Brannok #2
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.
One rope whips out and coils around her ankle. She stumbles, nearly falls, and her weight shifts against me as the rope pulls taut. My blade is lost, but I still have a knife at my belt—I draw it, slash down, sever the attacking rope before it can drag her to the platform floor.
I don’t watch what the severed rope does. I shove her toward the Execution Hall doors and keep moving—threat neutralized, momentum maintained.
Wrong. This is all wrong.
Something beyond a death witch feeding on executions, beyond a revenant that shouldn’t have manifested. Something underneath all of it that my training has no name for. Whatever just happened on that platform was bigger than any of its parts.
“Move.” I shove her toward the Execution Hall doors. “Now.”
She doesn’t argue.
We plunge into darkness.
This is my domain. My world. I’ve lived in these chambers for two decades, surrounded by the names of everyone I’ve killed.
The death witch stumbles as I release her arm. She catches herself against the wall, leaving bloody fingerprints on centuries-old stone. Her torn gloves are gone, lost in the chaos above, and the sigils on her palms still shimmer faintly in the dim light.
“You need to chain me.” She sounds steadier than she has any right to. “Before I recover enough to be dangerous.”
I study her for a long moment.
She’s depleted—that much is obvious. Whatever power she used to destroy the revenant has left her gutted, trembling, barely able to stand. The violet light in her eyes has faded to a dull human brown, and the fever-heat of her skin has cooled to normal.
She’s no threat right now. But she’s right. She needs to be contained.
I retrieve the suppression manacles from their hook by the interrogation chamber door.
Enchanted iron etched with death-dampening runes—the same kind of restraints that should have kept her from manifesting power in the first place.
The same kind that held Mira Thornwood until a presence far stronger broke through.
She extends her wrists without being asked.
The manacles close with a click that echoes in the stone corridor.
She flinches as the runes activate, and I watch her remaining power drain away.
The shimmer in her palms dies. The trembling in her hands stills.
She becomes simply a woman—pale, exhausted, marked with scars that tell stories I don’t need to know.
“The cells are through there.” I gesture toward the heavy iron door at the corridor’s end. “You’ll be held until the council can be convened.”
“The council will order my execution.” Not a question.
“Yes.”