The Red Room
The room was colossal, a space designed not so much to be occupied as to impress the individual entering. Its ceiling towered far above, arched like cathedral vertebrae, painted in ivory and rich red that caught the light of the chandelier proudly hung at the room's center. That chandelier was not just any fixture—a work of art, a cascade of crystalline drops and leaping flames. Every prism broke up the candlelight into channels of color that poured across velvet drapes and polished marble floors, sending rainbows into all parts of the room.
