When the room went dark she heard her name.&nbsp;It came from the stone, from the air, from behind the bones of her own skull—soft as a lover’s whisper, sharp as the edge of the knife she’d buried in so many throats.She sat up on her cot, the chains at her wrists clinking like the tick of some distant clock. The cell was black as pitch. The candle had long since burned itself to a puddle of wax, but she could still smell it—sweet and rancid, like melted skin. &nbsp;The gallows waited for her come dawn.&nbsp;She began to laugh.&nbsp;It was a thin, cracked sound, scraping out of her like a blade dragged over a whetstone. The walls seemed to close in as she laughed. The stones were sweating tonight, bleeding slow little rivulets that looked like ink in the dark.&nbsp;“You shouldn’t have,” said a voice.&nbsp;Her laughter died in her throat.The voice was male, maybe. Maybe not.She turned her head and there—between the bars of moonlight slipping through the slit-window—stood a figure, half shadow, half memory. The first man she ever killed.&nbsp;“Didn’t mean to,” she muttered. “Didn’t mean to, but you wouldn’t stop.”&nbsp;His throat was still open, lips peeled back in a rictus grin. She saw again the way he’d gurgled when the knife went in, the way his hands had clawed at hers, weak and slick with his own blood. She’d watched the life go out of his eyes like a candle’s flame snuffed by wind.&nbsp;She touched her cheek. Wet. Tears—or blood—she couldn’t tell anymore.&nbsp;They came to her then, one after another. Faces out of the dark. Men and women, street filth and silken nobles both. All of them wearing the mark of her art: slashed throats, ropes biting deep into blue flesh, bellies opened like market pigs. Each one mouthing her name, over and over, until the sound became a chant, then a dirge.&nbsp;She pressed her hands to her ears. “Stop it,” she hissed. “You don’t get to call me that.”&nbsp;The cell stank of iron and sweat. She could taste copper at the back of her tongue, the old familiar taste of death. Once she’d found it intoxicating, that first spill of blood—warm as wine, bright as sin. There’d been a rhythm to it, a song only she could hear. The pulse of it beneath the knife, the twitch and quiver of the body as it realized the end had come. She’d danced with it once, the knife and the rope and the song of the dying.&nbsp;Now she just shivered.&nbsp;Her thoughts fractured, sliding apart like ice breaking on a river. She saw the gallows through her closed eyes, saw the crowd that would gather at dawn. Faces eager for her to drop, to kick, to hang. They’d jeer her, call her monster, witch, harlot, whore. She’d smirk at them—she always did—but the thought now made her stomach twist.&nbsp;She looked to the noose lying coiled in the corner like a sleeping serpent. They’d shown it to her this afternoon. Measured it for her neck. She’d smiled then, teeth red from where she’d bitten her lip till it bled. But now, in the dark, it seemed alive. It breathed. It watched her.&nbsp;“You’re not afraid,” the first man whispered from the dark.&nbsp;“No,” she said. “Not afraid.”&nbsp;“Then why do you tremble?”&nbsp;Her hands were shaking. She hadn’t noticed. “Cold,” she lied.&nbsp;She saw herself again—the alley behind the theatre, the blood on her skirts, the man gasping like a fish while she hummed some forgotten lullaby. Then the next, and the next. A baker. A constable. A priest. Each of them sinners, or so she told herself. But now their eyes gleamed through the dark, bright as coins in the underworld.&nbsp;“You did it for the song,” the priest said. His tongue was gone, chewed out. Still he spoke. “You liked the sound.”&nbsp;Her laugh came again, shrill and broken. “You talk too much for a corpse.”&nbsp;She crawled to the wall and pressed her forehead to the damp stone. The chill bit her skin. She whispered a prayer she didn’t believe in, to gods she’d spat on. Something about mercy. Or maybe it was hunger.&nbsp;A rat skittered across her foot. She flinched. In the dim light, its eyes looked almost human. She wondered if it would feed on her when she was gone. She hoped so. Better the rats than the worms.&nbsp;Her breath misted. Dawn was coming; she could smell it—the faintest hint of woodsmoke and rain from beyond the window slit.&nbsp;She turned her head toward the slit of a window, a strip of gray-blue sky. For an instant she thought she saw someone standing there—a woman, still as frost, haloed in the paling dark. Herself, perhaps. But unmarked. Whole. Eyes clear, hands unbloodied.&nbsp;The girl she had been.&nbsp;The memory stood before her, fragile as candle flame. Pale fingers lifted, trembling, reaching through the gloom. The gesture was simple, human—an offer, a mercy.&nbsp;She reached back.&nbsp;Their fingers never met.&nbsp;The distance between them was only air, and yet it was infinite. The girl’s face seemed to fade, features softening into mist, until nothing remained but the shape of light against stone.&nbsp;Then the bell tolled.&nbsp;Once.&nbsp;Then again.&nbsp;The sound rolled through the prison like thunder through a hollow chest. The floor trembled. She closed her eyes, listening to it. Each toll felt like a heartbeat. A countdown.&nbsp;Bootsteps followed—the heavy rhythm of men who did not need to hurry. The rattle of keys. The low murmur of voices outside the door. She could not make out the words, but she knew the tone. Routine. Detached. Death was their morning chore, as bread was to a baker.&nbsp;She sat very still. The whispering walls had gone silent; the faces had retreated into whatever dark had birthed them. Only the rope remained, coiled in the corner, waiting like a faithful pet.&nbsp;She smiled. It was a small, tired thing. “Told you I wasn’t afraid,” she said, and her voice no longer trembled.&nbsp;The lock turned.&nbsp;The door opened, and light spilled in—thin, gray, merciless. It poured across the stones, chasing the shadows into corners, touching her face like a benediction. She blinked into it, and for the first time, she saw dust dancing there—small motes suspended in judgment.&nbsp;When the guards came for her, she did not resist. They were rough without meaning to be, and she swayed between them, her feet bare against the cold floor.&nbsp;She laughed then, softly.&nbsp;Not the laughter of mockery or madness, but something gentler—like the last sigh of a dream before waking. It lingered in the air even after they led her away, curling faintly through the morning light.&nbsp;And when the door closed behind her, the cell fell still, empty but for the echo of that small, impossible sound.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;

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Requiem for a muderer

TL.Barehan

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chapter 1

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Thomas Bareham

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