Page 35 of Orc’s Gallows

The trapdoor opens.

Not the mechanical release of lever and hinge. The wooden panel simply parts, splitting down the center like a wound opening in flesh. Cold light spills from the gap—not moonlight, not torchlight, but the pale illumination of condemned innocents given form.

A figure rises from the gallows’ depths.

I’ve seen the Judge in dreams. Seen it in the bone-walled courtroom of my nightmares, cycling through the faces of the wrongfully executed. But dreams are shadows of reality, pale imitations that can’t capture the full horror of the thing climbing onto the platform above me.

It towers. Twelve feet of fused corpses wrapped in robes woven from witch-hair rope, bodies merged at impossible angles, limbs sprouting from torsos and faces embedded in chests. The composite form moves with terrible grace, each step accompanied by the whisper of hangman’s nooses that trail from its robes like the train of some nightmare bride.

Its face shifts constantly. A young witch’s terrified expression melts into an old man’s dignified acceptance, then a child’s confusion, then a merchant’s desperate denial. Every innocent who died on this gallows lives in that ever-changing visage, their features surfacing and submerging in an endless tide of stolen identities.

The eyes remain constant. Cold white light, blazing with the absolute certainty of righteous judgment.

“Little sister.” The voice harmonizes from a hundred dead throats. “You’ve finally come home.”

I try to run.

My legs carry me three strides before the ropes find me. They lash around my ankles, my wrists, my waist—witch-hair braids that suppress my magic even as they bind my body. I hit the cobblestones hard, the impact driving air from my lungs.

The ropes drag me toward the gallows.

I claw at the stone beneath me, nails breaking against the rust-stained surface. The claiming brand sears against my collarbone, a constant heat that speaks of distance and danger and the man who should be able to find me.

Brannok. He has to know. The bond tells him where I am.

But knowing and reaching are different things. He’s across the city. The Judge has had hours to prepare this moment, to clear the square, to ensure that no rescue will arrive in time.

The ropes haul me up the gallows stairs. Thirteen steps—I’ve counted them before, watching others climb toward death. Now I feel each one against my shins, my thighs, my hip bones as the witch-hair bindings drag me toward the platform.

The Judge waits at the top.

Up close, the wrongness is overwhelming. The bodies that comprise its form weren’t simply fused—they were woven. Flesh interlaced with flesh, bone threaded through bone, the boundaries between victims erased in a tapestry of stolen mortality. I can see individual faces trapped in its torso, mouths frozen in final screams, eyes still moving with trapped awareness.

“You’ve been feeding on my leavings for years.” The borrowed visages twist into something patient and benevolent. “Taking the scraps of ending magic while I devoured the feast. Did you ever wonder where the power came from? Did you ever ask yourself why executions generated so much more energy than natural deaths?”

I don’t answer. Can’t. The ropes around my neck are too tight, and the truth of its words lands in my chest like a punch—not new, not surprising, only more unbearable for being spoken aloud by the thing I made possible.

“You were part of my becoming.” The Judge circles me, its rope-wound robes trailing across the bloodstained platform. “Every death witch who feeds at my table contributes to my strength. Every passive observer who watches without acting validates my existence.” It pauses, the parade of stolen features softening into false sympathy. “You tell yourself you had no choice. That survival required compromise. But we both know the truth, don’t we?”

“The Gallows Warden will come for you.” The Judge steps back, spreading arms that end in rope-wound fingers. “The claiming brand flares both ways, after all. He’ll know exactly where you are. He’ll come running, sword drawn, prepared to destroy anything that threatens his possession.”

“I’m not his possession.”

“No?” The rotating masks settle into theatrical worry. “Then what are you? A partner? An equal? Or a woman he claimed because his instincts demanded it, because ancient magic chose you and he couldn’t resist the pull?”

The words hit harder than the ropes binding my limbs. I’ve thought those exact things, late at night when the brand throbs and I wonder what I’ve agreed to.

“He saved my life.”

“You’re a monster.”

“I’m justice.” The Judge rises to its full height, towering over me. “The justice this city has denied for three centuries. The justice the council refuses to dispense. The justice your mate has perverted every time he pulled the lever for political convenience.” Its voice echoes across the empty square. “I am every wrongful death given form. Every innocent cry for mercy ignored. Every broken promise of fair trial and impartial judgment.”

“You’re vengeance.” I struggle against the ropes, feeling them tighten in response. “Not justice. Vengeance wearing judicial robes.”

“Is there a difference?” The rotating visages pause on a child—young, confused, not understanding why he was being led to the gallows. “When the system is corrupt, when the authorities are complicit, when every legal avenue has been exhausted and the innocent still die—what remains except vengeance? What other tool can possibly balance the scales?”

I don’t have an answer. Don’t have words that will counter three centuries of accumulated grievance, of wrongful death, of justice denied and promises broken.