Main Hall
You open your eyes to the sound of creaking and find your nose stuffed with a strong musty smell. You try to clear your stuffy nose by breathing in deeply. After each strong sniffle, you feel your nostrils getting clearer and clearer until the blockage is completely gone and a strong sting erupts at the back of your nose, dazing you for a moment. As your sense of smell returns, you open your eyes to pitch black. You place your hands on the floor and feel specks of something- dirt or stones pressing against the palms of your hands like needles as you carefully push yourself up straight. With long pauses between your blinks, you find the black change to gray, and rough silhouettes appear around you.
You turn your head slowly left then right and sneak a peek behind you. Despite your eyes' best effort to adapt to the dark, it is still too hard to see anything but you get a general sense of your surroundings— a large space with large unknown objects all around you, masked by the cloak of darkness. The smell of mold and rotting wood makes you believe you are inside an old building. You plant your feet onto the ground and stand up. The clutter on the ground crunches under your weight and the floor creaks as if it were loudly announcing your wake.
You extend your arms in front of you and wave them blindly as you cautiously take steps forward. An object comes into view in the dark. In a hurry to get to it, your foot slides into a crevice in the floorboard, causing you to stumble. Tumbling towards the unknown object, you grab onto it and luckily catch yourself before you can fall. Close enough to see the object now, you make out the shape of a desk, pressed tightly against the wall, so tightly that there is a small dent slanted inwards the wall where the edge of the desk is. On the desk are several things: a worn-out notebook, a feathered pen, a pot of dried ink, and a box-shaped item. Uncertain what the item is, you wrap your hands around it and feel a handle behind it. Pulling it up, you lift it off the desk, surprised to discover that the object was rather heavy even though it was no bigger than your face.
You shake the item and hear a rattle come from the side. There is too much dust on it to identify what the thing is, much less see what is inside. You brush your finger along the exterior and feel the hardened combination of dirt and dust scratch your fingertip. You pull your finger away and look at it, expecting it to be covered in dust as well but it is not. The dirt is glued into the item like it is a part of it. You place it down and start to open the drawers under the desk. There are a lot of trinkets messily scattered around but you eventually find something- a tool sharp enough to scrap the junk off of the box-shaped object. With it, you clear up the junk bit by bit until the object returns to its original appearance. It is a lantern. There is a crack running through near the top where the iron was but it looked usable nonetheless.
Just next to the desk lies a huge barrel with a tightly sealed lid. It takes some work to pry it open. With some time and effort, you pull the lid off, taking some pieces off the sides of the barrel as well. At first, it does not look like there is anything inside of the barrel but after lowering your head slightly into the barrel, you can see a layer of liquid sitting in it. The smell was unmistakably oil. You pick up what looks to be a rusted ladle on the desk, scoop some of the oil, and pour it into the lantern. You turn the dial on the side of the lantern, surprised to find that it turned so smoothly. A light roared to life inside of the lantern. The fire blinds you and you have to turn your head away from the lantern to avoid the burning glare of the light.
As you turn your head, you see parts of the room now lit up by the lantern. Statues line the sides of either wall in many different shapes and sizes. A bear's head hangs just over the top of the staircase that leads up. Looking down, the floor is torn. Strange marks that could not have been made naturally are gashed into the tattered floorboard. A long once presumably red carpet rolled out in the middle of the room is now dirtied to the point where it is hard to discern the pattern sewn onto it. Rubble from the crumbling ceiling formed almost a perfect layer across the wood. You start to get a sense of where you are but there are still parts of the room that are hard to make out clearly. You wrap your hand around the lantern, feeling the rough handle rough the calluses of your hand.
You pick up and swing the lantern around to shine light on the rest of the room. Much of the place is worn down and there is little to see. However, you do find several areas of interest. In between a pair of vase statues is a hallway. Looking through it, the hallway is only a few meters long. At the end is a beautifully decorated door that has somehow withstood the test of time. Flowers, vines, leaves, and other nature-related elements are carved into it. There is no window, sign, or any other indicator to tell you where this door leads.
Moving away from the carved door, you approach the staircase and lift the lantern to get a better view of what is at the top. At the end of the stairs is a wall with paths that splits to the left and right. The wall stretches to the end of either side of the room, and at both ends are large openings. The light from the lantern does not reach either of the two paths so you cannot tell where each of them leads. You would have to climb the stairs to see what is up there.
You put aside the idea of going up the stairs for now and check the rest of the room. As you walk away from the stairs, you stumble on something and look down to see what it is. There is a small metal hoop jutting out from the ground for seemingly no apparent reason. You kneel to pick up the loop and as you try to lift it, you find it is attached to something. You kick away the dirt until you unearth a hatch buried beneath. You drop the lantern to the side of the hatch, grab the iron loop with both your hands, and give it a hard pull. The latch swings wide open with ease contrary to what you had expected, and you fall backward. Picking yourself back up, you wipe the dirt from your clothes again and grab the lantern to shine light down the hole. A steep staircase leads down. You walk around the hole and shine the lantern from various angles in an attempt to see more of what is down there but the only thing you can see is the gray stone floor at the bottom.
It is too dangerous to go down without knowing what is down there so you hold off on doing so for now. Furthermore, there are still a few places that you have yet to check. By the side of the staircase, there is a round door. On the door are words with letters missing, scratched away by something. There are still enough letters to make out what was once written on the door: “Servant’s Chamber.” You push down the handle to see if the door is locked- it is not. Before you can open the door, a noise comes from within. A loud thud shakes the room a little, followed by a low growl, then another thud, then complete silence.
That did not sound like any animal you know. You let go of the handle and it snaps back to its original position. Whatever that was, it can stay a mystery for now. There is still one more place to check. You turn around and walk towards the back of the room opposite the staircase leading up to the next floor. There is a large grandiose double door made of iron. Parts of it are rusted, but despite its degradation, the doors are still imposing. On the left door is a warrior wielding a sword and on the right side of the door is a demon-like creature. The two figures appear to be fighting each other. Considering how this door is opposite the stairs, it is likely the exit but there is a slight problem. The handles of the door are held together by rusted chains. A single lock as large as the lantern you are carrying keeps them from falling apart. You give it a good tug but the chains do not budge. They are still holding on strong. Some specks of brown fall off of the chain and join the dust on the floor. You look at your hand and see it is coated in a layer of it too. You wipe off the rust and reconsider your options. This door is locked so you have to look elsewhere for the time being.
You feel that you have already found everything in the room but you decide to go through it all one more time to make sure you did not miss anything. Going backwards to where you started, you walk by the servant’s chamber, hearing the low growing sound again. You take some steps back and go to the trapdoor. If there is one, then there may be more of them. You go around the room, tapping your foot against the floor to see if there are any hollow parts. There are none. Disappointed, you return to where you left off and head to the stairs. You check both sides of the staircase and what do you know, there is something there. A single square is carved into the wood on the left side of the staircase. You apply some pressure on it and the tile presses in. There is a creak and a rumble as a hidden entrance under the stairs slides open.