Page 73 of Orc’s Gallows

“We cannot undo what was done. Cannot bring back those whose names are carved in this stone. Cannot erase the centuries of blood that soaked this ground.” His tone softens—not weakness, but intention. “But we can choose differently. We can build a city where justice doesn’t require gallows. Where order doesn’t depend on terror. Where the guilty are punished and the innocent are protected, and we never again confuse the two because it’s easier than finding the truth.”

I watch him from the edge of the crowd, pride swelling through me. Three months ago, this man would have laughed at the idea of a city without gallows. Would have called it naive, dangerous, impossible. Now he stands before thousands of citizens and asks them to imagine it with him.

People can change. Killers can choose to be different. I’m living proof of that—and so is he.

“Light your candles.” Brannok’s final words carry the weight of ritual without the poison of execution ceremony. “Remember the dead. All of them. And let their names remind us what happens when fear becomes policy and death becomes entertainment.”

One by one, candles flicker to life across the memorial square. Thousands of tiny flames, each one held by a citizen who came to mourn the system they helped create. The light is golden, gentle—nothing like the harsh torchlight that once illuminated public executions.

A single bell begins to toll.

Not the execution bells—those have been silenced, their enchantments broken, their towers converted to other purposes. This is the memorial bell, newly forged and hung in the last surviving tower. It rings for remembrance rather than sentencing. Its tone is deeper, softer, stripped of the death wards that once sent throbs of fear through the streets.

Across the city, people pause to honor the dead. Not with fear. Not with entertainment. Not with the hungry anticipation of watching someone die. With acknowledgment. With grief. With the uncomfortable awareness that the past cannot be erased, only learned from.

It’s not perfect. Blackhook City still bears scars that will take generations to heal.

The system Brannok helped build doesn’t disappear overnight. Citizens still flinch when they see an orc in black armor, still lower their eyes when passing the old execution grounds, still carry the bone-deep fear that centuries of public death have bred into them. The new council struggles to maintain order without the gallows’ terror to enforce compliance. Crime has risen—not dramatically, but enough that some voices whisper about restoring the old ways.

But the gallows are gone. The platform has fallen. And in the silence where screams used to echo, a new way of living is taking tentative root.

Brannok finds me after the ceremony, in the shadow of the memorial wall where the names of the wrongfully executed are carved deepest.

He doesn’t speak. Doesn’t need to. He takes my hand, pulls me against his side, and we stand there in the candlelight, reading names that belong to people who should have lived.

“You were good.” I squeeze his fingers. “The speech. You were good.”

“I was honest.” His thumb traces circles on the back of my hand. “Not the same thing.”

“Sometimes it is.”

We fall into a comfortable silence. Around us, the crowd begins to disperse—families heading home, couples walking hand in hand through the memorial pathways, children reluctantly abandoning the garden’s wild beauty for bed and breakfast. The candles will burn through the night, tended by volunteers who have taken it upon themselves to ensure the dead are never left alone in the dark.

“The death witches want to meet with you.” Brannok breaks the quiet. “Era sent word this morning.”

I nod. The old blind witch has become an informal leader among our kind—the death witches of Blackhook City, who had to find new ways to survive when the executions stopped. Without public hangings to feed on, we’ve had to adapt. Hospital deaths. Natural endings. The gradual, inevitable mortality that doesn’t require gallows and spectacles.

It’s not as potent. The ending magic from a peaceful ending carries less power than the surge of a public execution. But it’s cleaner. Kinder. It lets us survive without being complicit in the system that nearly destroyed this city.

“What do they want?”

“Formalization.” Brannok guides me toward the edge of the memorial, away from the lingering mourners. “Recognition. A role in the new order that doesn’t require hiding what they are.”

“Death witches as official members of society.” I consider the idea as we walk. “Three months ago, that would have been a death sentence.”

“Three months ago, a lot of things were death sentences.” His hand finds the small of my back again, steadying me as we navigate the uneven ground of the memorial’s edge. “Including saving the Gallows Warden’s life.”

“Lucky for me, the Gallows Warden had other ideas.”

“Lucky for both of us.”

We leave the memorial behind, walking through streets that have begun to seem known in new ways. The fear that once permeated Blackhook City hasn’t disappeared, but it’s changed shape. People no longer eye the gallows with the dread of potential victims. Instead, they eye each other—uncertain about the rules, uncertain about who holds power, uncertain about what kind of city they’re building from the rubble.

It’s uncomfortable. Chaotic. Occasionally dangerous.

It’s also alive in a way Blackhook City hasn’t been for centuries.

“I got a message this morning.” I keep my tone casual, though what I’m about to say is anything but. “From a contact in Saltgrave.”