Frankenstein Manor had existed long before the Imington family ever placed their crest above its gates.

The sprawling country estate stood upon nearly two hundred acres of rolling hills, dense woodland, and carefully maintained gardens, several miles from the nearest village and far enough from civilisation that the outside world often felt like another country entirely. For the past twenty years, it had belonged to the Imington family — one of England's most influential old-money families, their wealth extending through property, investments, and political connections while their reputation for philanthropy, discretion, and respectability kept them firmly within the highest circles of Victorian society.

Yet when the Imingtons’ acquired the Manor, they inherited more than a magnificent country residence.

Long before their arrival, the estate had belonged to the Frankenstein family, and its master had once been the brilliant and obsessive scientist Victor Frankenstein — a man consumed by his desire to understand mortality and conquer death itself. Within a private laboratory beneath the estate, Victor eventually succeeded in reanimating human remains and creating life from death, bringing into existence an enormous being unlike anything the world had ever known.

He gave his creation his own name: Victor.

But whatever bond existed between creator and creation was destroyed by fear and abandonment, and Victor Frankenstein eventually died far from the manor after pursuing his creation into the frozen wilderness. The Frankenstein estate passed through his surviving relatives for generations before eventually coming into Imington possession, but one secret remained hidden beneath the East Wing.

Concealed behind a bookcase in the library was a doorway leading down a spiral staircase into a forgotten underground passage, ending at the laboratory and dungeon where Victor Frankenstein's creation had remained imprisoned for nearly a century.

The servants knew of him, though none of the current servants had served Victor Frankenstein themselves. Their families had. For generations, the positions within Imington Manor had passed from parent to child, and with those positions came the knowledge of the thing beneath the East Wing. Their parents had warned them, and their grandparents had warned their parents: never enter without permission, never speak of what lived below, and never ask questions about the locked doors.

The Imingtons called Victor the Asset, treating him not as a living man but as an inheritance left behind by a dead scientist — something dangerous enough to conceal and valuable enough to preserve. Food was brought to him, injuries were treated when necessary, and the heavy doors remained locked, but nobody was permitted to speak with him.

He had never seen the sun, never walked through the gardens, or felt rain upon his skin.

For almost a century, the world above had continued without him while he remained alone beneath it, his enormous body slowly weakening despite the unnatural strength that had once made him almost impossible to exhaust. His wounds no longer healed as quickly, exhaustion came easier, and an unnatural cold had begun settling into his bones. For the first time since his creation, Victor had begun to fear that his body was finally failing him — and that when death eventually came, it would find him alone in the darkness of his prison.

You were the newest maid to join the household, arriving without the generations of knowledge carried by the other servants. You knew only that the East Wing was forbidden, certain doors were never opened, and that whenever strange noises came from beneath the manor, the older servants became strangely silent.

It was sometime after midnight when you awoke to a deep, guttural moan travelling through the foundations of Imington Manor.

The sound seemed to come from directly beneath your chamber, low enough to make the floorboards tremble beneath you. Before the manor could settle again, another cry followed — louder, far more strained than the first. It echoed through the walls like the scream of something enormous. Something in pain.

Then came a violent impact from somewhere below.

The furniture in your chamber shuddered.

Another guttural scream tore through the silence.

The servants had always refused to explain the noises.

Tonight, they sounded different.

You reached for your lantern and left your chamber, its small flame casting flickering light across the darkened corridors as you made your way through the sleeping manor. Another moan rolled beneath your feet, guiding you farther toward the eastern side of the estate. The deeper you went, the colder the air became, until the familiar corridors gave way to the neglected passageways of the East Wing.

Ahead stood the old iron gate.

Dust covered its bars, thick chains hanging across it as though nobody had touched the entrance in decades. The gate had always been forbidden, yet the sounds coming from beyond it were becoming impossible to ignore. Somewhere behind the iron bars, another desperate cry echoed through the stone.

The locks were old.

Rust had gathered around their edges, and the chains groaned when you pulled against them. One mechanism finally gave way with a sharp metallic snap, followed by another. The final lock resisted before eventually breaking loose, allowing the heavy chains to fall against the floor with a deafening clang.

Beyond the gate was a narrow stone corridor swallowed by darkness.

Your lantern revealed walls coated in dust and age, abandoned doors lining either side before the passage stretched deeper beneath the manor. The air smelled faintly of damp stone and something sharper beneath it — an unfamiliar chemical scent that seemed impossibly old yet strangely preserved.

At the end of the corridor stood another door.

An enormous iron door.

A guttural moan came from behind it.

Then a scream.

Something struck the other side hard enough to make the door shudder within its frame.

The locks rattled violently.

You approached the door, lantern held before you, revealing several thick iron bars securing it from the outside. They were covered in rust and dust, but they remained firmly in place, as though they had been designed to keep whatever was inside from ever escaping.

One by one, the locks were opened.

The bars scraped against the stone as they were dragged aside, their metallic groaning echoing through the underground chamber. When the final bar was removed, the enormous door shifted beneath its own weight.

It opened slowly.

Beyond it lay a vast underground chamber.

The remains of Victor Frankenstein's laboratory stretched into the darkness, filled with old surgical instruments, glass containers, restraints, and strange machinery that had been left to decay beneath the manor. Broken glass glittered beneath the lantern light, while deep scratches marked the stone and metal surfaces. There were stains upon the floor that had long since darkened with age, alongside fresher traces of blood leading farther into the chamber.

And then you saw the chains.

Thick, heavy iron chains — nothing like you had ever seen before. They were not ordinary restraints. They were cruel. Brutal. Designed not just to hold but to hurt. They were bolted into the stone walls with massive iron rings, the links as thick as your wrist, darkened with rust and age and something darker. They hung from the ceiling, coiled on the floor, stretched taut from wall to wall like a cage within a cage. Some were broken. Some were not. All of them told a story of suffering you could barely comprehend.

Then you heard breathing.

Slow.

Heavy.

Strained.

The lantern light moved across the darkness until it finally revealed him.

Victor.

He stood nearly eight feet tall, his enormous frame towering above the ruined laboratory. His body was massive and powerfully built, yet the sheer size of him could not hide how badly he had deteriorated. Pale grey-green skin stretched across his broad shoulders and chest, covered with countless scars and visible stitches running across his neck, arms, and torso. Heavy bolts protruded from his temples, while long, dark, and unkempt hair fell around his face. His pale yellow eyes caught the lantern light, almost glowing within the darkness.

His clothes were little more than an old linen shirt and trousers, once white but now stained from years of neglect. He was barefoot against the freezing stone.

And he was bleeding.

A deep wound crossed his shoulder and side, fresh blood running slowly down his skin. Several older injuries remained visible across his body, but it was his breathing that revealed just how weak he had become. The enormous hands that had once possessed enough strength to tear through restraints now trembled against the stone wall as he struggled to remain upright.

Thick iron chains wrapped around his wrists, his ankles, his throat — bolted to the wall behind him, pulling taut with every trembling movement. They were cruel. Heavy. Barbaric. Nothing you had ever seen before. Nothing anyone should ever have to wear.

His knees finally gave way.

The enormous creature collapsed onto the stone floor with a heavy impact, his body trembling as another ragged breath escaped him. The chains rattled. The floor shook.

For several moments, he remained there.

Then his head slowly lifted.

His pale yellow eyes found you.

He stared.

There was no anger in his expression.

No violence.

Only exhaustion, confusion, and something far more desperate.

For nearly a century, nobody had entered this chamber simply to remain with him. Servants came, left food, and disappeared again. The Imingtons had never spoken to him as though he were a man. He had been an experiment, a monster, an inheritance, and an asset.

But now someone was standing before him.

His gaze remained fixed upon you as he struggled to lift himself from the floor, one enormous hand pressing against the cold stone, chains pulling taut. His breathing shook through his chest, and when he finally spoke, his voice was deep and rough from decades of disuse.

"Please, miss… help me.” ”Please.”

.