Page 7 of Orc’s Gallows

My legs won’t cooperate. The oxygen deprivation hit harder than I realized, and my body demands recovery time I don’t have.

The death witch smiles.

Not a pleasant expression. Not defiant or brave or any of the things I’ve seen condemned prisoners try before the rope takes them. This smile is hollow and deliberate and perfectly aware of what it costs her.

She pulls off her ruined gloves, revealing the sigils carved into her palms in full. They radiate violet to match her eyes, throbbing with power she’s drawn from the very air. “We are alike. Which means I know exactly how to hurt you.”

She reaches out and places her palm against the revenant’s chest.

The power that releases nearly blinds me.

Violet light explodes through the execution square, washing over fleeing citizens and scattered guards and the blood-soaked timber where I’m still struggling to rise. The revenant screams—not with Mira Thornwood’s voice, but with a thousand voices layered into one, harmonized agony that shatters windows and sets dogs howling three districts away.

A tearing sensation.

The snapping of whatever held this entity to its stolen flesh registers in my bones. The presence behind those glowing eyes is ripped away, expelled from the body it was using, sent screaming back to wherever it came from.

The corpse collapses.

One moment it’s a towering monster made of impossible angles and ancient rage. The next it’s a dead woman crumpled on the cobblestones, neck still broken, face still gray, ordinary as any other executed prisoner.

The death witch sways on her feet.

The power she released has left her depleted—I can see it in the way she struggles to stay upright, in the trembling of her hands, in the violet light fading from her eyes. She gave everything she had to stop that thing.

And she’s still standing in the middle of an execution square surrounded by witnesses who watched her display prohibited magic.

My legs finally decide to work. I push off the beam, stumble toward the stairs, nearly fall twice before I reach ground level. My blade remains lost in the chaos, but I don’t need it for this.

A death witch. Exposed. Vulnerable. Capital offense under Blackhook law.

The crowd has noticed what she did.

Not the saving part. Not the stopping the monster part. They noticed the magic. The violet light. The power no human should possess.

“Witch!” someone screams.

The cry spreads like fire through dry brush. More voices join, turning accusation into chant, turning fear into fury.

I reach her first.

My hand closes around her arm—thin, trembling, the skin hot from the power she channeled. I pull her against my side, putting my body between her and the advancing mob. She’s taller than I expected. Her head comes up to my shoulder, and the scent of her fills my nostrils. Ending magic and wildflowers and fear. And beneath it all, an undertone that makes my pulse quicken—nothing to do with combat, everything I refuse to name.

“This woman is under arrest.” My words cut across the square with the authority I’ve spent two decades cultivating. “She will face judgment through proper channels.”

The crowd hesitates. Not because they’re satisfied—I can see the hunger in their eyes, the need for blood that won’t be denied. But they’ve spent two decades learning to fear me, learning that challenging the Gallows Warden means facing consequences they’d rather avoid.

Fear. My oldest tool. My most reliable weapon.

I drag her toward the Execution Hall, away from the destroyed gallows, away from the corpses of my guards, away from everything that’s gone wrong this morning. She doesn’t resist. Doesn’t struggle. Lets me pull her forward, her body pressed against my side in ways I refuse to acknowledge.

We pass the Grand Gallows.

The ropes move.

Not wind—there is no wind. The remaining nooses sway and twist toward her, reaching like blind things sensing prey. The timber groans, the entire structure shifting in her direction as if drawn by some invisible force. As if it wants her.

As if it knows what she is.