There was music spilling out towards him, the high stone walls of the castle echoing and distorting the sound before it hit his ears.
The halls he walked with Chrissy were towering tall. Steve couldn’t tell how far up the ceiling went, extending so high the darkness swallowed the light, making them seem endless.
It was dark, though the lanterns hanging off thick iron chains along the walls tried their best to chase it away, he got the exact same feeling he’d had before when approaching his own parents in the great hall back home, the darkness making it somehow cavernous and claustrophobic at the same time.
But the feeling was amplified here and it made him feel incredibly uneasy.
Every so often, over the sound of the music, there was a high pitched whistling, the wind whipping against the castle walls, almost like the wailing of a distraught woman.
It was cold in here, colder than it was outside and there was the slightest smell of damp coming off the stones.
He wasn’t sure if that was a result of the sea being so close or the stormy weather but either way, the lanterns and braziers seemed to be doing very little to chase it away.
Steve would have expected to find thick rugs or rushes along the floor, tapestries and draperies hung on the walls to keep the heat in, but there was no such thing in sight.
It was all bare and quite… severe.
