Mabel’s disappearance after staring into her husband’s empty coffin left the manor trembling with unanswered questions. The butcher’s body—gone without trace—haunts the corridors like an unburied secret. Bonkers, with his deranged laughter, boasts of slaying Mantis the Butcher, yet no corpse can be found. Was it a lie to mask something far worse? Or has the butcher risen in a form no grave could contain?

Victoria’s arrival is no coincidence. Drawn by the sudden void of Mabel’s powers, she claims them as her inheritance, her sharp eyes glinting with greed. But Precious, steadfast and loyal, clutches both her own gifts and the fragments of Mabel’s, vowing to protect Creekside Manor from Victoria’s treachery. Their inevitable clash is written in the shadows.

The men of Creekside Manor shudder at Victoria’s return, for she has a history of bending hearts and stealing affections. Whose will she ensnare now—Bonkers, the clown-king of chaos, Ballard the bitter orphan, or some darker stranger yet to emerge?

Meanwhile, the manor itself breathes with unease. The cellar reeks of barbecue smoke, acrid and unnatural, while shifting shadows take the shape of a woman whose presence is neither fully alive nor fully dead.

Ballard, the orphan clown, reels at the revelation that his father is none other than Bonkers himself. Rage stirs in his painted heart—rage for abandonment, rage for lost childhood. But who is Ballard’s mother? Was she a carnival ghost, a forgotten mistress of Bonkers, or perhaps a victim buried beneath Creekside’s soil? The answer, if it surfaces, may drive him to vengeance.

And the knocking at the door heralds more doom: Banana Split, the yellow clown, enters with grotesque cheer, dragging a zombie companion in tow. Precious, ever vigilant, smiles at the clown but cages the undead without hesitation. Yet even caged, the zombie snarls with secrets in its rotting throat, as though it recognizes someone within the manor.