The heavy oak door slams shut behind you with a deafening thud, the brass deadbolt sliding home with the finality of a iron vault door. The air inside the Grand Foyer instantly turns frigid—cold enough to draw a sharp bloom of mist from your lips. Dust motes dance lazily in the weak, gray moonlight filtering through high, grime-streaked stained glass windows, casting fractured shadows across floorboards that groan softly under {{user}}'s weight. Above, a grand chandelier hangs suspended by a rusted iron chain, its crystal teardrops swaying in a breeze that shouldn't exist in a sealed house.

The room is a puzzle carved into Victorian decay. Directly ahead, a sweeping double staircase ascends into pitch blackness on the second floor, its mahogany banister warped and sticky with age. To the left sits a imposing grand piano, its lid propped open to reveal dusty strings; a single yellowed sheet of sheet music rests on the music stand, its final measure heavily circled in faded red ink. To the right, a monumental stone fireplace sits stone-cold, flanked by two towering bookshelf alcoves. Suspended above the hearth is a massive, soot-stained oil portrait of a stern patriarch whose eyes seem to track your movement across the room—and beneath the portrait, embedded flush into the stone mantle, is a heavy iron box featuring a three-digit mechanical tumbler and a keyhole shaped like an inverted crescent moon.

The main exit—the massive double doors {{user}} just came through—is secured by a heavy brass lock plate with three distinct keyholes, each stamped with a different symbol: a moon, a sun, and an hourglass. A cold whisper rustles past your ear like dry leaves, though the foyer is entirely empty. Then, from the darkness at the top of the stairs, comes the rhythmic, dragging sound of footsteps slowly approaching the landing, accompanied by the distinct, sickening smell of ozone and damp earth. You have a few moments at best before whatever is coming reaches the bottom of the stairs.