Page 28 of Orc’s Gallows

You know what you’ve done. You know how many have died so you could live.

A figure sits at the judge’s bench—a towering presence in robes woven from hanging ropes. Its face shifts constantly, cycling through features I’ve seen distort in death. The young witch from the revenant incident. A merchant falsely accused of treason. A child whose only crime was being born to the wrong parents.

All of them dead. All of them feeding the thing before me.

“Sister.” The Judge speaks with a chorus, a hundred wrongful endings harmonized into a single terrible sound. “You’ve finally come.”

“This is a dream.” I force the words out, though my throat feels filled with ash. “You can’t hurt me here.”

“Hurt you?” The shifting faces arrange themselves into an expression of wounded dignity. “I don’t want to hurt you. I want to save you.”

“Save me from what?”

“From the one who claims you.” The Judge leans forward, and I see its robes writhe with captured souls. “From the executioner who has killed hundreds in the name of order. From the monster who seared his ownership into your flesh without asking permission.”

“He saved my life.”

“He saved his possession.” Contempt drips from the voice. “Do you truly believe he cares about you? About who you are, what you want, what you need? He marked you because his instincts demanded it. You’re a trophy. A prize. A thing to be owned.”

The words hit harder than they should. I’ve thought the same things, in the dark hours when the brand sears and I wonder what I’ve agreed to.

“You don’t know him.” I force steel into my words. “You don’t know what he’s given up.”

“I know what he’s taken.” The Judge rises from its bench, its composite form towering over me. “I know every life he’s ended on that platform. Every innocent who died screaming while he pulled the lever without hesitation. Every wrongful death that fed my becoming.”

It gestures, and the courtroom shifts around me. I’m standing on the scaffold, watching Brannok perform an execution. The condemned is a woman—young, terrified, proclaiming her innocence with every breath. The crowd jeers. The drums beat their countdown.

The lever pulls. The floor drops. The rope catches.

And ending magic floods through me, sweet and terrible, sustaining me with another death I did nothing to prevent.

“You’re the same.” The Judge’s words are soft now, almost gentle. “Both of you. Monsters who feed on death to survive. The only difference is scale.”

“I never killed anyone.”

“You let them die. Watched them die. Fed on their dying.” The shifting faces cycle through expressions of sad understanding. “The executioner pulls the lever. The witch drinks the magic. The innocent still ends up dead.”

I want to argue. Want to find words that will refute the accusation. But the truth of it settles into my bones like poison.

He’s right. The Judge is right. I’ve been complicit in every execution I witnessed. Every death I fed upon.

“The mating bond can be broken.” The Judge circles me, its rope-woven robes whispering against the skull-paved floor. “I can show you how. Free you from the executioner’s claim, from the ownership he seared into your flesh. You could be free. Truly free. Beholden to no one.”

“And then?”

“Then we become partners.” The shifting faces settle into an expression of benevolent purpose. “You and I, sister. Death witches both, born from wrongful endings, sustained by the magic of execution. We could change this city. End the system that created us both. True justice, finally dispensed.”

The offer is seductive. It tugs at parts of me I’ve tried to ignore—the guilt, the self-loathing, the desperate need to matter.

All I have to do is break the bond. Let the claiming dissolve. Let the Judge have what it wants.

“No.”

The word surprises me as much as the Judge. I didn’t plan to say it. Didn’t plan to refuse.

But the brand on my collarbone throbs warm, and I remember the feel of Brannok’s hand on my shoulder. The certainty in his words when he said he wouldn’t let me go.

He chose me. Destroyed everything for me. Whatever else he is, he’s mine now.