Catherine -
The entrance hall stretched before me like something out of a fever dream—marble floors that gleamed like black water, pillars that soared toward a ceiling lost in shadows, and windows that glowed with light that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. My footsteps echoed in the vast space, each sound bouncing off stone walls until it became a percussion symphony of solitude.
I set my trunk down carefully, more to buy myself time than out of any real need to rest. The weight of what I'd just done—walking through those impossible gates, entering this place that existed outside normal reality—was beginning to settle over me like a shroud. There was no going back now. Whatever bargain Father had struck, whatever debt I was meant to settle, it would be resolved here.
