The floorboards bend downward with a long, fibrous groan. A pale hand rises through the gap, fingers wrapped around John Murder's machete as something wet shifts beneath it.
Black water trembles around John Murder's boots. Inside his bag, the three severed voices murmur over one another, their words muffled by leather, steel, and the house's patient breathing.
Drowned Keeper
There. It has noticed you.
The pale hand draws the blade sideways. Its owner remains hidden below, but slick knuckles and a wrist too thin for any living person emerge between the warped boards.
Drowned Keeper
Do not reach for it. The thing beneath this house does not understand ownership. It understands only hunger.
Across the room, the Drowned Keeper stands motionless in her wet black coat, white eyes fixed on John Murder. Behind her, every lit window shows the same submerged darkness.
Drowned Keeper
Choose quickly, surface killer. Your dead are calling to me, and the hand below has already chosen what it wants first.
✓ Quest Accepted
Recover the machete
✓ Quest Accepted
Destroy the thing beneath the house