Page 64 of Orc’s Gallows

The entity whirls toward me, its stolen faces contorting with surprise and fury. Behind it, Ismerie drops to her knees, her body shaking with exhaustion, her scars still faintly radiant with the last of her stolen power.

Magnificent. Depleted and trembling and utterly devastating.

The sigil on my neck throbs in answer to hers. She’s done her part. Led the monster where I need it to go. Bought me the time I needed to work.

Now it’s my turn.

I stand beneath the makeshift gallows—beam, crossbar, noose—and wait for the thing I built it for.

“The court recognizes the condemned.” My words carry the same formal weight I’ve used to pronounce sentences for two decades. The words seem different now—not empty ritual but genuine judgment. “You stand accused of crimes against the living and the dead.”

The Judge’s faces freeze. Its body goes still, the rope-tentacles that were reaching for Ismerie falling slack at its sides.

It recognizes what I’ve built. Understands what I intend.

“You cannot be serious.” The voices harmonize into disbelief. “You think to execute me? You, who served me for twenty years? You, whose hands have fed my becoming with every lever you pulled?”

“I think to end you.” I don’t move from my position beneath the gallows. Don’t need to. The entity will come to me—its rage won’t allow otherwise. “The charges are these: consumption of innocent souls. Perversion of justice into vengeance. Attack upon the Gallows Warden and his mate.”

“Your mate.” The Judge’s faces arrange themselves into cruel amusement. “The death witch who fed on my leavings. The woman you claimed to save her from the very justice you dispensed for decades.” The entity takes a step toward me, then another, drawn by fury it can’t control. “What a pair you make. The executioner and his pet monster.”

“She’s not a pet.” My hand tightens on the rope. “And she’s not a monster.”

“No?” Another step. The Judge is almost within range now, its form swelling with power it thinks will protect it. “Then what is she?”

I don’t answer. Don’t need to. The truth is blazing on my neck for anyone with eyes to see.

She’s mine. And I’m hers. Whatever else we are—whatever killers we’ve been or might become—that doesn’t change.

The Judge lunges.

I’ve been waiting for this moment since I started building the gallows. The entity’s rage has made it predictable—it wants to tear me apart with its own hands, wants to sense my bones break under its fists. It’s forgotten that I’ve spent my entire life studying how death works.

I step sideways at the last instant, letting the Judge’s momentum carry it past me. The noose swings down as I pull the rope—not around the entity’s neck, not yet, but tangling in its rope-woven robes, catching on the merged flesh of its stolen bodies.

“Now, Ismerie!”

She’s already moving. Rising from her knees with power she shouldn’t have left, ending magic blazing from hands that sear with amethyst light. The energy hits the witch-hair rope and ignites it—not with fire but with suppression, the same wards that have been used to bind witches for centuries now turned against the greatest witch-born horror Blackhook has ever known.

The Judge screams.

The rope tightens around its form, witch-hair fibers biting into merged flesh, suppression wards drinking the ending magic that sustains its existence. The entity thrashes, trying to tear free, but every movement only draws the noose tighter.

I haul on the rope.

Every lever I’ve ever pulled prepared me for this one.

The rope slides over the crossbar, lifting the Judge from the ground. Its body dangles in the air—not by the neck like a proper execution, but by the torso, the noose wrapped around its merged flesh in a dozen places. Close enough.

“You cannot—” The voices are fragmenting now, individual tones breaking free from the chorus. “This is not—I AM justice—I AM⁠—”

“You’re a vengeance that convinced itself it was virtue.” I tie off the rope, securing the Judge in place. “And now you’re going to face the same fate you’ve dispensed for three hundred years.”

Ismerie reaches my side. Her hand finds mine—cold and trembling and perfect. I pull her close without breaking eye contact with the thrashing entity, her body pressing against mine with the easy certainty of two people who have learned each other in the dark.

“Can you anchor it?” My words are rough, worn raw by the rope burns still purpling my neck. “Keep it manifested while I⁠—”

“While you execute it?” She looks up at me, dark eyes bleeding amethyst at the edges. A ghost of her usual humor surfaces through the exhaustion. “Never thought I’d be helping the Gallows Warden hang anyone.”