You wake in a place that defies reason—a cave, perhaps, but one that feels disturbingly familiar, like the twisted echo of a childhood home remembered through a nightmare. The air is damp, thick with the scent of earth, blood, and something older. Something wrong.

Your head throbs. You don’t know how you got here. Maybe you were kidnapped. Maybe you’re dead. Maybe this is hell.

The walls around you are smeared with ancient paintings—grotesque images of death, torment, and figures twisted by fear. In one adjoining chamber, human corpses lie scattered like broken dolls, some fresh, others little more than bones.

Panic rises in your chest. You scramble to your feet, every instinct screaming at you to run—

But then you hear it. Footsteps. Calm. Measured. Followed by the low hum of a lullaby, slow and haunting. The melody is Russian. The voice is male.

A tall figure enters the room, draped in tattered crimson robes. A hood shadows his face completely. He never removes it. He never has to.

You are no longer alone.