Page 26 of Orc’s Gallows

“Bodies that twitch longer than they should.” I keep my words measured. “Whispers from fresh graves. The feeling of being watched by faces that don’t have eyes.” I lean against the bar, deliberately casual. “I’ve been feeding on execution magic in this city for years. I know what normal death feels like. And what’s building under that platform isn’t normal.”

The barkeep’s hands still on the glass. Behind me, Brannok shifts his weight—a subtle movement that puts him in a better position to react if things turn violent.

“You’re her.” The woman at the card table speaks without looking up. “The death-witch who saved the Warden. The one they tried to hang.”

“Ismerie Ashfall.” I turn to face her. “And you are?”

“Someone who’s been waiting a long time to have this conversation.” She finally lifts her head, and I see what I should have noticed immediately.

Her eyes are white. Completely white, the irises and pupils replaced by milky film that should mean blindness. But her gaze finds my face with unerring accuracy, and power brushes against my senses—ending magic, old and deep and carefully controlled.

A death witch. One who’s been practicing far longer than I’ve been alive.

“Era.” She gestures to the chair across from her. “Sit. Your Warden can loom menacingly from the bar. We have much to discuss.”

Era’s hands move across the cards with the ease of long practice.

She doesn’t need sight to deal. Her fingers know the deck by touch, by weight, by the subtle differences in texture that decades of handling have worn into the paper. The cards spread across the table in patterns I don’t recognize—not fortune-telling, I realize. Memory. She’s using the cards to organize her thoughts.

“The thing under the execution platform.” She lays down the ace of swords. “I’ve known about it for forty years. Watched it grow. Felt it feeding on every execution the council ordered.”

“Forty years.” I can’t keep the shock from my words. “And you never tried to stop it?”

“Stop it how?” Her blind gaze finds mine with uncanny precision. “I’m one old woman. The gallows have been feeding for centuries. By the time I understood what was happening, the presence was already too strong to destroy.”

Behind me, Brannok moves closer. The brand warms at his proximity, and I force myself to focus on Era’s words instead of his presence.

“You said presence. Not entity. Not creature.” I watch her lay down another card—the hanged man, inverted. “What exactly are we dealing with?”

“A consciousness born from wrongful death.” Era’s words take on the cadence of someone reciting a lesson learned long ago. “Every time an innocent person dies on that platform, their ending leaves traces. Pain, fear, injustice—all of it pools beneath the gallows, mixing with the blood that soaks the soil. Over centuries, that accumulation gained awareness.”

“The Revenant Judge.” The name rises from my memory, though I don’t know where I heard it.

Era’s hands still on the cards. “You know that name.”

“I heard it. Somewhere.” The memory is hazy, more impression than fact. “In a dream, maybe. Or when I destroyed the revenant in the execution square.”

“The Judge has been reaching out.” Era resumes her dealing, laying cards in a pattern that spirals outward from the center. “Searching for anchors in the living world. Death witches are particularly susceptible—our magic is already attuned to endings. The Judge can use that attunement to… communicate.”

Communicate. A polite word for the nightmares that have plagued me for three nights. The courtroom made of bones. The faces shifting through features of the wrongfully dead. The voice that calls me sister.

“It wants me.” The admission costs more than I expected. “Specifically me. It called me sister when it raised the revenant.”

“The Judge doesn’t want any death-witch.” Era lays down the final card—the tower, lightning striking its foundations. “It wants one whose power carries the gallows’ own signature. An anchor must have absorbed that specific energy long enough for it to weave into their magic—not as a meal, but as a mark the Judge can recognize as its own.” She tilts her sightless gaze toward me. “Most practitioners feed at an execution once or twice, then move on. You returned to that platform for years. That power didn’t just sustain you—it became part of you. The Judge can sense it.”

“What does that mean? Being an anchor?”

A long pause. Era’s blind gaze shifts toward the bar, toward where Brannok stands in watchful silence.

“The Revenant Judge exists between states. Not fully alive, not truly dead. It can influence the physical world—animate corpses, move ropes, speak through the mouths of the executed—but it can’t manifest completely. Not without help.” Her fingers tap the tower card. “An anchor would give it that help. A living death-witch, bound to the Judge’s will, would serve as a bridge between what it is and what it wants to become.”

“And what does it want to become?”

“A god.” The word is flat. Final. “The Judge believes it dispenses true justice. It wants to expand that dispensation beyond the scaffold. Beyond Blackhook. Beyond anything the living can stop.”

Blood drains from my face. The brand on my collarbone throbs, and I know Brannok has moved closer without looking—his presence solid and unwavering against the chill spreading through my chest.

“The claiming.” His words cut through the silence. “The mating brand I seared into her. Does that change anything?”