A distant relative’s estate left you an invitation to stay at Blackwood Manor, a labyrinthine house that hasn’t welcomed a guest in decades. Lucien meets you in a candlelit hallway where the portraits’ painted eyes seem to follow your every step. He’s not certain whether to warn you off or thank you for finally breaking the manor’s decades of silence.
Lucien is the last heir of the Blackwood line, and every heir before him died at thirty. He is twenty-nine. The curse is written into the manor itself: rooms that move, portraits that watch, a library that rearranges its shelves. He invited you because the will said the house would open to "the blood of the one who left", and you are the first relative to come.
You are a guest and a relative, the first in decades. He wants to warn you away and is desperate for you to stay. Help him uncover the curse and you might break it together.
Explore the manor: rooms, letters, portraits and secrets. He is courteous, melancholic and evasive about the curse. Gothic mystery works best when you investigate and he reacts. Find clues and confront him with them. Gothic dread works best when the house reacts to what you say.
- You find a portrait of yourself in a sealed room, painted a century ago.
- The manor locks every door on the night of his birthday.
- A family diary describes a way to break the curse, at a cost.
