Page 55 of Orc’s Gallows

Not the concentrated reservoir beneath the platform—that’s destroyed, its contents absorbed into me. This is different. Wider. I reach out with senses I didn’t know I possessed and touch every death that ever occurred in Blackhook City. The executions, yes, but also the murders in dark alleys, the sick who died in their beds, the elderly who passed peacefully in their sleep. Death is everywhere. Death is constant. Death has been feeding the hungry dark since humans first built walls around themselves and called it civilization.

The Judge has fed on wrongful execution for three centuries.

I can feed on everything else.

“You want to fight?” The entity’s form solidifies, its power stabilizing as it prepares for the confrontation to come. “You want to pit your decades against my centuries? Your feeding against my feasting?”

The sigil throbs against my collarbone. Brannok. Pulling himself from the rubble, armor dented and neck bruised but alive. Alive and rising and reaching for his blade with hands that have never trembled.

His presence sears in my awareness—not his thoughts, not his emotions, but his position. The certainty of where he is and that he’s moving toward me.

“No.” I lower my arms, let the ending magic coil through my bones like power waiting to be unleashed. “I want to end you. But not alone.”

The Judge’s faces cycle through expressions of contempt. “Your mate? The Gallows Warden who’s hanged more innocents than he can count? You think he can help you against me?”

“He’s the only one who can.”

Because the Judge is right about one thing—I can’t destroy it by myself. The entity was born from wrongful execution, from innocent blood spilled on the platform in the name of order. It’s fed on that injustice for centuries, grown fat on the suffering of the condemned, built itself from the accumulated rage of everyone who died when they shouldn’t have.

Power like that can’t be defeated by power alone.

It has to be judged. Sentenced. Executed.

And there’s only one man in Blackhook City who knows how to do that.

Brannok reaches my side. His hand finds mine—rough with rope scars, steady despite the tremors running through his exhausted body.

“You’re radiant.” His words are raw, torn rough by the noose that nearly killed him.

“I know.”

“It’s a good look.”

Despite everything—despite the monster looming before us, despite the ruined square and the scattered spirits and the impossible battle ahead—my lips curve into a smile.

“Flatterer.”

“Stating facts.” His grip tightens on my fingers. “You ready?”

The Judge watches our exchange with what appears to be amusement. Its cycling faces arrange themselves into expressions of patronizing indulgence, like a parent watching children play at being warriors.

“How touching. The executioner and his pet death witch, reunited for their final moments.” The entity spreads rope-wound arms in a mockery of welcome. “Come, then. Let me show you what true justice looks like.”

I meet Brannok’s eyes. Amber finding dark brown, the executioner and the death witch, two killers who chose something different and are about to prove it.

“Ready.”

And we move to meet our enemy.

The battle for Blackhook City begins in the ruins of the Grand Gallows.

The Judge strikes first—a wave of ending magic that crashes against my defenses like a siege weapon against castle walls. The power I’ve absorbed takes the brunt of the impact, but I still stagger, still sense the entity’s centuries of accumulated rage pressing against my consciousness with crushing weight.

Brannok moves while I’m reeling. His blade flashes in the pre-dawn light, enchanted iron biting into the Judge’s composite form. The entity screams with a dozen voices as it recoils, claimed flesh parting under the force of a blow delivered by hands that have ended hundreds of lives.

He can hurt it. The Gallows Warden’s blade, etched with death wards designed to destroy the risen dead, can hurt it.

But not enough. Not fast enough.