The whispers of the crowd echoed through the square. “The whips!” they cried. “The Hangman will bring out the whips.”

“No, the chains. He’ll bring out the chains. They’re one of his favorites these days.”

“He hasn’t used the chains in months.”

“It’s going to be the whips. They have glass in them, you know. Embedded at the ends. It’ll shred skin on contact.”

“Yes. But the heavy weight of chains digging into the back is far worse. Chains bruise and break, not just rip. Most people don’t recover from chains. Whips? It can happen.”

From where he stood in the stocks, his head and hands shoved through tight holes that dug painfully into his skin, Rakesh stared straight ahead and tried desperately not to hear the words being uttered by those who had come to watch the spectacle.

With every bite of the whip into the skin on his back, Rakesh tried not to moan. The resulting pain numbed his mind, and everything around him now seemed to be happening at a distance.

The pain consumed him. Like fire, it licked up his back in long, burning flames.

* * *

The city square was crowded today, with even the most fearful and downtrodden having left their dank holes and hovels to gather and watch.

A cluster of fairy orbs hovered near the edge of the Fool Plaza where grotesque statues ringed the space with hissing, snarling expressions. The animalistic sculptures, backlit by the glowing orbs, looked to be uttering screams from out of the shadows.

Behind them stood pawn shops filled with odds and ends and mostly known for unsavory customers attempting to sell off rotten meat and outlawed items such as new razors and files. Today the shop owners had closed the doors and ventured outside to watch the upcoming punishment with hungry eyes.

“Fools, the two of you,” The Hangman roared. “To think you can come into MY house?”

He stood only a few paces away from the stocks. The inhabitants of Iskawan shrank back, trying to become a part of the shadows.

Jiro cried out as The Hangman’s servant turned the attention of the whip to him. Rakesh drew in a breath and clutched for threads of sanity during this brief lull in his own punishment.

“I am everywhere,” The Hangman boomed, his ham-like fists on his hips. He turned a bright and malevolent eye to the gathering crowd. “You cannot disobey me. You cannot perform foul deeds in the darkness that I will not see. Do you understand?”

A low murmur of assent rippled through the crowd.

Rakesh hung his head. Sweat dripped down his forehead. His mouth was dry as a desert. He wanted a drink of water almost as much as a reprieve from the pain.

The quiet mumblings of the crowd moved into his ear. They sounded thick and slow, as if the words had travelled through water to reach his ears.

“He will kill that one.”

“Neither committed murder. They should not die!”

Rakesh heard the words, the quiet disapproval, but did not comprehend what it would mean. All he knew and understood was the pain. The endless agony. The thirst.

Next to him, Jiro calmed his cries. He too hung his head and began to weep.

“Courage, Jiro,” Rakesh rasped. “I am with you.”

Sticking out of the stock was Rakesh’s hand – missing a finger. Blood oozed out of his hand, trickled across his palm.

“There is no courage in Iskawan!” The Hangman cried.

He turned, spinning his hips, and brought his foot up against Rakesh’s injured hand with a perfect kick.

Rakesh collapsed in the stocks, screaming all the way from the bottom of his stomach. His agony echoed through the square, billowing through all of Iskawan.

The other residents stopped murmuring. Lights exploded across Rakesh’s vision, blurring what he saw. When he looked up, seeking air, life, and solace, all the Vakums were turned toward him. Their blank, unending gazes penetrated through his haze, and his scream faded into a dying gurgle as he locked eyes with one Vakum with long, scraggly hair.

The Vakum’s gaze seemed to slam into Rakesh, erasing the pain for a moment. The Vakum shuffled toward him, a hand outstretched.

Behind him, more Vakums spilled out of the crowd, their eyes fixed on Rakesh.

Rakesh held his breath. The air stopped in his throat, and he uttered a half-scream, half-whimper.

Three more Vakums headed toward Rakesh in the hazy cloud of his vision.

The long-haired Vakum was now a mere step away. His long, yellow-nailed fingers reached for Rakesh’s freshly bleeding hand. Just before he touched it, The Hangman planted a hand on the Vakum’s shoulder and shoved him off.

“Leave him. He’s mine,” The Hangman snarled.

The rest of the Vakums who had surged forward faded back into the strange cloud, and the inhabitants of Iskawan began to breathe again.

The Hangman stared at the lone remaining Vakum until he too slipped back into the strange cloud.

Back into the shadows. Back into their bland, restless, unknowing existence.

Rakesh lay limply against the boards and drew in a long breath.

“Stupid, spineless mongrels,” The Hangman muttered.

Rakesh braced himself for another round of pain, but The Hangman held up a fist instead. The restless crowd quieted.

“Cease,” The Hangman ordered his servant. “Let them hang there for a few minutes. May their blood stain the ground as a testament to those who defy me.”

Next to him, Jiro quietly wept. Rakesh swallowed past his dry throat. He was far past the point of shedding bitter tears.

Water. He wanted water.

The Hangman strode across the ground, stopping just before Rakesh.

“Do you know that I have loyal people in Iskawan?” he hissed into Rakesh’s ear with his hot, foul breath. “Loyal people who keep an eye on the happenings here? Yes. Loyal, self-aware servants. Like your friend. Gekko.”

The Hangman side-stepped, swinging out one arm. Behind him, Gekko stood, grimacing, as the fairy orbs spun above him now in a wild vortex, illuminating his betrayal.

Rakesh gasped. “Gekko?”

Next to him, Jiro sucked in a sharp breath.

The friends’ old roommate glanced at them through narrowed eyes as he winced and shrank back. “I . . . I . . .” The sounds coming from his lips ceased. His mouth moved, but nothing came out.

In the crowd, someone hissed.

Gekko swallowed. He tried to straighten, but seemed to lack the strength. Instead, he turned a shoulder to his roommates, as if blocking them from sight.

“Traitor!” Jiro screamed. “Traitor!”

Gekko looked away, moving behind The Hangman’s servants. He cast his eyes to the ground, swallowing hard again and again.

“Survival is the name of the game here,” The Hangman said in a sing-song voice. “Surely you cannot blame your friend for wanting to move up in life? I always treat well those who serve me. Gekko will have his reward.”

The Hangman tossed a small burlap bag at Gekko. From inside came the sound of metal clinking together.

Cast-away coins, no doubt. Scraps of metal. Other small, valuable trading trinkets that would afford Gekko a few days of luxury.

Gekko simply stared at it as his nostrils flared.

“Betrayer!” Jiro screamed. He struggled against the wooden bonds, eventually collapsing in exhaustion. “You betrayed your friends! No one trust him! No one!”

Slowly, one greedy inch at a time, Gekko reached down, snatched the purse from the ground, shoved it into his sleeve, and headed off into the crowd.

The crowd parted, watching him go with stunned expressions.

Too horrified to speak, Rakesh simply stared at Gekko’s back until he could see it no more, uncertain which felt worse: the sting of the whip or the stink of Gekko’s betrayal.

None of this would have happened if Gekko hadn’t betrayed them.

It seemed incomprehensible that the wheels of fate spun on such a heinous act.

The Hangman spun around, waving his hands in the air. “Be gone, residents. I am removing these criminals for questioning. May all of you ever remember the consequences of defying me and invading my home. Never again.”

One of The Hangman’s servants approached Rakesh, opening the wooden stocks and yanking him free with a harsh jerk.

Rakesh cried out in pain as the servants ignored his open wounds and grabbed him by the shoulders, shoving him forward into the square. Iskawan’s residents scattered to escape his presence, shooting away like rodents encountering light. None stayed to help, and Rakesh hadn’t thought they would.

The Hangman wasn’t wrong; the residents of Iskawan knew survival, not compassion.

Jiro, similarly freed, fell onto his knees beside Rakesh. Blood trails ran down his back like rivers.

“Come,” The Hangman ordered. “Come to my shelter for questioning. The real fun has just begun.”

* * *

“You know, this over here is really my home,” The Hangman purred half an hour later. “The two of you thought you invaded my home, but you were wrong. That spot over there is where I sleep sometimes. But this? This is my true den.”

At The Hangman’s order, his servants herded Rakesh and Jiro into a darkened room in the back of the building, far from the reach of the faint orbs that illuminated the front entryway.

Here, tools filled all the walls with faint silver light. Corkscrew-shaped weapons with razor-sharp edges. Chairs here and there along the walls. And a table with four ropes tied to it.

Rakesh wanted to vomit as he tumbled to his knees.

The Hangman ripped off his robe, tossing it to the side. His thick biceps seemed to glow underneath the zipping fairy lights that had followed them inside. “Put them in the chairs,” he ordered.

His servants jerked Rakesh up, tossing him into a wooden chair against the wall. They tied his ankles and hands to the legs and arms of the table as his back burned with pain. He struggled against blackness as it crept across his vision.

The servants then roughly seated Jiro next to him.

Jiro’s head rolled about on his neck. Clearly he too was fighting to remain conscious.

The Hangman strode over, standing before his prisoners with his legs spread and arms set in a broad stance. The fairy lights created a horrible glow on his face. He had the craziest look in his eyes.

Rakesh wanted to scream at the sight of those devilish eyes, yet was unable to tear his gaze away. The Hangman turned to Jiro first, cracking him across the face with the back of his hand.

“Who are you working for?”

Jiro’s head snapped back. He moaned, but his eyes remained closed.

“No one.”

The words came out of Rakesh’s lips in a squeak of terror. The Hangman lifted one eyebrow and turned to him. His eyes tapered into slashes.

“What?”

“W-we w-w-work for n-no one.”

“Then why were you in my house?”

“Food.”

“Food?”

Rakesh swallowed. “We’re starving. We didn’t know it w-was your house. We were just looking for food.”

The Hangman glanced down, eyeing Rakesh’s hollow stomach and gaunt ribs.

“You were looking in drawers that no one would use for food.”

Rakesh tried to shrug, but grimaced instead. “We are hungry. That’s all I know. Food could be anywhere. Hidden anywhere.”

The Hangman’s nostrils flared as he leaned close to Rakesh, the foul scent of his breath wafting over them.

In the disturbing shadows, The Hangman’s face seemed distorted by an ominous grin. Rakesh trembled.

“Then why were you holding that box?”

The Hangman pointed a long finger to one of his servants, who held the little black box in his hand. It lay closed in his palm. Rakesh forced himself to look at it, keeping his expression as blank as he could manage.

“W-we thought it could hold spices or salt.”

“Salt?”

“We crave it.”

The Hangman snorted.

Trade in and out of Iskawan had been bleak since the dark city began, and several food items rarely made it through the caravan and into the hands of the residents. Like sugar. Salt. Tea.

The Hangman eyed Rakesh.

“I don’t believe you.”

Rakesh braced himself, preparing for a backhand to the face or a deathblow to his head.

None came. Instead, The Hangman straightened, pulling his shoulders back. He loomed tall and terrible above his prisoners, seeming to stretch into the great darkness as if he were one with it.

Rakesh’s mind spun. His throat burned with thirst. He’d surely suffer another lashing for a glass of water.

“But I don’t think you’re entirely lying either. You’re too stupid to do much else, aren’t you? I can’t kill you outright and risk a mob rising up in protest right here in Iskawan.”

The Hangman turned to his servants, ham-like fists propped on his hips. “Let’s just get rid of them.”

* * *

The Hangman’s men forcibly pushed the two hapless guys out of the house and into the streets. Rakesh was too consumed by the need for water, the need for relief, to do anything more than stumble along, but Jiro cried aloud with every step they took.

Finally, to silence the cries, one of the servants grabbed Jiro, slung him over his back, and carried him. Jiro silenced, his arms hanging limp down the man’s back.

Slinking off to the side of the street, The Hangman and his servants led them farther from the main center of the city, toward the darkness of the outer wall. Rakesh stumbled along, his legs dragging on the ground until he fell.

The Hangman grunted, and another of his servants picked up Rakesh and slung him across his back. Rakesh let out a cry, but silenced it, lost somewhere in the haze between life and death, grateful not to have to shuffle....

He must have passed out, or slept. He woke some time later when The Hangman’s servant threw him to the ground. His back wounds, sticky with blood and sweat, seemed to peel open from the resulting jolt and threatened to erupt. Rakesh passed into a mind-numbing place of darkness before returning to a form of consciousness once again.

As Rakesh lifted his eyes open, The Hangman towered over him, fists pressed into his hips. But his gaze was fixed somewhere beyond the bodies of Rakesh and Jiro.

“Here you are, wretches. Your new hope.”

Looming tall above them all were…the North Doors.

Rakesh’s chest constricted in a panic infinitely more painful than all the other things he had endured. Like a drumbeat, the words echoed in his mind.

North Doors. North Doors. North Doors.

“No,” he murmured. His lips peeled apart, dry as sand. “No!”

The man bearing Jiro kicked at him. Rakesh groaned, his head tilting back.

Several seconds passed before Jiro’s gaze narrowed on the dark swath of land stretching before them. Then Jiro sucked in a sharp breath and screamed. “No!”

The dark lands of The Nothingness were what lay before them.

The Hangman grunted and waved his servants back. “Go,” he instructed them. Then turning to Rakesh and Jiro, he leered, “Good luck in your new home – for whatever length of time you manage to not die. With your open wounds and bloody skin, I doubt you’ll live to see another hour. I hope it was worth it.”

The Hangman laughed, a deep sound that echoed and almost shattered the last of Rakesh’s control. Jiro scrambled after him as The Hangman backed away.

“No!” he screamed, his voice thin and reedy like that of a lost child. “Don’t leave us here! Kill us back in Iskawan. Return us to the stocks. Please!”

This evident fear only made The Hangman laugh harder.

Once The Hangman passed through the massive North Doors, his servants slammed them closed, nearly crushing Jiro’s hand.

Rakesh stared blankly off into the distance.

The Hangman had just sentenced them to a death worse than torture. At least, in torture, they could pass out. Obliterate the pain. But here, in the dark lands, they would know every moment of their existence. Every horrible twist of their hearts.

They couldn’t run from such pervasive darkness.

Rakesh slowly shook his head, bringing himself out of the spiraling thoughts.

No giving up, he thought, remembering her.

No giving up.

“Jiro. Come.” He reached out a bloody hand, the stump of his missing finger glazed over black with a thick scab.

Jiro stared at the dirt beneath him. “The Nothingness,” he repeated, his swollen lips bloody with drool and sweat and a thousand unreleased screams. “They’ve sentenced us to death in The Nothingness.”

“Yes,” Rakesh said. “There’s hope for escape from the pain. Come. We cannot stay here. We need . . . We need.. . .”

The thought fell away from Rakesh’s lips.

What did they need? Where did they even start? And why would The Hangman relinquish them to the dark lands of The Nothingness instead of just killing them secretly?

Perhaps he planned to track them. Then laugh at their deaths.

Or maybe he just didn’t care. Maybe they didn’t matter enough to watch even in death.

“Jiro, come.”

Jiro slowly pushed himself upright. His chest lifted and fell in agonizing breaths. Every movement seemed to cause him pain. He grimaced, the tight nuances of his face cutting through every expression. Tears glittered in his eyes.

“We will die.”

“We can survive.” Rakesh gently took his arm. “Jiro, we’ll stick together. We can survive. We’ve already survived this long. We’ll continue.”

“Not in The Nothingness!”

The scream tore from Jiro’s throat, rippling out through the strange darkness that seemed to absorb it.

Jiro began to breathe so fast over he had to double over. “The Nothingness,” he murmured, as if in disbelief. “The Nothingness!”

To Rakesh’s relief, sweet, sustaining rage bubbled up inside him. It swept through him, giving him a new wave of strength.

“Yes, The Nothingness! It’s a chance. We could be laying in the streets of Iskawan right now, our heads sawed off. But we’re not. What we have is bleak, but it’s something! Now, get it together, Jiro. I don’t want to be here either, but here we are. We’ll work together. Things will work out. Look! We can ask to enter.”

Overwhelmed with the need to do something, Rakesh threw himself against the North Doors, banging on them with his uninjured hand. “Please!” he screamed. “Please, let us back in!”

He paused, pressing his ear to the heavy wood, and thought he heard someone laugh.

He looked up as, though he could find some form of unexpected support in the dark sky, but his gaze met something else.

On the walls and dimly lit by fairy-fires stood a bird-like creature resembling a big owl. The beast, coated in silvery feathers, looked down at Rakesh with piercing red eyes.

Rakesh had never seen anything like it in his life.

To tell the truth, he had never even seen an animal bigger than a rat in Iskawan. How could any animals have survived in that place?

As he tried to make sense of the apparition, the creature wailed, a wail so disturbing that it made the dark place seem even more sinister.

Rakesh felt his soul tear out of him. He put his right hand on his chest and knelt, burdened by the chilling sound.

Then, the sound ceased, and the creature vanished.

Behind him, Jiro started to laugh. A deep, guttural, terrifying cackle rolled out of him in long waves. The terror behind it set Rakesh on fire with panic.

“Please! This is a mistake. Please let us in!”

Rakesh pounded furiously on the doors despite the tearing, stinging, numbing sensation it created through his back. Cuts broke out on his knuckles, splitting them in half. Blood, thick and coppery, spilled onto his hands. He clawed at the wood, screaming. “Noooo! Let us in!”

The laughter continued, ringing in the background, disappearing further and further back into Iskawan.

Rakesh sank to his knees. Hopeless, frightened thoughts consumed him.

He would never see light again. He would never see her again. He would be another casualty forgotten, another life from Iskawan snuffed out.

He would be nothing.

Rakesh straightened, shoving off from the dirt. If he must die – and die he would – then he would die fighting. He wouldn’t give The Hangman the satisfaction of winning his soul with his darkness.

“Jiro,” he said in as calm a voice as he could manage. “Come. It’s time we go on. We’ll find shelter. Water. We’ll find or do something, and then go from there.”

Rakesh reached out a trembling and weak hand. Just standing up had cost him strength, but he had done so, forcing his shaky knees to straighten. He pressed his fingers into Jiro’s shoulder on the only spot without whip marks.

“Jiro?”

A high-pitched scream erupted from Jiro. He stood up, throwing Rakesh back, and ran. With his hands in the air, he disappeared into the smoky darkness, his cry trailing along behind him.

Rakesh stared at the spot where Jiro had disappeared into the darkness.

“Jiro?”

Rakesh stumbled forward a step, but then stopped.

He couldn’t save Jiro from the dark lands of The Nothingness. He couldn’t even save himself. And he would certainly die if he followed Jiro and his madness into the night.

In keeping his sanity, Rakesh still had a chance.

A very small chance.

Tears trickled down his face as Rakesh lowered himself slowly to the ground. He pressed his whole hand to his cheek, and silently sobbed. “Jiro,” he murmured. “You are gone. You are gone.”

Several more tears skidded down his cheeks – the final ones. He let them go, then straightened.

He must find a route. A place to go. Somewhere that he could hide, recover his strength, and find water.

Using the solidness and strength of the doors as a guide, Rakesh slowly stood yet again and faced the dark lands.

“I am not your prey,” he whispered. The words rang in his head with reassurance.

In the distance, a low, mournful sound filled the air. Rakesh swallowed. His heart beat in his throat with a heavy staccato as he took his first quiet, steady step into the dark lands of The Nothingness.