Page 59 of Orc’s Gallows

The impact drives the breath from my lungs. The noose bites into my neck—not the clean break of a proper execution, but the slow crushing pressure of strangulation. The knot is wrong. The drop was too short. The Judge has arranged my death to be as prolonged and agonizing as possible.

I can’t breathe.

My hands claw at the noose, but the spectral chains still bind my wrists. My legs kick in empty air, searching for purchase that doesn’t exist. Every instinct screams at me to fight, to struggle, to tear myself free from the rope that’s crushing my windpipe.

The condemned always fight. Even the ones who accepted their fate, who climbed the gallows stairs with dignity and made their peace with the gods—when the trapdoor opened, when the rope bit into their necks, every one of them struggled. The body refuses to surrender even when the mind has given up.

Now I understand why.

The world narrows to a single point of agony. My neck. The rope. The pressure building behind my eyes as blood tries to reach a brain that’s slowly being starved of oxygen. My heartbeat pounds in my temples, in my wrists, in the sigil that heats against the noose with fire that should be comforting but only reminds me of what I’m about to lose.

Ismerie.

The thought cuts through the panic with terrible clarity. She’s still there—a bright point of awareness somewhere below and behind me, her presence throbbing with power I’ve never sensed from her before. She’s not watching me die. She’s not screaming or crying or surrendering to despair.

She’s working.

The gallows shudder.

Not the deliberate motion of the Judge’s courtroom—this is different. Involuntary. The old wood groaning under stress it wasn’t designed to bear, death wards flickering as the magic that sustains them begins to unravel.

Ismerie. Reaching the anchor. Pouring everything she has into destroying the foundation of the entity that’s killing me.

The noose loosens.

A fraction of an inch. Barely noticeable. But enough to let a thread of air slip through my crushed windpipe, enough to keep me conscious for another heartbeat, another second, another moment of hanging while the woman I love tears apart the monster from below.

The Judge notices.

“No.” The voices fragment with sudden alarm. Its form flickers—more violently now, stolen features melting into each other, robes unraveling at the edges. “She cannot—the anchor is mine—the wards are⁠—”

Another shudder runs through the gallows. Deeper this time. The trapdoor beneath me groans with the sound of splitting wood.

The spirits surrounding me begin to waver. The young witch’s form goes translucent, her vacant stare losing focus. The merchant’s features blur. The old scribe’s defiant expression softens into confusion.

The Judge is losing control.

My vision grays at the edges. The air I’m drawing through the loosened noose isn’t enough—not enough oxygen reaching my brain, not enough blood flowing to my heart. I’m dying. Slowly, agonizingly, but dying nonetheless.

But I’m not dead yet.

And somewhere in the foundations of the Grand Gallows, my mate is screaming with power she didn’t know she had.

The gallows explode.

Not from above—from below. The tainted earth beneath the platform erupts outward, ending magic detonating through centuries of accumulated execution with force that tears the warped oak apart. The trapdoor disintegrates. The support beams splinter. The entire transformed courtroom collapses into chaos.

The rope around my neck goes slack.

I fall again—this time without anything to catch me. My body crashes through the ruins of the platform, bouncing off shattered beams, tumbling through empty air until I hit the ground hard enough to drive what little breath I have left from my lungs.

For a long moment, I can’t move. Can’t think. Can only lie in the rubble of the Grand Gallows and remember how to breathe.

Air. Rushing into lungs that have been starved of it. The sweetest sensation I’ve ever known.

The sigil throbs against my neck—not with warning or fear, but with fierce, triumphant heat. Ismerie. Alive. More than alive.

Powerful.