It was not one large event that alerted the Kingdom to what had happened. It was merely several, small events. The morning had dawned with an unseasonable chill, frost riming the windows and doors. The birds, the insects, even the creeping mice- all had fled, or stayed huddled in darkened corners, refusing to make a single sound. The children, perhaps more sensitive to the subtle wrongness of the morning, were subdued and silent, hungering for nothing and wanting only sleep. The urchins on the street had vanished, along with the other animals. Even the grand arts of the occult were muted somehow, as if something else had dampened their fire. In fits and pieces, the populace trickled towards the palace, not yet frightened. The horror came when they passed the outer gates, and found every door, every window, every mousehole, even every crack that permitted the passage of the tiniest spiders- all were locked, closed off by arts that no magi outside the palace could break. An Hour's personal attention had become fixed upon the palace, and nothing would enter or exit until it alone decided that would be so.

After days of silence and icy doors that would succumb neither to breaking nor lockpicking, the locks shattered on their own. Slowly, carefully, the first of the crowd entered the palace, prepared for anything. ''Almost'' anything, for what they saw in the halls was a charnel house that seemed sprung from the dreams of a madman. The servants, the nobles, the magi of the court- all adults that had lived and worked in the palace that evening had been hunted down, their eyes and tongues removed, their bellies and the arteries of their legs slashed open, and the corpses pinioned to the walls by the bones of their fingers. All the mirrors had been shattered, the reflective blades of weapons blackened and matted, even the perfect surfaces of statues and ornamentations had been scratched and twisted to refuse reflection. (Meatgrinder activities here). In the great throne room, the face of the King had been nailed to his throne with his own teeth. Along the wall behind the throne, a bloody message was writ: Don't do it again.