For three long years, every night at exactly 9:00 p.m., Sarah performed the same ritual. She heated the water, carried heavy buckets up the creaking staircase, and poured them into the copper bathtub at the center of the bathroom in Thornhill Plantation. Everything had to be flawless—the temperature, the scent of soap, the water level. Any small mistake came with punishment. The woman who waited in the tub was Katherine Thornhill, a wealthy Charleston mistress whose cruelty was whispered about far beyond the plantation gates. She took pleasure in watching Sarah kneel beside the tub, scrubbing her skin while enduring a steady stream of insults. The leather strap hanging by the bath was never decorative.Sarah learned silence as a survival skill.She memorized every crack in the ceiling, every reflection on the copper surface, every violent cough that sometimes shook her mistress’s body. She noticed Katherine’s skin growing pale, her breathing heavier after each bath. And there was always the blue glass bottle, hidden carefully away, never to be touched.Then came the night of October 14, 1854.It began like all the others.Clear water. Perfect warmth. The familiar scent of lavender soap.Sarah dipped the cloth into the bath—and froze.Under the glow of the oil lamp, the water was no longer transparent. The color shifted slowly, unnaturally, as if something were rising from beneath the surface. Pale pink… then darker… until the entire tub looked thick with blood.Katherine screamed.She tried to stand, slipped back into the crimson water, and pointed at Sarah in terror.“What did you do to me?”Servants rushed in. The house erupted into chaos.And in that moment, they noticed something far more horrifying than the color of the bathwater.The truth behind the night the water turned red would destroy Sarah’s life forever—and it was nothing like the legends that followed.