Story 1169: The Executioner’s Shadow

The bell tower of Hollowmoor Prison rang twice before dawn, each chime hollow as a coffin. The city below barely stirred, lost in uneasy dreams. But in the prison yard, a shadow walked where no man had stepped in decades.

The Executioner had returned.

They said he had no name—only a title passed down like a curse. Hooded, faceless, more myth than man, he had once delivered justice with an axe carved from cursed iron and a silence that clung to him like fog. The city claimed he vanished after the last execution—when the wrong man’s blood soaked the stones and the gallows fell silent forever.

But vengeance keeps its own calendar.

Jasper Crane had heard the rumors in whispers—while digging graves, while drinking with Madame Grin, while pretending not to see the marks etched into the fogged windows of Hollowmoor. Now, with a trembling lantern in hand, he followed a trail of black bootprints through the prison gates.

The air was colder here, deathless.