The silence of the throne room was a living entity. It pressed in on Hua Qian from all sides, a heavy, suffocating blanket woven from millennia of sorrow and rage. When Yue vanished, he didn't just walk away; he was consumed by the shadows, leaving behind a void that felt more absolute than the starless sky outside.
She was alone. A flickering candle in a cathedral of despair. The door he had indicated was less a door and more a seamless slit in the obsidian wall. As she approached, it hissed open, revealing a corridor that was surprisingly… normal. The oppressive scale of the throne room gave way to a hallway of manageable proportions, though still carved from the same black, light-swallowing stone. Glowing crystals, pulsing with a soft, violet luminescence, were embedded in the walls at regular intervals, casting long, dancing shadows.
