Page 62 of Orc’s Gallows

I pull the rope.

And somewhere in the foundations of my soul, a weight I’ve carried for twenty years finally begins to lift.

FOURTEEN

ISMERIE

The Judge attacks with the fury of centuries denied.

No longer confined to the platform, no longer bound by the anchor I destroyed, the entity surges across the ruined execution square with power that makes the air itself shriek. Its merged form swells as it draws on death from every corner of Blackhook City—the graveyards, the hospitals, the dark alleys where blood has been spilled and forgotten. The rope-woven robes lash out like tentacles, each strand a noose seeking a neck to crush.

I meet it with equal fury.

The ending magic I absorbed from the gallows’ anchor blazes through me, transforming me into a conduit for ending, a channel for the void itself. I’m not feeding anymore. I’m wielding. Every execution that ever happened on this platform is mine to command, and I throw that power at the Judge with words that exist only in the language of the dead.

The entity’s stolen flesh tears under my assault. Chunks of fused corpses rip away from its form, dissolving into ash before they hit the ground. The Judge screams with its chorus of voices—rage and pain harmonizing into a sound that shatters windows across the square.

But it doesn’t fall. Doesn’t retreat.

It reforms around the wounds I’ve inflicted, drawing on reserves I can’t match. For every piece I tear away, two more emerge from the bones buried beneath the execution square. The entity has fed on this city’s fear for three hundred years. I’ve fed on scraps for barely three decades.

The mathematics are brutal.

“Little sister.” The Judge drips with mockery beneath the pain. Its shifting faces pause on an expression of dark amusement. A sound like grinding bone follows. “You’ve grown teeth. How delightful. But teeth aren’t enough. Not against me. Not against what I’ve become.”

A rope-wound arm sweeps toward me. I dodge, but the trailing fabric catches my shoulder, spinning me off balance. The impact drives me to one knee on the rubble-strewn ground, my palms scraping against shattered oak and twisted iron.

The sigil on my collarbone flares—a sharp, insistent tug.

Brannok. Pulling himself from the debris where he fell when the gallows exploded. His presence sears in my awareness—not his thoughts, not his emotions, but his position. The certainty of where he is, twenty feet to my left, rising despite the bruises purpling his neck.

Get up. Get up and fight.

I push myself upright as the Judge strikes again. Ending magic crashes against my defenses—wave after wave of accumulated ending, pressing against my consciousness with weight that threatens to crush me into oblivion. My vision flickers. My scars blaze with light that’s starting to fade.

I can’t win this fight alone.

It has to be executed—and there’s only one man in Blackhook City who knows how.

I throw myself sideways as another rope-tentacle lashes through the space where my head was. The entity is toying with me now, secure in its superiority, enjoying the spectacle of a death witch who dared to challenge it slowly losing ground.

Buy him time. Whatever he’s doing, buy him time.

I gather what remains of my stolen power and launch myself at the Judge.

Not to defeat it. Not to destroy it. To distract it.

My hands blaze with light as I tear into the entity’s form, ripping away merged flesh and stolen faces with desperate fury. The Judge howls, turning its full attention toward me, its body swelling with rage as it abandons games in favor of annihilation.

Good.

Pain erupts across my back as a rope-wound fist connects with my spine. I fly forward, hitting the rubble hard enough to drive the air from my lungs. Before I can rise, spectral chains surge from the Judge’s form—the same guilt-forged links that bound Brannok, reaching for my wrists, my ankles, my neck.

“You’ve been feeding on my leavings for years, little sister.” The entity looms over me, its multitude of faces arranged in expressions of hungry anticipation. “Now it’s time to return what you’ve taken.”

The chains close around my wrists. Cold seeps into my bones—not physical cold, but the frozen weight of accumulated guilt.

No.