Page 54 of Orc’s Gallows

The tainted earth falls away from my hands, and I see that my skin has changed. Light throbs beneath the surface, visible through flesh that has become almost translucent. My scars aren’t scars anymore—they’re channels, conduits, pathways for power that flows through me like blood through veins.

I’m not feeding on death anymore.

I AM death.

The realization doesn’t frighten me. It sinks into my bones with the weight of truth finally acknowledged, of identity finally accepted. I’ve spent my entire life running from this moment, hiding from this truth, pretending I could be anything other than what I was born to be.

No more running. No more hiding. No more fear.

The gallows scream.

“What are you—how are you—the wards should have⁠—”

“Should have stopped me?” My words come out wrong. Layered. Harmonic. The voices of the dead speaking through my windpipe, their fury becoming my fury, their need for justice becoming my need. “You twisted the wards to feed yourself. Did you think I couldn’t twist them further?”

Above me, the noose around Brannok’s neck is loosening. Not enough to save him—but enough to give him time. Precious seconds while the gallows tear themselves apart from the inside out.

The entity shifts from alarm to grudging respect, its stolen features arranging themselves into an expression of dark satisfaction. “You’ve finally stopped pretending. Finally embraced what you are. But you’re still a child playing with powers you don’t understand. I was born from centuries of death. You’ve fed on scraps for barely three decades. You cannot⁠—”

I raise my hand, and the gallows explode.

Not fractures—complete destruction. The ancient wood detonates outward in a spray of splinters and iron shards, three hundred years of execution architecture reduced to kindling in a single instant. The Judge’s throne disintegrates beneath it. The witness stands collapse. The gallery seating shatters, releasing spirits that scatter like leaves in a hurricane.

And Brannok falls.

The sigil blazes with sudden terror—not his terror, but my awareness of his position changing rapidly. Falling. The noose no longer attached to anything, the transformed platform no longer beneath his feet, nothing but empty air between him and the stone courtyard below.

I reach for him with power I didn’t know I had.

Ending magic surges from my hands, not to harm but to catch. The energy wraps around his falling body like invisible arms, slowing his descent, cushioning the impact when he hits the rubble-strewn ground. It’s not gentle—his ribs give beneath the force, air drives from his lungs—but he’s alive. Breathing. The bond throbs with the steady rhythm of his heart.

Alive. He’s alive.

Relief crashes through me. For one moment, I let myself sense it—the gratitude of knowing he survived, the fierce joy of sensing his presence, knowing exactly where he is. He’s hurt, but he’s alive, and that’s enough. That has to be enough.

Then the Judge reforms.

It rises from the rubble like a nightmare given flesh—merged corpses pulling themselves from the scattered debris, stolen faces emerging from the bones buried beneath the execution square. The entity has lost its throne, lost its courtroom, lost the platform that gave it shape and purpose. But it hasn’t lost its power.

If anything, I’ve made it stronger.

“You fool.” The voices harmonize into thunder that shakes the foundations of the square. “Did you think I was bound to that platform? Did you think destroying my throne would destroy me?” The composite form swells, drawing on ending magic from sources I can’t see—the graveyards surrounding the city, the hospital where the sick go to die, every place in Blackhook where life ends and feeds the hungry dark. “I AM this city’s fear. I AM its hunger for blood. The gallows were a focus, nothing more. A convenient seat of power.”

The entity towers over the wreckage, larger now that it has no throne to sit—its full scale filling the square the way a storm fills a valley.

“You’ve freed me from my throne.” The claimed features warp into a smile that contains no humanity, no mercy. “Now I’ll take the whole world as my kingdom.”

I should be afraid.

The Judge is more powerful than anything I’ve ever faced—centuries of accumulated death given consciousness and rage, an entity that has fed on executions since before my grandmother’s grandmother was born. It’s beaten the Gallows Warden, haunted the council, terrorized a city. What chance does a death witch with barely thirty years of experience have against a creature that old, that hungry, that certain of its own righteousness?

But I’m not afraid.

The power flooding through me has seared away fear along with everything else. I am vast, ancient, formidable—a vessel for ending that has finally stopped pretending to be anything else. The spirits I consumed aren’t separate from me anymore. Their fury is my fury. Their need for justice is my need.

“You think you’re the only one who can draw on the city’s death?” My words echo with harmonics that make the scattered debris tremble. “You think you’re the only one who understands what power sleeps in these streets?”

I spread my arms, and the ending magic responds.