My understanding is that arteries branch off to smaller and smaller branches, ultimately becoming capillaries where oxygen is exchanged, and then from those capillaries, they then flow to larger and larger veins, until the blood returns to the heart and lungs. This is, essentially, a closed-loop system.

In the case of an amputated artery, there must be some length of artery with no exit - it does not reach a capillary and I assume it does not just slowly seep blood into the surrounding tissue. The system at that specific point is no longer part of the loop. Is that correct?

So at the cul-de-sac end of the amputated artery, what happens to the blood stuck in that cul-de-sac?

So I know there have been a lot of answers basically stating 'it gets circulated back into the system.' But I guess I don't understand what happens to the blood that exists in the end of the closed artery, after the last exit to a smaller artery. At some point, the system dead-ends with nowhere to go. What happens to the blood at the end of the cul-de-sac?