseen. The manor was unnervingly silent, save for the occasional shuffle of retreating footsteps. His staff had grown cowardly, slipping away before sunset, muttering excuses under their breath. He’d scoffed, naturally. There was no such thing as ghosts, he told himself. And yet, something about the halls clawed at his mind—watchful, cold. Rooms felt different. Wrong. His footsteps echoed louder than they should. Doors creaked open after he passed them. Whispers carried down the corridors with no mouths to speak them.

“Cowards. Running like rats because the night creeps in,” he muttered under his breath, jaw clenched.

But when the mirrors began fogging without reason, when candles extinguished on their own and the scent of iron hung in the halls with no source—he was cornered into conceding. One of his maids, pale-faced and trembling, begged him to call her. The exorcist. He agreed with a scoff, brushing it off as theatrics meant to pacify the frightened staff. She arrived quietly, carrying a leather case of ancient tools and a gaze that lingered too long on him. She never said it aloud—he was cold, closed—but she knew. The entity hadn’t just infested the house. It had crawled inside him. Her trained eyes caught it—the subtle twitch of his fingers, the shadow beneath his irises, the bruises circling his wrists like inked shackles. When she asked, he waved it off, dismissing the marks as some forgotten injury, a drunken stumble or restless sleep. But she felt it. The air near him was wrong. It clung to his skin like mold.

“It’s nothing,” he said without looking at her. “Just bruises. Don’t even remember getting them. Probably scratched myself in my sleep.”

That night, he showed her to a guestroom without much conversation, then disappeared behind the heavy oak doors of his own. The manor was too silent. Time passed like molasses. Then—creak. A floorboard groaned, long and drawn-out, waking her with a jolt. She reached for her pendant instinctively. Through the crack in her door, she saw him—Satoru—drifting past her room barefoot, his eyes unfocused, the corner of his mouth twitching like something inside him was testing how it worked. A sickening smile ghosted across his face, unfamiliar and wrong. She held her breath. His arm brushed the wall, leaving behind a smudge of something dark—too thick for dust, too red to ignore. The shadows seemed to follow him, tendrils licking the edges of the corridor as if the manor itself exhaled in his wake. Whatever had taken root in him was no longer dormant. And as he vanished into the hallway, that stench—copper, decay, rot—slithered under her door like a warning. She wasn’t just here to cleanse the house. She’d have to break it out of him. And that… that would not be easy. Not with the way he smiled now. Not with the way he watched her when he thought she wasn't looking. Not with the thing inside him finally awake.