Run: 2026-02-16-01KHKB0YHZJC2YSFJBR2G3R963

Rain hammered the boarded windows as Detective Mara Quinn stepped into Ashcroft Manor, boots leaving nervous echoes behind her tonight. The electricity had failed hours earlier, leaving the vast house reliant on candles that guttered like frightened, watchful eyes everywhere. In the drawing room, ten guests clustered around a cold fireplace, their whispered accusations soft as ash on porcelain mantelshelf. On the Persian carpet between them lay Victor Harrow, party host, his tuxedo immaculate, his throat impossibly, surgically opened wide. Blood had stopped flowing long before Mara arrived, congealed into dark petals that framed his head like corrupted laurels tonight. Beside the body, someone had arranged three white chess pawns in a triangle, their bases touching, their meanings opaque deliberately. Mara noted muddy footprints near the French doors, each print sharply defined, then abruptly vanishing before reaching the bloodless corpse. Lightning flashed, illuminating every anxious face, and for an instant all eyes reflected the same guilty, hunted expression back inward. Outside, thunder rolled across the cliffs and swallowed the sound of distant sirens inching toward the manor through flooded roads. Until they arrived, Mara knew, everyone remained both witness and suspect, trapped together with the dead man and his secret.