Misericord

Ryko Graves learned the meaning of mercy from the worst possible teacher.

As a boy hidden deep in the northern woods, he lost his mother, his dog, and eventually the belief that adults always knew the difference between necessity and cruelty.

Thirteen years later, Ryko walks back into civilization.

Then people begin dying.

The victims are not innocent. They are abusers, predators, and people who repeatedly chose cruelty when other choices remained open. The masked figure the public names Misericord watches carefully before he acts.

Detective Niles Coble watches just as carefully.

As the investigation closes around Ryko and his relationship with Audrey Rose gives him something worth losing, the difference between judgment and murder becomes harder to hide behind rules.

Misericord is a psychological crime-horror novel about violence, restraint, love, consequence, and the dangerous belief that careful judgment can make killing righteous.

That positioning fits the manuscript extremely well. Ryko explicitly creates rules excluding children, animals, witnesses, police doing their jobs, inherited guilt, isolated mistakes, and people who actually change course. He knows those rules do not make him right.