The living room on the first floor was completely silent, as quiet as the entire street outside. Everything still maintained the appearance of nightfall, while the wooden puppets and iron servants, driven by springs and Magical Mechanism, stood silently in their places—it seemed that until just the second before the "anomaly" occurred, they were still executing their cleaning commands according to their programmed settings.
With Alice nervously clinging onto his clothes, Duncan walked down the stairs, his eyes sweeping across the gloomy and silent living room. The sound of their footsteps echoed in this deadly silence, adding to the eerie setting.
