Run: 2026-02-24-01KJ8V5EJZ2R929PQWMKAKPF1W

Rain fell hard on Ashwood Manor as Detective Clara Hess slowly stepped out of her black car and looked up. The old house rose five stories high against a bruised and angry sky that seemed ready to swallow it whole. Someone had called her from inside those walls barely six hours ago, and then the phone line had gone dead. The caller had whispered that a man lay dead inside the manor before the signal became nothing but cold static. Clara pulled her dark coat tight against the cold rain and walked with careful deliberate steps toward the iron gate. The iron gate swung open on its own the very moment she arrived, and she felt her stomach drop cold. There, laid out on the front steps, was a body face down with one pale hand reaching toward the door. She knelt beside him in the cold rain and felt the heavy, unmistakable weight of något deeply wrong settle in. The man had clearly been dead for several hours, she guessed, and she would wait for the coroner to confirm. Around his neck, a thin red cord had been pulled tight, tied in a knot no careless hand could make. Clara stood, looked up at the manor's dark and silent face, and knew she had just begun a dangerous hunt.