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The doors do not creak on their hinges when you throw them open. In fact, they do not make a sound at all. Perhaps because you forgot what they should sound like, so many years removed from that day. Perhaps because the King's maids kept every hinge so immaculately oiled that they glide open without even the slightest hinge of friction. Perhaps because the sound has been swallowed by darkness on the other side. An abyss stretches onwards and outwards from the doors, an expanse of midnight darker than a sunless sky.
There is little choice but to step forward. You could not turn back down the winding path of interwoven halls that led you here, least of all because you forgot what turns you made. A suspicion tingles in the back of your mind, as well, that any door you opened would lead to this place. So with only a moment of hesitation, you take your steps beyond the threshold and the enter the void.
The doors slamming themselves closed behind you does not surprise you.
Nor does how they vanish into the air, as if they had never been there to begin with.
The air in this room is cold as winter's first snow. The color of the lightless void that surrounds you cannot truly be called black any more than one can call the depths of the ocean blue. Oh, the word suffices in an abstract manner, but "black" as humans understand it implies a texture, an object onto which the darkness is projected and given form. The black you see here is an empty, hollow, <span class="mu-i">lightless</span> color within which nothing exists save the malignant echoes of your darkest thoughts and emotions, buried long ago.
That, and the shrill, mocking voice of a woman who is horrifically pleased to see you. Her tone is stilted and jeering, full of a sour playfulness that grates against your ears like nails upon a chalkboard. "My, oh my, did you wear such a dress for <span class="mu-i">me</span>, Louise le Blanc? To think I'd have the pleasure of seeing you in a such a daring outfit before I got my hands on you... <span class="mu-i">how delicious</span>?"
Your ears redden in anger, your eyes narrowing as they scan the darkness for a voice. But it surrounds you, subsumes you, drowns you in the lightless eternity that stretches to infinity on every side. You cannot see. You can hardly feel. You can hear yourself echo through the darkness as you spit, "You sound different than that <span class="mu-i">demon</span>. Is it your pet? Or are you its creature?"
"You can hear him?" she asks with far too much joy in her voice. A happy, hollow laughter fills the void, crashing against your ears like a wave on a stormy beach, before she says, "How delightful~! Oh, you won't believe how happy I was when Justy told me about the vincula she implanted in your arm! A curse mark of shackles, the very chains that shall soon bind you to my will, written into your flesh... ah... <span class="mu-i">ahhhhhhhhn~</span>!"
A dreadfully immodest noise escapes from the woman's lips, for which she insincerely apologizes. "I'm sorry, I'm just <span class="mu-i">overflowing</span> with excitement at your progress~"
