13. Brannok #2
My hands claw at the noose, but the spectral chains still bind my wrists. My legs kick in empty air, searching for purchase that doesn’t exist. Every instinct screams at me to fight, to struggle, to tear myself free from the rope that’s crushing my windpipe.
The condemned always fight. Even the ones who accepted their fate, who climbed the gallows stairs with dignity and made their peace with the gods—when the trapdoor opened, when the rope bit into their necks, every one of them struggled. The body refuses to surrender even when the mind has given up.
Now I understand why.
The world narrows to a single point of agony.
My neck. The rope. The pressure building behind my eyes as blood tries to reach a brain that’s slowly being starved of oxygen.
My heartbeat pounds in my temples, in my wrists, in the sigil that heats against the noose with fire that should be comforting but only reminds me of what I’m about to lose.
Ismerie.
The thought cuts through the panic with terrible clarity. She’s still there—a bright point of awareness somewhere below and behind me, her presence throbbing with power I’ve never sensed from her before. She’s not watching me die. She’s not screaming or crying or surrendering to despair.
She’s working.
The gallows shudder.
Not the deliberate motion of the Judge’s courtroom—this is different. Involuntary. The old wood groaning under stress it wasn’t designed to bear, death wards flickering as the magic that sustains them begins to unravel.
Ismerie. Reaching the anchor. Pouring everything she has into destroying the foundation of the entity that’s killing me.
The noose loosens.
A fraction of an inch. Barely noticeable. But enough to let a thread of air slip through my crushed windpipe, enough to keep me conscious for another heartbeat, another second, another moment of hanging while the woman I love tears apart the monster from below.
The Judge notices.
“No.” The voices fragment with sudden alarm. Its form flickers—more violently now, stolen features melting into each other, robes unraveling at the edges. “She cannot—the anchor is mine—the wards are—”
Another shudder runs through the gallows. Deeper this time. The trapdoor beneath me groans with the sound of splitting wood.
The spirits surrounding me begin to waver. The young witch’s form goes translucent, her vacant stare losing focus. The merchant’s features blur. The old scribe’s defiant expression softens into confusion.
The Judge is losing control.
My vision grays at the edges. The air I’m drawing through the loosened noose isn’t enough—not enough oxygen reaching my brain, not enough blood flowing to my heart. I’m dying. Slowly, agonizingly, but dying nonetheless.
But I’m not dead yet.
And somewhere in the foundations of the Grand Gallows, my mate is screaming with power she didn’t know she had.
The gallows explode.
Not from above—from below. The tainted earth beneath the platform erupts outward, ending magic detonating through centuries of accumulated execution with force that tears the warped oak apart.
The trapdoor disintegrates. The support beams splinter.
The entire transformed courtroom collapses into chaos.
The rope around my neck goes slack.
I fall again—this time without anything to catch me. My body crashes through the ruins of the platform, bouncing off shattered beams, tumbling through empty air until I hit the ground hard enough to drive what little breath I have left from my lungs.
For a long moment, I can’t move. Can’t think. Can only lie in the rubble of the Grand Gallows and remember how to breathe.
Air. Rushing into lungs that have been starved of it. The sweetest sensation I’ve ever known.
The sigil throbs against my neck—not with warning or fear, but with fierce, triumphant heat. Ismerie. Alive. More than alive.
Powerful.
I force myself to roll over. To lift my head. To look toward the center of what used to be the execution square.
She stands in a crater of destroyed stone and splintered wood, amethyst light blazing from scars that cover her arms, her neck, her face.
Her eyes have become pools of darkness—not empty, but filled with depths that seem to go on forever.
Ending magic radiates from her in waves that make the air itself shiver.
She’s not the woman I claimed in desperation before a howling mob. She’s not the passive feeder who survived by consuming scraps of execution magic. She’s become different—vast and beautiful and formidable all at once.
She’s become death itself, wearing human skin because she chooses to.
The Judge reforms across the square.
Its form is damaged now—fused corpses coming apart at the seams, cycling visages flickering between faces faster than I can track. The robes have half-unraveled, revealing the nightmare of merged flesh beneath. But it’s still standing. Still manifested. Still powerful enough to kill.
“You think you’ve won, little sister?” The voices are ragged, breaking at the edges, but they still carry weight that makes the rubble around us tremble. “I am this city’s fear. I am its hunger for blood. You’ve destroyed my throne—but thrones can be rebuilt.”
Ismerie doesn’t answer with words.
She raises one hand, and the spirits the Judge commanded surge toward their former master.
Not to serve—to attack. The young witch with the broken neck leads the charge, spectral hands reaching for the entity that consumed her soul.
Garrett the Scribe follows, and the merchant, and dozens more I don’t recognize.
The wrongfully executed dead, turned against the monster born from their deaths.
I push myself to my feet. My neck is on fire, my body screaming with the aftermath of near-death, my vision still blurred at the edges. But I’m alive. I’m standing.
And I still have a promise to keep.
Ismerie’s eyes find mine across the chaos of the collapsing square. The bond brightens between us—not with words, because words aren’t what it provides, but with location. With awareness. With the certainty of where she is and that she’s waiting for me.
I move toward her.
Through the rubble of the platform I built my life around. Through the spirits of victims I’ll never be able to make amends to.
Through the ruins of a system I helped maintain for two decades.
She meets me halfway.
Her hand finds mine—cold from the ending magic she’s channeled, trembling with the aftermath of power no human was meant to wield. But her grip is strong. Her fingers interlock with mine with the familiarity of two people who have found each other in the dark.
“You’re alive.” Her words carry harmonics that weren’t there before—echoes of the ending magic still surging through her veins. “The noose—I sensed you falling—I thought—”
“You saved me.” I pull her close, one arm wrapping around her waist, the other hand cradling the back of her head.
Her body presses against mine, ash-blonde hair spilling over my arm, the scent of ending magic and desperation filling my lungs.
“You destroyed the wards. Broke the Judge’s hold. You did that.”
“I almost didn’t.” She’s shaking now, adrenaline and spent power catching up with her. “Another few seconds and you would have—”
“But I didn’t.” I press my lips to her temple. “I’m here. We’re here.”
Behind us, the Judge screams.
The spirits are overwhelming it—not destroying, but distracting. Buying us time that we need to use.
“It’s not dead.” Ismerie pulls back enough to meet my eyes. The pools of darkness are fading, replaced by the dark brown I remember, but amethyst still bleeds at the edges. “The anchor is damaged, not destroyed. I hurt it, but—”
“We need to finish it.” I release her waist, let my hand find hers again. The contact grounds me, keeps me focused when exhaustion and pain want to drag me under. “How?”
“The same way it was born.” Her fingers tighten around mine. “Execution. But not on the platform—the platform is destroyed. We’d need to…”