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The room that we entered was huge and cavernous, like the inside of a cathedral or palace. There was no roof—only a big grid of black iron bars in place of what should have been the ceiling. When I looked up, I saw the sky through the grid. To my surprise, it was nighttime. The moon was so big and bright that it illuminated the whole room. Or maybe it was the room itself that was glowing.
The walls and floor were made of the same cold, shiny black stone that made up the rest of the prison. The room seemed to be mostly empty, but I couldn’t be sure. Everything was clogged with a vibrant violet fog, so thick and dense that it was difficult to see through. It clung to the ground and the walls and swirled around us as we walked forward. And in the center of the room, just visible through
