They didn't.
So the floor opened, mid-plea, every time. The fabricated tales cut off like a snuffed wick, and the woman in black was already walking to the next door.
Her domain only took the proven, as she found out. She couldn't just decide to judge a man for being guilty; she needed the proof of it. But every man she caught carried the proof of the next four, so the deeper she went the faster she moved, and the machine fed her its own arrests.
And as more and more scum was sentenced under her judgment, Iris felt her class slowly, relentlessly increasing her strength.
That's how the Demon of Vengeance worked.
Terror ran ahead of her up the duchy's roads all night, and mercy came behind her exactly never.
The counts came an hour before dawn.
Ostrev tried to buy passage with his own vaults through the shrine door he was hiding behind, and the floor drank him mid-offer.
