The heavy oak door clicked shut behind Viktor with a soft, final thud.
The banquet hall's curated laughter — all that careful, practiced warmth — sealed itself away into a muffled, distant thing, like noise heard through water. The corridor swallowed him. Cooler here. The marble floor reflected nothing, too dark for that, and the candles had thinned to single wall-sconces spaced far enough apart that the shadows between them were real shadows, not decorative ones.
His boots made no sound.
He moved forward with the same measured pace he always moved — not slow, not hurried, the pace of a person who had long ago decided that urgency was something you felt on the inside and expressed nowhere else. The night air from somewhere ahead carried the smell of the garden below. Stone. Damp grass. Something floral, faint.
Then it reached him.
Not all at once. In pieces — the way bad things arrive when they don't want to be recognized too quickly.
