Run: 2026-07-09-01KX40GCXZE7FGA6WYS5W44531

Rain hammered Blackthorn Manor as Detective Mara Venn arrived, carrying a damp invitation and an instinctive distrust of wealthy hosts. Inside, eleven guests watched the grandfather clock, whose brass hands trembled strangely at precisely midnight beside the silent dining fireplace. Their host, Sir Alistair Quill, had promised revelations concerning an old disappearance and several inconvenient inheritances before serving supper tonight. Instead, the lights failed, the clock chimed once, and someone screamed behind the locked library door for no apparent reason. When candles flared, Quill lay sprawled beneath his portrait, a silver letter opener buried deeply beneath his left rib cage. Nobody had entered or left, according to the butler, although every guest suddenly remembered hearing something different during the blackout. Mara knelt beside the corpse, noticing mud on Quill's cuffs and one missing pearl from Lady Fane's necklace that evening. Then the dead man's pocket watch began ticking, though its cracked face showed an hour yet to come for everyone. Outside, thunder concealed the sound of a carriage departing, leaving fresh wheel tracks beneath the eastern windows in wet gravel. Mara looked toward them, then at the guests, and understood the murderer had planned for her arrival from the beginning.