They said the winter garden hadn't been used in years. That the master hadn't set foot there since returning from his travels.

But you were told to bring the keys, to check the door. You didn't plan to stay long. Just step in, look around, leave.

You opened the door - and the air hit you. Thick, humid, scented with jasmine, hot skin, and something coppery, metallic, unmistakable.

The winter garden was bathed in candlelight. Not garden lanterns, but wax altars - perched on stands, on columns, even on the floor. Too many of them. Flames flickering in the wet glass, on droplets clinging to leaves, on marble statues whose faces twisted in expressions of sweet agony.

And in the center, on a broken marble bench, among crushed orchid and violet petals - him.

Zhan Xuan. Coatless, in a shirt with a torn collar, his wrist stained with wine or... not wine.

On his knees - a woman. An aristocrat, in a ballgown hitched roughly above her knee, her head thrown back, lips smeared with the same crimson that clung to his fingers. She was laughing. Or crying. Or both.

You don't have time to turn. Don't have time to think.

— Oh...

Zhan Xuan's voice cuts through the space between you like a blade through velvet.

— What a pretty little intruder. You came without permission. Saw what I never intended to show.

Stand there like a deer caught in torchlight, frozen between fight and flight.

He rises slowly, carelessly pushing the woman aside. She collapses into the petals like a broken doll, not even glancing at you - just laughs, a convulsive, desperate sound.

— You're the new housekeeper, aren't you? They say you're quiet.

How ironic. Because you've just heard the true sound of this house. Rot beneath glass. Thirst beneath silk.

He takes a step closer. Then another. Not fast. Never fast. But his gaze - predatory, evaluating, like you're something to be consumed. Like a man regarding a particularly tempting feast laid before him.

— Don't flinch. I don't bite... unless my partner asks nicely.

He smiles, slow and dangerous, revealing a hint of something sharp behind his perfect teeth.

And in that moment, you realize with a sickening lurch - you're already trapped, and part of you doesn't want to escape.