Outside, somewhere down the corridor, a servant rounded the hallway corner and stopped breathing.
Three crumpled robes. One empty heap of crimson silk where the Patriarch had stood. Elder Shen's body, one palm still extended. Elder Wu face-down in a spreading dark pool. Faint red footprints leading back toward the sealed royal chamber door.
The servant's clay water jug hit the floor and shattered.
The sound reached no one in the chamber.
Inside, the only sounds were Phack and PAAAH and the three distinct broken screams of women who had stopped belonging to the Lin Clan entirely.
The palace beyond those doors could collapse. The clan could scatter. The servants could run.
None of it mattered. None of it touched the sealed room where a conqueror claimed what he'd taken — not with armies, not with politics, not with bloodline rights or cultivation rank or the weight of tradition.
