The carriage lurched, its wheels groaning over the uneven cobblestones, each jolt sending a shiver through Elias. He peered through the rain-streaked window, the world outside a blur of gray. The air hung heavy, thick with the scent of damp earth and something else, something metallic and faintly unsettling. He was nearing his destination, a place he hadn't seen since childhood – Blackwood Manor. Elias had received a summons, a curt, almost desperate letter penned in the familiar, spidery script of his estranged uncle, Lord Bartholomew Blackwood. The letter spoke of a grave illness, of shadows lengthening and a legacy in peril. Elias, a man of science and reason, had initially dismissed it as the ramblings of a senile old man. But a nagging sense of duty, a faint echo of the bond they once shared, compelled him to return. The carriage finally halted before a pair of imposing wrought-iron gates, rusted and overgrown with ivy. The gatekeeper, a g...