A few days later.0

Within the Clock Mansion, in the eastern wing of the outer courtyard, rooms had been set aside specifically for incoming undying husks. 0

The mansion master, often dressed in a red robe, had earned no small amount of criticism for letting outsiders move in, but he simply behaved as though he were powerless, allowing them to swagger around as they pleased.0

His subordinates were abused; he endured it. His fattest livestock was snatched away; he submitted. They insisted on living inside his own estate; he gave in yet again.0

But when the outsiders demanded the Clock Mansion provide forces to join their offensives against other prefectures, he refused, insisting they were too weak—unfit to march beyond their backwater region. People mocked him all the more for his cowardice.0

In one of the courtyards, its walls cold stone and mottled gray, a few wisps of eerie chill...0