The castle definitely looks like it's been bombed. The walls are crumbling, the ground is cratered, parts of the castle are on fire, and dead or dying soldiers lie scattered around both inside and out.

But before going in the main building, walk one step south from the entrance, then travel along the wall to the right. You'll find a semi-secret doorway leading to the dungeons, where another soldier lies dying.

Nothing exceptional here, but the Crossbow and arrows here could come in handy. Also remove Tella's equipment before going upstairs because....

...the party reaches the third floor to find a red-haired woman on the ground.

Tella rushes up to her. A gaily (in the minstrel sense of the word) dressed man who looks rather womanly approaches from the side.

Tella attacks! He only uses his normal attack, though. And his mouth.

And the Minstrel has 60,000 HP here anyway, so don't worry about him.

"You spoony bard!" Sure. It's so awful it's funny.

The spoony battle ends as Tella and the minstrel rush to Anna's side. Cecil and Rydia advance too, for good measure.

Of course, taking vengeance won't bring her back any more than crying will, but try telling him that.

Tella starts to leave, but Cecil cuts him off.

Tella knocks him aside.

He leaves.

Cecil turns to find Gilbart crying like a baby. Understandable, but still. Rydia gets in his face.

Cecil walks over and hits him. +1 for attacking a prince with impunity.

Everyone walks out of the room, though Gilbart turns back for one last look at Anna.

Her body vanishes (since that's apparently what the dead do in this world), and Gilbart leaves again.

Outside, a hovercraft appears from the castle, and the party rides it away. As promised, it can cross shallows, and no monsters attack while the party is riding it. Shallows lead south to Kaipo and east to the antlion's cave and Hobs Mountain (which is blocked by thick ice). Also feel free to return to the castle, where pots on the third floor restore HP and MP, free of charge.

Did I say Tella ought to be placed in the back row to protect him? That goes triple for Gilbart. Though his stats easily surpass Tella's at higher levels, he's quite weak for now, his abilities aren't very good, and it doesn't help that he joins at only level 5. He's fairly good at inflicting status effects, but not much else. And his harps, though not very powerful to begin with, aren't even long-ranged weapons except in the NA version! You may be better off giving him a bow and arrows if you want him trying to inflict damage, though that disables his halfway useful Sing command.

If you like incredibly rare but largely useless items, the groups of eight Goblins in the desert around the castle make it the best place to hunt the Goblin summon item. You'd better have plenty of patience or luck, though, since each Goblin only has a 1/20 change to drop anything, and the summon item is only chosen 1/64 of the time when something drops, making the odds of any given Goblin dropping it 1/1280. Eight Goblins result in slightly under a 1/160 chance per battle.