Page 6 of Orc’s Gallows

“You maintain order through terror.” The voice drops to a whisper, a thousand voices speaking as one. “You believe fear keeps civilization intact. But you’ve never understood what fear truly is.”

I can’t breathe. Can’t speak. Can barely think past the pressure crushing my windpipe. My blade lies on the floor, out of reach. My guards are dead or dying. The crowd is screaming, fleeing, adding their panic to the chaos spreading across the execution square.

Then ending magic registers on senses I didn’t know I still possessed.

Thick and cloying, radiating from the dispersing crowd. Not the fading echoes of this morning’s execution—this is active. Feeding. Powerful enough to cut through the revenant’s presence.

A death witch. Here. Feeding on my execution.

My nostrils flare despite the crushing grip on my neck. The scent cuts through blood and decay and old wood, hits a primal part of my brain that recognizes danger and desire in equal measure.

The revenant’s head snaps toward the crowd. Its grip loosens enough for me to drag in a ragged breath, and I use the moment to search for what’s caught its attention.

I find her immediately.

Dark cloak pulled tight around a slender frame. Ash-blonde hair escaping a loose braid. Pale skin marked with faint scars around her wrists and throat—rope burns, I realize, though she’s too young to have survived a hanging. Her eyes blaze violet with barely contained power, bleeding light in the chaos of the square.

Beautiful.

I crush the thought. Beauty is irrelevant. She’s a death witch—capital offense in Blackhook City. She’s been feeding on executions I performed, sustaining herself on deaths I dealt. She’s a criminal, a parasite, exactly the kind of creature the gallows were built to handle.

And she’s staring at the revenant with recognition in those luminous eyes.

The thing wearing Mira Thornwood’s body releases me entirely. I drop to my knees on the platform, gasping, watching through blurred vision as it turns its full attention to the woman in the crowd.

The corpse tears itself free from the noose entirely. Rips away, leaving shredded rope and a chunk of neck flesh behind. It drops to the platform floor in a crouch that’s more insect than human, limbs folding at impossible angles as it orients on its new target.

Its stolen head rotates to face the death witch. The mouth shapes words that cut through the screaming chaos with impossible clarity:

“Sister. I’ve been waiting for you.”

I force myself upright against the beam.

Every breath sears. The thing’s fingers left bruises I can already sense swelling, and my vision keeps trying to gray out at the edges. But I’ve worked through worse. Taken wounds that should have killed me and kept moving because the job demanded it.

The job demands it now.

The revenant drops from the platform into the crowd. People scatter, trampling each other in their desperation to escape. The thing moves through them without attacking—not because it can’t, but because it has a different target. A specific target.

The death witch.

She hasn’t run. Stands frozen in a cleared space as the crowd flees around her, those violet-lit eyes fixed on the approaching monster. Her gloves are torn, and I can see sigils tattooed on her palms—channeling marks, the kind practitioners use to control powers too dangerous to wield unfiltered.

She knows exactly what she is. What she does. The sigils are self-inflicted, applied with full understanding of the consequences.

The revenant stops three feet from her. Close enough that its stolen breath must wash over her face, close enough that she could reach out and touch the dead flesh if she wanted. It towers over her—Mira Thornwood wasn’t tall, but the thing has hunched itself into a posture that adds bulk, presence, threat.

“You’ve been hiding.” The chorus carries across the square, cutting through the screams and panic. “Feeding on scraps while I devoured the feast. Taking enough to survive, never enough to grow.”

The woman’s chin lifts. A flicker crosses her violet-lit gaze—not fear, exactly. Recognition. Understanding.

Resignation.

“I know what you are.” She stands steady, stronger than expected from someone facing down a monster. “I know what made you.”

“Then you know why I’ve waited for you.” The revenant leans closer, dead lips nearly touching her ear.

Move. Retrieve your blade. Rally whatever guards are left standing. Contain this thing before it kills her and moves on to the rest of the city.