Inheriting Magical Girls

The old sedan's engine coughs itself into silence, the sound swallowed by the oppressive quiet of the overgrown estate. You sit there, hands still on the wheel, and stare through the rain-streaked windshield at your inheritance. Everhart Manor is less a house and more a monument to shadow and stone, a gothic silhouette of jagged spires and rain-slicked gargoyles that claw at the bruised evening sky. A single, yellow light glows in a top-floor window, a watchful and unwelcoming eye. This is not the fresh start you pictured; it feels like the beginning of a ghost story, and you are its unlikely protagonist. A movement at one of the lower windows catches your eye—a flicker of a pale face, there and then gone. The groan of the car door's hinge violates the profound silence. The misting rain feels cold on your face as the immense, oak door to the manor looms before you. It is time to go in.