The days that followed were thick with tension.
The courts sat half-empty. Trials were postponed, hearings abandoned. Judges feigned illness, prosecutors fled to country estates. Yet their names still burned on the Judgment Screen. No distance spared them, no locked gate kept me away. Each time I chose, the tether drew me across the city, unseen, unstoppable.
I learned the rhythm of it. The screen pulsed when sin demanded reckoning, and the choice was always mine. Fire, chains, silence, spectacle. Some nights I hesitated, staring at the list until dawn. Other nights, my hand moved without thought, guided by a fury that had grown sharper than any blade.
And with each judgment, the whispers grew.
The poor left offerings at crossroads bread, coins, candles guttering in the rain. They prayed for the Black Judge to hear them. When a merchant beat his apprentice, he was found days later with his tongue blackened and shriveled, the word TYRANT burned into his chest. The city shuddered with dread, but the alleys sang with quiet approval.
I walked among them, hood low, listening. Some called me savior. Others called me monster. A shadow had risen that could not be ignored.
One night, I stood at the edge of the river, the city lights flickering across the black water. The screen glowed before me, brighter than ever. Names scrolled endlessly, judges, nobles, soldiers, ministers, merchants. Not hundreds. Thousands.
The voice stirred again, rolling through me like thunder in bone.
The scales are endless. The world drowns in sin. Will you turn away now?
I stared at the list, my reflection broken in the waves. I thought of my mother's hands, rough with work, yet gentle. I thought of Lira, dragged away in chains. I thought of myself, kneeling in courtrooms, begging for justice that never came.
I whispered into the night.
"No. I will not turn away."
The screen flared white. The river shook. And in that moment, I understood.
I was no longer a man chasing justice. I was justice unbound, wrath made flesh.
The Black Judge was no whisper now.
He was me.