All color faded into the dull shades of the violet room. The soft music flowed easily into the souls of the guests, instilling a certain feeling of regret and remorse and guilt and longing. Reminiscing was inevitable. Their hearts were weighed down by old memories; their thoughts were dominated by the paired feelings of lust and desire; their desires were of what they could've, but hadn't done.

Every beat of the room was slowed: the music, the dancing, the talking, the laughter. Every breath stole a minute; every lost minute equaled a lost moment. Sixty seconds ticked by steadily yet quickly; the hand of the foretelling clock ignored by the blissful party-goers. Violet shadows consumed the room while the windows shuddered ominously, reminding the guests of their withheld fear and the ignored omen. Although the guests dressed themselves with polite smiles, the level of their comfort gradually diminished to a new questioning and terror. But all was hidden behind their attitudes of silver and postures of gold.

Conversations could not last long enough to distract the party-goers from this fear. Words were scarce; wisdom was scarce; wonders were scarce. But worry was abundant. Even the room itself seemed to radiate with its own tight terror. It was expected. Violet was the misfortune that was bound to arrive, but had not yet emerged.

Whilst the perennial, internal battle of the guests raged on unintentionally, another uncontrollable factor added itself to the equation of anxiety. Outside the protective walls of the abbey, a war violently spewed outside. Intense yellow and electrifyingly white bullets streaked through the sky, swimming through the Earth and shocking its inhabitants. Enormous shots of rain pounded hard and steady, but the people of the violet room perceived an agonizingly slow patter on the roof and window. The wind screamed and shrieked and screeched and shouted, as a warning and as a scolding. The destructive lightning and unstable wind did not seem to match the calm, steady tempo of the rain. Desperately, the storm tried all it could to grab the attention of the guests for at least one minuscule minute. Whistling winds targeted and attacked the violet painted chandelier, lightly whispering a curse against the violet tinged flames. The tale of the storm went unheeded.

A tremendous vibration resonated throughout all seven rooms. Another breath for the clock; another stolen moment from guests. All went still. The music silenced. The guests ceased their dancing, some tripping over their own feet, stumbling to the floor and paralyzed with anxiety. The small discussions abruptly stopped in mid-sentence. Laughter was replaced by ragged, uneasy breaths. Some of the guests clutched at their heart, as if it was too much to handle, and others wiped the perspiration off their foreheads. However, the action was futile; the hands of the guests were clammy and slick with sweat. Even the storm was frozen in time. The lightning stayed suspended in the sky, a constant, ghostlike glow in the darkness of the moment. The rhythm of the rain was drowned out by the excruciatingly slow chime of the, almost, long-forgotten clock. An eerie hush descended over the crowd of unmoving guests, sleeping tensely among them. It then arose into new life, weaving stress into the minds of the party-goers, making their muscles taut and their expressions rigid.

There was one man who showed no change in expression from the strikes of the clock. He seemed neither young or old, poor or wealthy. It was a frozen moment in time, but he continued gliding across the length of the room; unaffected by the obvious, terrified, stares of the fear-stricken guests, unaffected by the threats of the clock, unaffected by his dragging cloak. His dreary, roughly mended garments did not match the vibrant, silk-woven dress of the guests. Nothing could be hidden behind his lust for blood and love for slaughter.

Then, the life of the clock deadened, but the life of the guests did not reawaken. It was midnight.