The heavy oak doors of Elena's mansion slammed shut behind Rose with a resounding boom, the percussive finality seeming to reverberate through her very bones. She stood there for a moment on the ornate front steps, chest heaving with each ragged inhalation as she struggled to rein in the blazing fire of her fury.
All around her, the night seemed to have taken on a peculiar, hyper-realized quality - the shadows cast by the estate's tasteless neo-baroque facades elongating into ebony claws, the ambient sounds of the city taking on an almost oppressive weight.
Even the air itself felt heavier, more viscous, as if charged with the same roiling energies that crackled through Rose's psyche.
