14. Ismerie
FOURTEEN
ISMERIE
The Judge attacks with the fury of centuries denied.
No longer confined to the platform, no longer bound by the anchor I destroyed, the entity surges across the ruined execution square with power that makes the air itself shriek.
Its merged form swells as it draws on death from every corner of Blackhook City—the graveyards, the hospitals, the dark alleys where blood has been spilled and forgotten.
The rope-woven robes lash out like tentacles, each strand a noose seeking a neck to crush.
I meet it with equal fury.
The ending magic I absorbed from the gallows’ anchor blazes through me, transforming me into a conduit for ending, a channel for the void itself.
I’m not feeding anymore. I’m wielding. Every execution that ever happened on this platform is mine to command, and I throw that power at the Judge with words that exist only in the language of the dead.
The entity’s stolen flesh tears under my assault. Chunks of fused corpses rip away from its form, dissolving into ash before they hit the ground. The Judge screams with its chorus of voices—rage and pain harmonizing into a sound that shatters windows across the square.
But it doesn’t fall. Doesn’t retreat.
It reforms around the wounds I’ve inflicted, drawing on reserves I can’t match. For every piece I tear away, two more emerge from the bones buried beneath the execution square. The entity has fed on this city’s fear for three hundred years. I’ve fed on scraps for barely three decades.
The mathematics are brutal.
“Little sister.” The Judge drips with mockery beneath the pain. Its shifting faces pause on an expression of dark amusement. A sound like grinding bone follows. “You’ve grown teeth. How delightful. But teeth aren’t enough. Not against me. Not against what I’ve become.”
A rope-wound arm sweeps toward me. I dodge, but the trailing fabric catches my shoulder, spinning me off balance. The impact drives me to one knee on the rubble-strewn ground, my palms scraping against shattered oak and twisted iron.
The sigil on my collarbone flares—a sharp, insistent tug.
Brannok. Pulling himself from the debris where he fell when the gallows exploded. His presence sears in my awareness—not his thoughts, not his emotions, but his position. The certainty of where he is, twenty feet to my left, rising despite the bruises purpling his neck.
Get up. Get up and fight.
I push myself upright as the Judge strikes again. Ending magic crashes against my defenses—wave after wave of accumulated ending, pressing against my consciousness with weight that threatens to crush me into oblivion. My vision flickers. My scars blaze with light that’s starting to fade.
I can’t win this fight alone.
It has to be executed—and there’s only one man in Blackhook City who knows how.
I throw myself sideways as another rope-tentacle lashes through the space where my head was. The entity is toying with me now, secure in its superiority, enjoying the spectacle of a death witch who dared to challenge it slowly losing ground.
Buy him time. Whatever he’s doing, buy him time.
I gather what remains of my stolen power and launch myself at the Judge.
Not to defeat it. Not to destroy it. To distract it.
My hands blaze with light as I tear into the entity’s form, ripping away merged flesh and stolen faces with desperate fury. The Judge howls, turning its full attention toward me, its body swelling with rage as it abandons games in favor of annihilation.
Good.
Pain erupts across my back as a rope-wound fist connects with my spine.
I fly forward, hitting the rubble hard enough to drive the air from my lungs.
Before I can rise, spectral chains surge from the Judge’s form—the same guilt-forged links that bound Brannok, reaching for my wrists, my ankles, my neck.
“You’ve been feeding on my leavings for years, little sister.” The entity looms over me, its multitude of faces arranged in expressions of hungry anticipation. “Now it’s time to return what you’ve taken.”
The chains close around my wrists. Cold seeps into my bones—not physical cold, but the frozen weight of accumulated guilt.
No.
I reject the guilt the way I rejected my fear. The chains are weapons, not truth. They’re designed to bind, to paralyze, to make victims accept their fate the way the condemned accept the noose. But I’m not a victim. Not anymore.
I’m a death witch who has stopped pretending to be anything else.
The power I absorbed from the anchor surges through me one last time. Not enough to break free—not enough to defeat the Judge—but enough to do what needs to be done.
I reach for the spirits trapped within the entity’s form.
Not to consume them. Not to feed on them. To wake them.
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 still in there, trapped in the Judge’s merged consciousness, their identities subsumed into the entity’s hunger for vengeance.
I call to them with the language of death itself.
Fight. You’re not part of it. You’re prisoners. Fight.
The Judge staggers.
Its body shudders as the spirits within begin to stir—not with the entity’s will, but with their own. The faces freeze, expressions shifting from hunger to confusion to dawning awareness. The chorus of voices fragments, individual tones emerging from the harmony of rage.
“What—what are you—stop—”
The chains around my wrists weaken. I tear free, scrambling backward across the rubble, putting distance between myself and the thrashing entity. The Judge is fighting itself now—the collective will that bound it warring with the individual souls it consumed.
It won’t last. The entity is too strong, the spirits too long imprisoned. In moments, the Judge will reassert control, and then—
Movement at the edge of my vision.
Brannok. Rising from behind a pile of shattered beams, a length of witch-hair rope coiled in his hands. His gaze meets mine across the chaos of the collapsing square.
The bond thrums between us. Not words—words aren’t what it provides—but recognition. The knowledge that he is ready, that he has a plan, that he needs me to do one more thing before this ends.
I gather the last dregs of my power and turn back toward the thrashing Judge.
“Hey.” My words come out raw, frayed thin by exhaustion. “Over here, you overgrown corpse pile.”
The entity’s attention snaps toward me. Its internal struggle pauses as fury overwhelms confusion—the rage of a creature that has been defied one too many times.
“You dare—”
I hit it with everything I have left. Not enough to wound it. Not enough to slow it. But enough to make it chase me.
I run.
The Judge follows, rope-tentacles lashing at my heels, voices howling promises of eternal torment. I dodge through the rubble, leading it away from where Brannok works—away from the makeshift gallows I can sense him building at the edge of my awareness.
Herding it. Driving it. Positioning it for the kill.
Trust him.
I pivot sharply, doubling back toward the center of the square. The Judge’s momentum carries it past me, and for one precious moment, its back is turned.
Brannok’s words ring out across the ruins.
“Judge.”
brANNOK
The word cuts through the chaos.
The entity whirls toward me, its stolen faces contorting with surprise and fury. Behind it, Ismerie drops to her knees, her body shaking with exhaustion, her scars still faintly radiant with the last of her stolen power.
Magnificent. Depleted and trembling and utterly devastating.
The sigil on my neck throbs in answer to hers. She’s done her part. Led the monster where I need it to go. Bought me the time I needed to work.
Now it’s my turn.
I stand beneath the makeshift gallows—beam, crossbar, noose—and wait for the thing I built it for.
“The court recognizes the condemned.” My words carry the same formal weight I’ve used to pronounce sentences for two decades. The words seem different now—not empty ritual but genuine judgment. “You stand accused of crimes against the living and the dead.”
The Judge’s faces freeze. Its body goes still, the rope-tentacles that were reaching for Ismerie falling slack at its sides.
It recognizes what I’ve built. Understands what I intend.
“You cannot be serious.” The voices harmonize into disbelief. “You think to execute me? You, who served me for twenty years? You, whose hands have fed my becoming with every lever you pulled?”
“I think to end you.” I don’t move from my position beneath the gallows. Don’t need to. The entity will come to me—its rage won’t allow otherwise. “The charges are these: consumption of innocent souls. Perversion of justice into vengeance. Attack upon the Gallows Warden and his mate.”
“Your mate.” The Judge’s faces arrange themselves into cruel amusement.
“The death witch who fed on my leavings. The woman you claimed to save her from the very justice you dispensed for decades.” The entity takes a step toward me, then another, drawn by fury it can’t control.
“What a pair you make. The executioner and his pet monster.”
“She’s not a pet.” My hand tightens on the rope. “And she’s not a monster.”
“No?” Another step. The Judge is almost within range now, its form swelling with power it thinks will protect it. “Then what is she?”
I don’t answer. Don’t need to. The truth is blazing on my neck for anyone with eyes to see.
She’s mine. And I’m hers. Whatever else we are—whatever killers we’ve been or might become—that doesn’t change.
The Judge lunges.
I’ve been waiting for this moment since I started building the gallows. The entity’s rage has made it predictable—it wants to tear me apart with its own hands, wants to sense my bones break under its fists. It’s forgotten that I’ve spent my entire life studying how death works.