Prisoner 72 realized that his life was nothing but a fulfillment of an old crone’s tripartite prophecy. He saw no hope on the horizon; for he was a condemned blasphemer and an execrated witch-sympathizer. Thus, he was forced to wear a heretic’s branks—a wrought-iron muzzle that clamped around his head, lined with spikes on the inside that left pressure marks whenever his skin pressed hard against the frame—as punishment and humiliation for his crime of saving the last witch of Grandeloria.