12. Ismerie #2
Not the faint radiance that appears during executions, the gentle luminescence that marks me as a death witch.
This is different entirely—brilliance that sears from within, power that throbs through my skin in waves that make the air itself shiver.
The sigils tattooed on my palms ignite with fire that doesn’t burn, channels opening that I never knew existed.
I’ve been drinking from a stream my entire life.
Now I’m drowning in the ocean.
The anchor stone shatters.
The sound echoes through the transformed courtroom—a sharp, decisive snap that silences the Judge’s mocking laughter, that makes the spirits in the gallery seating turn toward me with expressions of shock and terror.
The wards carved into the stone’s surface fracture, their magic spilling out like blood from a wound.
I drink that too.
More. There’s always more.
The ending magic of the gallows floods into me—not pooling, not accumulating, but becoming part of who I am.
Every execution that ever happened on this platform becomes mine.
Thousands of endings, compressed into a single impossible moment of awareness.
The young witch with the broken neck. The merchant who screamed his innocence.
The old scribe who cursed the Gallows Warden with his dying breath.
They’re all here. They’re all part of me now.
And they want vengeance.
The gallows begin to shudder.
Not the deliberate motion of the Judge’s transformed courtroom—this is involuntary.
The ancient oak groaning under stress it was never designed to bear, the iron reinforcements screaming as forces they can’t comprehend tear through their structure.
The death wards carved into every beam and post are failing, their magic draining into me faster than the entity can replace it.
I rise from my knees.
The tainted earth falls away from my hands, and I see that my skin has changed. Light throbs beneath the surface, visible through flesh that has become almost translucent. My scars aren’t scars anymore—they’re channels, conduits, pathways for power that flows through me like blood through veins.
I’m not feeding on death anymore.
I AM death.
The realization doesn’t frighten me. It sinks into my bones with the weight of truth finally acknowledged, of identity finally accepted. I’ve spent my entire life running from this moment, hiding from this truth, pretending I could be anything other than what I was born to be.
No more running. No more hiding. No more fear.
The gallows scream.
“What are you—how are you—the wards should have—”
“Should have stopped me?” My words come out wrong. Layered. Harmonic. The voices of the dead speaking through my windpipe, their fury becoming my fury, their need for justice becoming my need. “You twisted the wards to feed yourself. Did you think I couldn’t twist them further?”
Above me, the noose around Brannok’s neck is loosening. Not enough to save him—but enough to give him time. Precious seconds while the gallows tear themselves apart from the inside out.
The entity shifts from alarm to grudging respect, its stolen features arranging themselves into an expression of dark satisfaction.
“You’ve finally stopped pretending. Finally embraced what you are.
But you’re still a child playing with powers you don’t understand.
I was born from centuries of death. You’ve fed on scraps for barely three decades. You cannot—”
I raise my hand, and the gallows explode.
Not fractures—complete destruction. The ancient wood detonates outward in a spray of splinters and iron shards, three hundred years of execution architecture reduced to kindling in a single instant.
The Judge’s throne disintegrates beneath it.
The witness stands collapse. The gallery seating shatters, releasing spirits that scatter like leaves in a hurricane.
And Brannok falls.
The sigil blazes with sudden terror—not his terror, but my awareness of his position changing rapidly. Falling. The noose no longer attached to anything, the transformed platform no longer beneath his feet, nothing but empty air between him and the stone courtyard below.
I reach for him with power I didn’t know I had.
Ending magic surges from my hands, not to harm but to catch.
The energy wraps around his falling body like invisible arms, slowing his descent, cushioning the impact when he hits the rubble-strewn ground.
It’s not gentle—his ribs give beneath the force, air drives from his lungs—but he’s alive.
Breathing. The bond throbs with the steady rhythm of his heart.
Alive. He’s alive.
Relief crashes through me. For one moment, I let myself sense it—the gratitude of knowing he survived, the fierce joy of sensing his presence, knowing exactly where he is. He’s hurt, but he’s alive, and that’s enough. That has to be enough.
Then the Judge reforms.
It rises from the rubble like a nightmare given flesh—merged corpses pulling themselves from the scattered debris, stolen faces emerging from the bones buried beneath the execution square.
The entity has lost its throne, lost its courtroom, lost the platform that gave it shape and purpose. But it hasn’t lost its power.
If anything, I’ve made it stronger.
“You fool.” The voices harmonize into thunder that shakes the foundations of the square.
“Did you think I was bound to that platform? Did you think destroying my throne would destroy me?” The composite form swells, drawing on ending magic from sources I can’t see—the graveyards surrounding the city, the hospital where the sick go to die, every place in Blackhook where life ends and feeds the hungry dark.
“I AM this city’s fear. I AM its hunger for blood.
The gallows were a focus, nothing more. A convenient seat of power. ”
The entity towers over the wreckage, larger now that it has no throne to sit—its full scale filling the square the way a storm fills a valley.
“You’ve freed me from my throne.” The claimed features warp into a smile that contains no humanity, no mercy. “Now I’ll take the whole world as my kingdom.”
I should be afraid.
The Judge is more powerful than anything I’ve ever faced—centuries of accumulated death given consciousness and rage, an entity that has fed on executions since before my grandmother’s grandmother was born.
It’s beaten the Gallows Warden, haunted the council, terrorized a city.
What chance does a death witch with barely thirty years of experience have against a creature that old, that hungry, that certain of its own righteousness?
But I’m not afraid.
The power flooding through me has seared away fear along with everything else.
I am vast, ancient, formidable—a vessel for ending that has finally stopped pretending to be anything else.
The spirits I consumed aren’t separate from me anymore.
Their fury is my fury. Their need for justice is my need.
“You think you’re the only one who can draw on the city’s death?” My words echo with harmonics that make the scattered debris tremble. “You think you’re the only one who understands what power sleeps in these streets?”
I spread my arms, and the ending magic responds.
Not the concentrated reservoir beneath the platform—that’s destroyed, its contents absorbed into me.
This is different. Wider. I reach out with senses I didn’t know I possessed and touch every death that ever occurred in Blackhook City.
The executions, yes, but also the murders in dark alleys, the sick who died in their beds, the elderly who passed peacefully in their sleep.
Death is everywhere. Death is constant. Death has been feeding the hungry dark since humans first built walls around themselves and called it civilization.
The Judge has fed on wrongful execution for three centuries.
I can feed on everything else.
“You want to fight?” The entity’s form solidifies, its power stabilizing as it prepares for the confrontation to come. “You want to pit your decades against my centuries? Your feeding against my feasting?”
The sigil throbs against my collarbone. Brannok. Pulling himself from the rubble, armor dented and neck bruised but alive. Alive and rising and reaching for his blade with hands that have never trembled.
His presence sears in my awareness—not his thoughts, not his emotions, but his position. The certainty of where he is and that he’s moving toward me.
“No.” I lower my arms, let the ending magic coil through my bones like power waiting to be unleashed. “I want to end you. But not alone.”
The Judge’s faces cycle through expressions of contempt. “Your mate? The Gallows Warden who’s hanged more innocents than he can count? You think he can help you against me?”
“He’s the only one who can.”
Because the Judge is right about one thing—I can’t destroy it by myself.
The entity was born from wrongful execution, from innocent blood spilled on the platform in the name of order.
It’s fed on that injustice for centuries, grown fat on the suffering of the condemned, built itself from the accumulated rage of everyone who died when they shouldn’t have.
Power like that can’t be defeated by power alone.
It has to be judged. Sentenced. Executed.
And there’s only one man in Blackhook City who knows how to do that.
Brannok reaches my side. His hand finds mine—rough with rope scars, steady despite the tremors running through his exhausted body.
“You’re radiant.” His words are raw, torn rough by the noose that nearly killed him.
“I know.”
“It’s a good look.”
Despite everything—despite the monster looming before us, despite the ruined square and the scattered spirits and the impossible battle ahead—my lips curve into a smile.
“Flatterer.”
“Stating facts.” His grip tightens on my fingers. “You ready?”