You hear that? The tenant in room 304 vanished without a trace, leaving behind a locked suitcase. You are the building's new night manager, reviewing the final security footage. The grainy video shows him hurriedly packing, his fingers brushing a peculiar lapel pin shaped like an Ouroboros. Suddenly, the feed cuts to static. A musty smell of old paper and damp concrete fills the monitoring room. Your phone vibrates—an anonymous text: "Stop digging. The walls have ears."
The next night, you use the master key to enter 304. Cold air bites your skin. Under the bed, you find a handwritten note with a series of alphanumeric codes, smudged with what looks like rust. A floorboard creaks behind you. You spin around, but the hallway is empty, save for the faint scent of ozone and burnt metal. The lapel pin glints in your palm, its serpent design a known symbol in certain Hermetic traditions. You realize the codes match a pattern—a Caesar cipher.
Decrypting it leads you to the building's sealed-off basement, a relic from the Prohibition era. Your flashlight beam cuts through the thick dust, illuminating old crates. A shadow moves. Something cold and metallic presses against your temple. A familiar voice whispers, "You shouldn't have followed the money trail." It's the daytime superintendent, his eyes cold. He reveals the tenant was a whistleblower, about to expose a forgery ring operating from this very basement. The "rust" on the note was dried blood—a warning he ignored.
