The sun had barely broken over the rooftops of Caorran when the square was cleared. No festival flags flew, no heralds announced a noble procession. What gathered the people that morning was not celebration, but reckoning.
On a raised platform before the eyes of the city and the silent ranks of Caorrani soldiers, Duke Eoghan stood clad not in royal regalia, but in the dark cloak of judgment. Before him knelt his nephew, now forever known as Bryce the Godless Traitor, once a noble claimant, now a convicted traitor, found guilty of conspiring with foreign powers to claim a Crown soaked in the blood of his kin.
The Duke had spoken little in the hours prior. His face was stone, his eyes hollow with the weight of duty. To some, it was vengeance. To others, justice. To Eoghan, it was a debt, owed not only to the Crown he once wore, but to the thirteen nobles coldly executed by order of Aurelian Aeternus Avalon, including the newly elected King Loghain I, and to the thousands who perished in the shadow of Bryce's ambition, silence, and betrayal.
When the blade rose, it was not with wrath, but with resolve. "You were born of my blood," Eoghan said, voice steady, "but you died the day you invited our enemies to feast upon our lands. Let no man say I spared even my own where justice was due."
On 45-60-6, with a single, clean stroke, Bryce's life ended, just before the turning of the year. There was no applause, no cheer, only silence and the faint rustle of banners in the wind.
But the sentence had not ended there.
By the Duke's order, the body was quartered. Each limb sent to a different gate of the city, nailed to oaken boards and watched by Caorrani guards. It was not cruelty, but message. A warning carved in flesh and carried by wind and rumor alike: this is the price of treason against the Kingdom.
His head was mounted above the city's Eastern gate, where the sun would rise upon it each morning. Beneath it, carved into dark iron, a plaque bore the final verdict of the realm: ""Here lies the face of ambition born in silence. Let traitors know the Crown cannot be bought with foreign steel."
And upon the Western gate, beneath the dangling arm that once bore a false sigil of rule, another plaque was hung: "Let all who seek power through foreign blades remember this man's fate."
There were those who had long viewed Duke Eoghan as overly cautious, a ruler who relied too heavily on diplomacy, whose restraint skirted the edge of indecision and weakness. To some, he was a man of principle, a peacemaker. To others, a man too soft for the age.
But that morning, as steel met flesh and kin fell by his hand, the image of the hesitant King was shattered. Eoghan had spoken through action, and the realm heard him clearly: no bloodline, no title, and no old bond would shield a traitor from justice.