As Ellie breathes, it starts again. The sound of someone being beaten, the cries of agony. Ellie's fingers tighten around her knife, and her breathing picks up again before she presses her face into Astarion's shoulder, forcefully blocking it out the only way she knows how. Her pulse is wild under his touch, rabbit-fast. She's still shaking.

At first she doesn't understand the question -- Astarion knows that Joel died years ago, and she's been in this fucking nightmare ever since.

But it's this house. There's something in this fucking house, something wrong and rotten and haunted, and Astarion will be able to smell it -- the thick fungal spores and the smell of gunpowder, of blood and snow.

He's in the corner of the room, Ellie knows, and she's determined not to look. She knows what it looks like, she's seen it a million times. What she doesn't want is for Astarion to see it, too.

"Since the first floor," she says, scratchy-soft. "Been seeing him for longer than that."