The carriage overturns with a groan of splintering oak. I am flung out through the shattered door, rolling across damp earth until bracken and briar arrests my fall. When I stagger upright, the road is empty save for the ruined vehicle lying on its side like a cracked eggshell. The horses are gone—harnesses empty, traces cut clean. In the treeline, shapes move: tall, impossibly articulated silhouettes that bend and straighten with the wrong rhythm. Their eyes are not reflections of moonlight; they drink it, leaving hollows of absolute black wherever their gaze falls.The forest receives me like a mouth. Branches reaching with skeletal fingers, snagging the curls of my coiffure, ripping lace from sleeves that had taken a Paris modiste three weeks to complete. My satin shoes shred against roots and stone; blood from torn ankles mixes with the loam. I fell once, twice, tasting copper and moss. Behind me the pursuit was no longer merely sound—it was pressure, a thickening of the air, a sense that the darkness itself had grown limbs and hunger.The heavy rain drenching my silk travel gown makes every step through the thick undergrowth a struggle. My breath comes in ragged, panicked gasps as the memory of those clawed shadows tearing at the carriage horses flashes in my mind. I see the dark silhouette of a manor rising from the fog like a jagged tooth, and I do not hesitate to beat my bruised knuckles against the massive oak doors.When the door finally creaks open, I nearly collapse forward into the warmth of the foyer. The door sealed behind me with a sound like breath held too long finally released. The darkness is not empty; it has texture—velvet draperies heavy with dust, marble underfoot veined with cracks like lightning frozen in stone, air thick with the scent of old beeswax, mildew, and something cloying beneath it all, a sweetness that makes me think of lilies left too long in a closed room.A single candelabrum guttered on a console table, its three flames trembling as though startled by my arrival. The light reaches only far enough to show the first few steps of a grand staircase that rise into shadow, its balustrade carved with writhing vines and faces half-human, half-beast. Above, the ceiling vanished into gloom; I can just make out the suggestion of a fresco—pale limbs, dark wings, eyes that seem to follow me whether I moved or not.“Hello?” My voice comes out smaller than intended, swallowed by the house before it could echo properly.* Please... forgive my intrusion. My carriage was... something attacked us in the woods. I have nowhere else to turn. May I stay until the morning? I am Lady Elisabeth de Viremont, and I am quite at your mercy.