8. Ismerie
EIGHT
ISMERIE
Idon’t go willingly.
The shadow comes for me while Brannok is at the council meeting, slipping through a crack in the Execution Hall’s foundation that it made itself—not with force but with patience, following the channels of old death-magic that already ran through the stone, the same channels I have fed from for years.
One moment I’m standing at the window watching the riots burn themselves out in the merchant quarter, my fingers tracing the claiming brand on my collarbone—a habit I’ve developed without noticing, seeking the warmth of his presence even when he’s not near.
The next, cold fingers wrap around my neck and drag me backward into darkness.
Not fingers. Tendrils. Wisps of concentrated ending magic that coil around my limbs with the intimacy of a lover and the strength of iron chains. I try to scream, but the shadow pours into my mouth, filling my lungs with the taste of old graves and unjust endings.
The Judge. It found a way inside.
The realization comes too late to matter.
The tendrils lift me off my feet, pull me through corridors I don’t recognize—passages in the Hall’s foundations that seem to have been carved by decay itself.
Stone walls give way to packed earth, then to soil that squirms with the memory of buried dead.
The air grows colder with each passing moment, carrying the scent of lime and rot and centuries of accumulated death.
I reach for my power. Reach for the dark power that has sustained me for years, that should respond to my will even in this darkness.
Nothing answers.
The shadow around me drinks every scrap of energy I try to gather. It’s not suppressing my magic the way the council’s manacles did. It’s feeding on it. Consuming whatever I produce before I can shape it into resistance.
Like being back in the crowd. Like being powerless while innocents die.
The irony of it lands like a fist: I spent years feeding on others’ endings, and now something feeds on mine.
The shadow drags me upward. Through soil, through stone, through the foundations of buildings I can’t identify. My lungs sear. My vision swims. The mating brand on my collarbone flares hot—a beacon, a warning, a desperate signal to the orc who can’t possibly reach me in time.
Brannok. He’ll feel this. He’ll know I’m in danger.
But he’s at the council meeting. Across the city, surrounded by enemies, unaware that the Judge has found a way to take what it wants despite the claiming.
We emerge into moonlight.
The execution square stretches before me, silver-washed and silent.
The shadow releases me.
I collapse onto the cold cobblestones. My hands scrape against the rough, gritty surface as I push myself upright, gasping for air that tastes of iron and old fear.
The square is empty. No guards, no citizens, no witnesses to whatever is about to happen. The buildings surrounding the plaza stand dark, their windows shuttered, their occupants either fled or hiding.
Where is everyone?
I stagger to my feet, scanning for escape routes.
The streets leading from the square should be patrolled—Halvard’s men, at minimum, maintaining some semblance of order despite the riots.
But every avenue stands empty. Every doorway gapes dark.
The entire district has been stripped of life, leaving only me and the gallows that waits with hungry patience.
The same ending-magic that dragged me here must have pushed them away—not with force, but with compulsion, the deep instinctive wrongness that makes living things flee a place of mass death before they understand why.
A sound rises from the execution structure.
Not creaking timber or settling wood. Breathing. Deep, rhythmic inhalations that seem to come from the structure itself. The ancient gallows expands and contracts with each breath, its damaged wards pulsing in time with the terrible respiration.
The ropes begin to move.
Slowly at first—gentle swaying that could almost be wind. Then more purposefully, coiling and reaching like the tendrils of some vast sea creature. They orient toward me with blind awareness, sensing the ending magic that courses through my veins.
It’s awake. Fully awake.
I back away from the execution platform, my bare feet cold against the bloodstained cobblestones. I’m still wearing the sleeping shift I had on when the shadow took me—no shoes, no weapons, no protection against whatever is rising from the depths of that ancient structure.
The trapdoor opens.
Not the mechanical release of lever and hinge. The wooden panel simply parts, splitting down the center like a wound opening in flesh. Cold light spills from the gap—not moonlight, not torchlight, but the pale illumination of condemned innocents given form.
A figure rises from the gallows’ depths.
I’ve seen the Judge in dreams. Seen it in the bone-walled courtroom of my nightmares, cycling through the faces of the wrongfully executed. But dreams are shadows of reality, pale imitations that can’t capture the full horror of the thing climbing onto the platform above me.
It towers. Twelve feet of fused corpses wrapped in robes woven from witch-hair rope, bodies merged at impossible angles, limbs sprouting from torsos and faces embedded in chests.
The composite form moves with terrible grace, each step accompanied by the whisper of hangman’s nooses that trail from its robes like the train of some nightmare bride.
Its face shifts constantly. A young witch’s terrified expression melts into an old man’s dignified acceptance, then a child’s confusion, then a merchant’s desperate denial.
Every innocent who died on this gallows lives in that ever-changing visage, their features surfacing and submerging in an endless tide of stolen identities.
The eyes remain constant. Cold white light, blazing with the absolute certainty of righteous judgment.
“Little sister.” The voice harmonizes from a hundred dead throats. “You’ve finally come home.”
I try to run.
My legs carry me three strides before the ropes find me. They lash around my ankles, my wrists, my waist—witch-hair braids that suppress my magic even as they bind my body. I hit the cobblestones hard, the impact driving air from my lungs.
The ropes drag me toward the gallows.
I claw at the stone beneath me, nails breaking against the rust-stained surface. The claiming brand sears against my collarbone, a constant heat that speaks of distance and danger and the man who should be able to find me.
Brannok. He has to know. The bond tells him where I am.
But knowing and reaching are different things. He’s across the city. The Judge has had hours to prepare this moment, to clear the square, to ensure that no rescue will arrive in time.
The ropes haul me up the gallows stairs. Thirteen steps—I’ve counted them before, watching others climb toward death. Now I feel each one against my shins, my thighs, my hip bones as the witch-hair bindings drag me toward the platform.
The Judge waits at the top.
Up close, the wrongness is overwhelming.
The bodies that comprise its form weren’t simply fused—they were woven.
Flesh interlaced with flesh, bone threaded through bone, the boundaries between victims erased in a tapestry of stolen mortality.
I can see individual faces trapped in its torso, mouths frozen in final screams, eyes still moving with trapped awareness.
“You’ve been feeding on my leavings for years.
” The borrowed visages twist into something patient and benevolent.
“Taking the scraps of ending magic while I devoured the feast. Did you ever wonder where the power came from? Did you ever ask yourself why executions generated so much more energy than natural deaths?”
I don’t answer. Can’t. The ropes around my neck are too tight, and the truth of its words lands in my chest like a punch—not new, not surprising, only more unbearable for being spoken aloud by the thing I made possible.
“You were part of my becoming.” The Judge circles me, its rope-wound robes trailing across the bloodstained platform.
“Every death witch who feeds at my table contributes to my strength. Every passive observer who watches without acting validates my existence.” It pauses, the parade of stolen features softening into false sympathy.
“You tell yourself you had no choice. That survival required compromise. But we both know the truth, don’t we? ”
“The Gallows Warden will come for you.” The Judge steps back, spreading arms that end in rope-wound fingers. “The claiming brand flares both ways, after all. He’ll know exactly where you are. He’ll come running, sword drawn, prepared to destroy anything that threatens his possession.”
“I’m not his possession.”
“No?” The rotating masks settle into theatrical worry. “Then what are you? A partner? An equal? Or a woman he claimed because his instincts demanded it, because ancient magic chose you and he couldn’t resist the pull?”
The words hit harder than the ropes binding my limbs. I’ve thought those exact things, late at night when the brand throbs and I wonder what I’ve agreed to.
“He saved my life.”
“You’re a monster.”
“I’m justice.” The Judge rises to its full height, towering over me.
“The justice this city has denied for three centuries. The justice the council refuses to dispense. The justice your mate has perverted every time he pulled the lever for political convenience.” Its voice echoes across the empty square.
“I am every wrongful death given form. Every innocent cry for mercy ignored. Every broken promise of fair trial and impartial judgment.”
“You’re vengeance.” I struggle against the ropes, feeling them tighten in response. “Not justice. Vengeance wearing judicial robes.”
“Is there a difference?” The rotating visages pause on a child—young, confused, not understanding why he was being led to the gallows.
“When the system is corrupt, when the authorities are complicit, when every legal avenue has been exhausted and the innocent still die—what remains except vengeance? What other tool can possibly balance the scales?”
I don’t have an answer. Don’t have words that will counter three centuries of accumulated grievance, of wrongful death, of justice denied and promises broken.
“The Warden approaches.” The Judge turns toward the streets leading to the square. “I can feel him coming. The claiming brand blazes so bright, doesn’t it? Leading him straight to you. Straight to me.”
Brannok.
He’s close. Getting closer. Running toward danger because the magic demands it, because I’m his mate and the bond won’t let him ignore my peril.
“When he arrives, I’ll show him what real justice looks like.
” The Judge’s voice carries a note of anticipation.
“I’ll conduct his trial right here, on the execution platform he used to deliver so many false verdicts.
I’ll let his victims speak. Let them testify to the deaths he caused, the lives he ended, the innocence he ignored. ”
“He’ll destroy you.” The words come out fiercer than I intend. “He’s killed monsters before. He’ll kill you too.”
“Will he?” The Judge laughs again. “On my throne? Surrounded by my power? With you bound and helpless, watching every moment?” The dead visages twist with dark delight.
“I think not. I think he’ll listen. I think he’ll finally understand what he’s been part of.
And when he does—when the weight of all those deaths crashes down on his conscience—I think he’ll welcome the noose. ”
The Judge opens its mouth.
All of its mouths. Every face in that amalgamated form speaks simultaneously, a chorus of stolen lives that echoes across the execution square like thunder.
And from those hundred throats, I hear my own voice.
Brannok.
A single word. My voice, in a register I barely recognize—stripped of every defence, carrying the full weight of every question I’ve buried in the dark.
The Judge has reached into my mind. Stolen the most unguarded thing it could find. Turned it into a weapon.
“Stop.” I strain against the ropes. “That’s not—you don’t get to use that—”
“Your secrets are my secrets now, death witch.” The Judge looms over me, its rotating faces frozen in expressions of cruel triumph.
“Every doubt you’ve harbored. Every fear you’ve hidden.
Every moment of weakness when you questioned whether the claiming was genuine or magical compulsion.
” Its voice drops to a whisper. “I know what you truly think of your mate. And when he arrives, I’ll make him hear every word. ”
Horror crawls through my chest like ice water. The Judge isn’t planning to kill Brannok. It’s going to destroy him first. Use my own words—my own fears—to shatter whatever confidence he has left.
“He’s a good man.” I force the words out. “Better than he believes. Better than you know.”
“Then let him prove it.” The Judge straightens, turning toward the streets where the sound of running footsteps grows louder.
“Let him face the truth of what you think of him. Let him hear the doubts his mate harbors, the fears she can’t voice, the questions she asks in the darkness.
” The stolen visages reshape into anticipation.
“If he truly loves you—if the claiming is more than magical compulsion—he’ll survive the hearing. If not…”
The Judge spreads its arms, and the ropes around me tighten.
“If not, then the noose will find another neck to claim.”
I see him enter the square.
Brannok. Running, sword drawn, armor gleaming in the moonlight.
His face is set in the expression I’ve come to recognize—the cold calculation of a man who has weighed risks and decided violence is the answer.
But beneath that calculation, I see fear.
Not fear of the Judge or fear of death—fear for me.
Fear of what might happen if he arrives too late.
The claiming bond surges between us. I sense his relief at seeing me alive, his fury at seeing me bound, his absolute determination to destroy anything that threatens what’s his.
Turn back. Please, turn back. You don’t understand what it’s going to do.
But the bond can’t carry thoughts. Can’t communicate warnings. All I can do is watch as he charges toward the gallows, toward the Judge, toward the trap that has been waiting for him since before either of us understood what was waking beneath the execution platform.
He reaches the base of the stairs, blade raised, ready to cut through anything that stands between us.
The Judge steps to the edge of the platform, looking down at him with a hundred dead faces.
“Gallows Warden.” The voice echoes across the empty square. “How punctual. The claiming bond is such a reliable leash, isn’t it?”
Brannok doesn’t respond to the taunt. His gaze finds mine, and I see the question there—are you hurt, are you broken, is there still time to save you?
I’m fine. I’m fine. Please don’t listen to what it’s about to say.
The Judge laughs with a hundred stolen voices.
And begins to speak with mine.