Anyone near Morosuke's castle that morning would have known, without needing to step closer, that something had gone very wrong inside.
The great gate hung open and shattered, its heavy doors reduced to broken timber scattered across the entrance. From the street, even those who only glanced in passing could see the courtyard beyond, and what lay across it made them stop cold. Bodies covered the ground. Dismembered, broken, bloodied. They were piled in the kind of disorder that only came from a slaughter, not a battle, not a skirmish, but a slaughter. Men who had armed themselves and rushed forward and died before understanding what they were rushing toward.
Passersby recoiled at the sight without meaning to.
