Page 63 of Orc’s Gallows

I reject the guilt the way I rejected my fear. The chains are weapons, not truth. They’re designed to bind, to paralyze, to make victims accept their fate the way the condemned accept the noose. But I’m not a victim. Not anymore.

I’m a death witch who has stopped pretending to be anything else.

The power I absorbed from the anchor surges through me one last time. Not enough to break free—not enough to defeat the Judge—but enough to do what needs to be done.

I reach for the spirits trapped within the entity’s form.

Not to consume them. Not to feed on them. To wake them.

The young witch with the broken neck. The merchant who screamed his innocence. The old scribe who cursed the Gallows Warden with his dying breath. They’re all still in there, trapped in the Judge’s merged consciousness, their identities subsumed into the entity’s hunger for vengeance.

I call to them with the language of death itself.

Fight. You’re not part of it. You’re prisoners. Fight.

The Judge staggers.

Its body shudders as the spirits within begin to stir—not with the entity’s will, but with their own. The faces freeze, expressions shifting from hunger to confusion to dawning awareness. The chorus of voices fragments, individual tones emerging from the harmony of rage.

“What—what are you—stop⁠—”

The chains around my wrists weaken. I tear free, scrambling backward across the rubble, putting distance between myself and the thrashing entity. The Judge is fighting itself now—the collective will that bound it warring with the individual souls it consumed.

It won’t last. The entity is too strong, the spirits too long imprisoned. In moments, the Judge will reassert control, and then⁠—

Movement at the edge of my vision.

Brannok. Rising from behind a pile of shattered beams, a length of witch-hair rope coiled in his hands. His gaze meets mine across the chaos of the collapsing square.

The bond thrums between us. Not words—words aren’t what it provides—but recognition. The knowledge that he is ready, that he has a plan, that he needs me to do one more thing before this ends.

I gather the last dregs of my power and turn back toward the thrashing Judge.

“Hey.” My words come out raw, frayed thin by exhaustion. “Over here, you overgrown corpse pile.”

The entity’s attention snaps toward me. Its internal struggle pauses as fury overwhelms confusion—the rage of a creature that has been defied one too many times.

“You dare⁠—”

I hit it with everything I have left. Not enough to wound it. Not enough to slow it. But enough to make it chase me.

I run.

The Judge follows, rope-tentacles lashing at my heels, voices howling promises of eternal torment. I dodge through the rubble, leading it away from where Brannok works—away from the makeshift gallows I can sense him building at the edge of my awareness.

Herding it. Driving it. Positioning it for the kill.

Trust him.

I pivot sharply, doubling back toward the center of the square. The Judge’s momentum carries it past me, and for one precious moment, its back is turned.

Brannok’s words ring out across the ruins.

“Judge.”

BRANNOK

The word cuts through the chaos.