Chapter 2 – The Gallows Square
The cobblestones of Durelin glistened under a thin film of rain, each step Lucian took echoing against the narrow, crowded streets. The scent of damp stone mixed with roasting chestnuts from a vendor's cart, but the warmth of the smell was smothered by the sight ahead.
At the heart of the city, Gallows Square loomed. Wooden scaffolding rose like skeletal fingers, the heavy rope swaying in the drizzle. Beneath it, a crowd had gathered — some drawn by morbid curiosity, others out of fear of being absent.
The Radiant Church's crimson-and-gold banners draped over the scaffold, their embroidered sun sigils glistening with rain. Inquisitors stood in their long coats, steel helms masking their faces, hands resting casually on sword hilts. At their center, a High Confessor read charges in a voice like cracked stone.
Lucian pushed through the throng, his hood low. He caught sight of the condemned: three men and one woman, their faces gaunt, their wrists bound.
"Heretics," the Confessor intoned. "Guilty of blasphemy against the goddess, and consorting with the unclean."
The crowd murmured — some in agreement, some with eyes fixed to the ground.
Lucian's gaze lingered on the woman. She met his eyes briefly — not pleading, but burning with a defiant fire that defied the rain.
The executioner stepped forward.
Lucian's fingers brushed the hilt beneath his cloak. Every instinct screamed at him to move, but the Inquisitors outnumbered the condemned ten to one.
He breathed out slowly. Not yet.
The trapdoors fell.
Gasps rippled through the square. The woman's body hung still for only a moment before an Inquisitor stepped forward, yanking free a pendant from her neck — a black shard bound in silver. Even from where he stood, Lucian felt a faint pulse from it.
He turned away before the Inquisitor's gaze swept the crowd. In Durelin, the Radiant Church didn't just kill its enemies. It put them on display.
And for the first time in years, Lucian felt the first flicker of something he thought he'd buried: rage.