Dawn was just breaking.
A bleak band of pale light spread across the leaden sky.
The light of dawn crept lazily over the uneven rooftops of the Port District, illuminating the sinister Execution Platform in the central square inch by inch.
A dense crowd had already gathered in the square.
Most were merfolk, though there were plenty of fish-men as well.
They crowded around the ten-meter-high Execution Platform, row upon row, standing on tiptoe and craning their necks.
Their whispers merged into a low drone, like countless bubbles bursting on a beach as the tide receded.
On the Execution Platform, rows of gallows swayed gently in the morning breeze. The ropes cast long shadows that fell diagonally across the fish-man prisoners kneeling below them.
Most of those prisoners had been dragged from their homes the previous night.
An entire night of terror and torment had drained their strength.
Some hung their heads, their shoulders trembling uncontrollably.
Others stared blankly at the small pools of blood on the ground, their eyes hollow.
A few had resisted too fiercely the previous night and now lay as cold corpses at the corner of the platform. Dark red blood still seeped from their wounds, trickling drop by drop through the cracks in the stone to form a small, glaring pool of scarlet below.
No one bothered with those bodies.
The constables simply stood around them, expressionless as wooden stakes driven into the ground. Their cold eyes swept over the crowd, while the hands gripping their instruments of punishment remained perfectly steady.
"Tch, look at those ones. They died last night, didn't they?"
An older fish-man in the crowd lowered his voice and gestured with his chin toward his companion.
"Serves them right."
His companion snorted. There was not a trace of sympathy in his