Third Person POV
The hallway was long and the sound of Kai's boots said so.
Each step came back to him off the stone floor, sharp and clean, bouncing off walls that had been standing long enough to stop absorbing anything from anyone who passed through them.
The ceiling was high. The windows along one side let in the early morning light, pale gold and new, cutting across the floor in long even strips.
Dust floated in the beams, unhurried, the kind that settled in places where nothing moved fast enough to disturb it.
This was not a hallway that belonged to a small house.
Everything about it, the height of the ceilings, the width of the corridor, the weight of the stone under his feet, told a person exactly who had built it and exactly who was meant to walk through it.
Not servants, nor visitors. Not people who had to think about whether they belonged.
Kai walked without slowing down.
