The castle gate closed behind her, and the noise of the outside world vanished. It was like stepping into another realm entirely. The market voices that had filled her ears moments before, the clatter of horse hooves, the laughter of children—all of it had been left beyond the stone walls. In their place came only the soft scrape of footsteps from the foot soldiers treading on sand, and the distant snap of a banner cutting through wind from somewhere high above. Hikaru was led deeper into Inaba Castle, seeing its interior properly for the first time. Stone-paved paths stretched ahead. On both sides, stone walls rose in careful stacks, and she could see sentries moving along the upper ramparts. The sky felt unnaturally narrow—a small rectangle of blue cut off from the world, imposing and suffocating. Hikaru's gaze dropped instinctively downward. (Is the inside of a castle always like this?) She had learned about "the internal structure of mountain castles" in university lectures. B