The Night-Walking Judge

By day, I'm the sect's lowliest servant, a good-for-nothing anyone can trample. But when night falls, I become the Nighttime Judge who walks between yin and yang. With a single Soul-Seizing Decree, a hundred ghosts bow and ten thousand evils flee. Until one night, as I went about my usual work of reaping souls, my iron chains snared the soul of the crown prince himself. Behind him stood nine ancient monsters of nation-guarding rank. Behind me? No one at all. "A mere little judge dares lay a hand on our crown prince?" I smiled. The Judge's Brush spun around my fingers, and a drop of ink from the Underworld fell, burning through the dragon vein beneath the entire imperial city. "I'm afraid you've all got the wrong idea." I pulled open my collar, revealing the Judge's Seal that pierced all three realms. "I'm not here to arrest him." "I'm here to..." "Take back what's mine." The greatest joke in this world is that you think I'm really a good-for-nothing by day. At midnight tonight, the Judge will light the lamps above the imperial city. It's time to pay your debts. The Nighttime Judge seizes souls, not lives. Unless you owe me.