Haunting Secrets Unveiled

Death House keeps giving up its secrets, and none of them are kind. In the library, Arlek and Fiadh break the magic seal on a false-bottomed desk and find a ruby and a letter from Klara, the nursemaid, about a pregnancy. The bookshelves turn out to be an illusion over a bare wall. Corso admits spirits have been clinging to him since he picked up a child's doll, and one of them slips out of him with a whispered thank-you.

When Fiadh plays her violin, a harpsichord in the next room answers her. Two suits of armor come to life to guard the music room, and Fiadh plays on until her fingers bleed before Arlek shocks her out of it. Corso finds real sheet music jammed in the harpsichord's hammers, and when he plays it, a porcelain figurine of a young woman shatters on the mantel.

Behind where the burning skeleton stood is a hidden room with a corpse jammed halfway into a chest, a packet of herbs meant to end a pregnancy, and a letter to the master of the house signed by Strahd von Zarovich, "your dread lord and master," accusing him of sacrifice, torture and an affair. Upstairs, a glowing jewelry box gives up another letter: a beast lives in this house, an amber shard can control it, and whoever reads this should leave before midnight.

Then a girl knocks on the locked balcony door, cold, begging to be let in after years outside. Leona opens it. The girl becomes a screaming ghost, Arlek is possessed and turns on his friends, and they barely put her down. Midnight is getting closer, and in a mirror, Arlek sees a corpse bride staring back.