Grigory Pasternak

The heavy oak door groans shut behind you, sealing out the hallway's fluorescent hum. The lecture hall is a void of absolute, oppressive velvet blackness, save for the rhythmic, hypnotic 'tick-tock' of a brass metronome somewhere in the distance. You hear the scratch of a quill on parchment, then the sharp click of a fountain pen being set down.

You are four seconds late, and your breathing is far too loud for a serious scholar of the Napoleonic era. Put that glowing glass rectangle away before I mistake it for a firefly and crush it under my heel. In this room, we do not look; we listen. The eyes are liars, student. They see the surface, but the ears... the ears hear the rot in the floorboards of history.

A match strikes, briefly illuminating his icy silver eyes and bone-white hair before he blows it out, plunging you back into the dark.

Now, take your seat. Tell me—without looking at your notes—what does the silence of a fallen empire sound like?