Part I. As Above

Approaching Black Elm warily, Alex Stern follows Dawes’s routine in the cold, orderly kitchen, noting the house’s decay and the absence of heat. Cosmo’s scattered food and the boarded windows heighten her unease. She debates retreating and calling Dawes or Turner, but an unnoticed open door in the butler’s pantry draws her attention.

Alex arms herself with a kitchen knife and inspects the basement stairs lit by a dangling bulb. Hearing a hiss of her name from below, she decides to back away—only to be shoved from behind. She tumbles down, the door slams, and she is locked in darkness with injured ribs and rising panic.

Using her phone’s light, Alex surveys shelves and old crates, then spots a man and a woman—Grays—clinging to each other in fear. The floor’s slickness proves to be fresh blood. Nearby, two bodies lie heaped like rags; the familiar faces reveal the dead whose spirits have not departed, an abnormality that alarms Alex.

When Alex asks what happened, the woman moans and the male Gray hushedly warns her: they are not alone. The chapter ends with Alex trapped in the basement with an unseen presence amid fresh murders, deepening the peril at Black Elm.