ORC’S GRIMOIRE

THE VEIL LANDS

BOOK 12

MILLY TAIDEN

CYN BLADE

ORC’S GRIMOIRE

NEW YORK TIMES and USA TODAY BESTSELLING AUTHOR

MILLY TAIDEN

&

CYN BLADE

This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are fictitious or have been used fictitiously, and are not to be construed as real in any way. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales, or organizations is entirely coincidental.

Published By

Latin Goddess Press

Winter Springs, FL 32708

http://millytaiden.com

Orc’s Grimoire

Copyright © 2026 by Milly Taiden

Edited by: Tina Winograd

Cover: Jacqueline Sweet

All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Property of Milly Taiden

June 2026

Formatted with Vellum

ABOUT THE BOOK

Welcome to the Veil lands, where monsters are the only ones who can save you.

Thyra:

Bleeding for a haunted library taught me to bury my emotions in numbers.

Twice a day, I slice open my skin to feed an ancient book that pulses with a human heartbeat.

I knew the rules, but then a massive, terrifying orc cornered me in the dark stacks.

He pins me against the cold stone, but his burning eyes tell me he wants to possess me rather than kill me.

Our temptation is deadly—a forbidden bond that is waking a century-old monster inside the pages.

He was sent to execute me, but I’ll drown this entire Archive in blood before I let him go.

Korrath:

A lifetime of executing witches turned my soul to stone.

Until I met a ruthless keeper who isn’t afraid of my blade.

Her cold, beautiful defiance broke my discipline completely.

If her pulse stops, the grimoire's curse will drag me straight into the grave next.

I’m violently addicted to the copper-sweet taste of her skin.

I was commanded to incinerate her, but I will slaughter my own brothers to keep her as mine.

—For our darker paranormal monster lovers,

Enjoy.

ONE

THYRA

The grimoire is hungry tonight.

I feel it before I reach the Restricted Stacks—a pull in my blood, a whisper behind my ribs. The alchemical lanterns burn low in their iron sconces, their pale blue flames dimming as I pass. Living magic stirs nearby. The lanterns know. They’ve been warning me for three hours.

My bare feet are silent against the blood-channeled floors. Cold stone. Ancient beneath my soles. Grooves worn smooth by centuries of sacrifice, of feeding, of keeping the darkness contained. I’ve walked this path a thousand times in my years as keeper. Tonight, each step feels heavier than the last.

The Black Archive stretches around me—endless vaulted halls of black stone, ceilings lost in shadow no light can pierce. Bone-inlaid shelves line the walls, reaching up into the dark. Some of those shelves move when I’m not watching. I’ve learned not to look directly at them.

Keep moving. Don’t stop. Don’t think about what else is awake down here.

My braids are pinned tight against my skull tonight—tighter than usual. Loose hair can be used as an anchor point by sentient texts. I learned that lesson the hard way three years ago, when a minor grimoire managed to catch a strand and nearly rewrote my memories before I could burn it loose. The scar behind my left ear still aches when the barometric pressure drops.

The air tastes wrong. Dust and old ink, yes—that’s normal. The copper-sharp tang of dried blood—also normal. But underneath it, a new edge. A new craving. The temperature has dropped near the deeper stacks. A bad sign. The texts are restless.

Somewhere in the darkness, a book moans. Not a human sound—older, born before humans had words for their suffering. The moan cuts off abruptly, swallowed by the Archive’s strange acoustics. Sound behaves wrong down here. Whispers carry for miles. Screams die within feet.

I’ve never been certain which is worse—hearing the texts cry out, or the silence that follows.

I pass through the outer wards without slowing. They taste my intentions, my blood, my purpose. A faint sting across my skin—the magic reading me, judging me, deciding whether I deserve to pass. Satisfied, they let me through with barely a whisper of resistance. I’ve been doing this so long the magic recognizes me. Knows I belong here.

Or it has already claimed me.

The thought is unwelcome. I push it down, focus on placing one foot in front of the other. The floor here is carved with seventeen different warning symbols in languages that predate human speech. Most scholars can’t even look at them without developing nosebleeds. I’ve memorized every curve, every angle, every bloodstain that marks where previous keepers failed to survive their tenure.

Three keepers before me. The first lasted four years before ink-madness took her—they found her trying to transcribe her own blood onto the Archive walls. The second managed seven years, which was considered impressive until the grimoire decided to consume his mind rather than his blood. The third… no one talks about the third. The Elders burned her journals, salted her chambers, and pretended she never existed.

I’ve lasted six years. A middling performance. Not exceptional. Not doomed.

Yet.

The Restricted Stacks open before me. Chains hum in the darkness—rune-etched iron binding texts to lecterns, keeping them from reaching, from spreading. Some of the books pulse in the gloom. Others breathe. A few whisper my name as I pass, their voices scratching against my skull.

I ignore them. They’re not the one I’m here to feed.

The central lectern waits at the heart of the chamber. And on it, the grimoire.

Massive. Ancient. Bound in material that might have been leather once but now resembles aged skin—pale and wrong, stretched too tight over the spine. The cover is warm to the touch, perpetually warm, pulsing faintly in a rhythm I’ve come to recognize. A heartbeat. The book has a heartbeat.

I’ve studied that rhythm. Charted it. In the beginning, I thought it might help me predict the grimoire’s moods, its cravings, its dangerous periods. All I learned was that the heartbeat doesn’t follow any pattern I can understand. It speeds when the book is satisfied. Slows when it’s angry. Sometimes it stops entirely for hours, and those are the worst times—the silences when I wonder if the thing has finally died, finally released me, finally stopped being my responsibility.

It never has. The heartbeat returns. It will return until one of us is ash.

Iron chains hold it to the lectern, every link etched with containment runes. The chains have never been enough. They’re not meant to stop it—just slow it down. Give the keeper time to feed it before it feeds itself.

Tonight, the chains are vibrating.

The runes glow faintly at the edges—warning sigils activating, containment spells straining. I can smell the magic working, a burnt-metal scent that coats my tongue and makes my teeth ache. The grimoire’s appetite has pushed the wards closer to failure than I’ve seen in months.

“I know,” I murmur. “I’m here.”

The grimoire’s cover twitches. Pages rustle without wind, without touch. A sound emerges from somewhere deep inside the binding—not quite a growl, not quite a sigh. Anticipation.

I draw my ritual knife from the sheath at my thigh. The blade is silver-etched, worn smooth from use. I know every nick in the handle, every imperfection in the edge. This knife has opened my flesh more times than I can count.

Twice a day. Every day. For six years.

The mathematics of sacrifice. Four thousand three hundred and eighty cuts. Enough blood to fill a small pool. Enough pain to drive most people mad. The Archivist Elders call it a calling. A sacred duty. A privilege.

I call it survival. Mine and everyone else’s.

The scars on my forearms itch beneath my sleeves. Ladder rungs of pale tissue climbing from wrist to elbow. I stopped counting the marks after the first year. No point keeping track of what’s become as routine as breathing.

I press the blade to my left palm. The cut is precise—deep enough to bleed freely, shallow enough to heal by morning. I’ve perfected this movement through years of practice. The angle. The pressure. The exact amount of pain required to produce the exact amount of blood. The pain is familiar. Almost comforting.

Blood wells in my cupped hand. Dark red against pale olive skin. I hold it over the grimoire’s cover and let the first drops fall.

The book shudders.

Sigils flare across the binding—red-gold light tracing patterns I’ve memorized but never fully understood. The grimoire drinks. I feel it pulling at the wound, urging more blood to flow, greedy and desperate in a way that makes my stomach clench.

Too ravenous. It’s too ravenous tonight.

More blood falls. The cover grows warmer beneath my hovering palm. The chains’ vibration intensifies, rattling against the lectern. The book itself stirs—not the Author, not yet, but the sentient appetite that makes it more than paper and ink.

The feeding should be calming it. Instead, I feel the pressure against my consciousness increasing. Not attacking. Testing. The grimoire is tasting the edges of my thoughts the way a wolf tastes the air before it strikes.

“Easy.” My voice comes out steadier than I feel. “I’m giving you what you need.”

A page turns on its own. Then another. The rustling grows louder, more insistent. Words crawl across the exposed parchment—not the grimoire’s original text but new writing. Fresh. For me.

YOU’RE LATE.

“Thirty minutes.” I keep my tone calm. Reasonable. The grimoire responds to emotion. “I had other texts to check first.”

EXCUSES. WE’RE PAST EXCUSES, THYRA.

My name in its script. Not unusual—it’s done that before. But the familiarity in the phrasing unsettles me. All these years I’ve fed this thing, and it’s never felt quite so… personal.

The pressure on my consciousness increases. I grit my teeth and focus on the blood pooling in my palm, the steady drip onto the cover. Feed it enough, and it settles. That’s the arrangement. That’s what keeps us all alive.

My blood splashes against the binding. The grimoire drinks deeper, and I feel myself swaying.

Too much. It’s taking too much.

A shriek tears through the Restricted Stacks.

High. Thin. A sound that exists only in the space between magic and madness. A spell-scream. One of the lesser texts has awakened.

I rip my hand away from the grimoire, slapping my uncut palm against the wound to stanch the bleeding. The book lets out a sound of frustrated appetite—that half-growl, half-sigh—but I’m already moving.

Can’t let an awakened text roam free. Can’t.

The scream echoes strangely in the Stacks. I have to track the source by feel, by the wrongness in the air, by the way the temperature spikes in certain corridors.

There. Third row from the back. A grimoire no larger than my two hands side by side, bound in faded green leather that’s starting to split at the seams. The book is convulsing on its shelf, chains straining, pages fluttering in a wind that doesn’t exist.

I know this text. The Whispering Concordance. Relatively minor, as forbidden knowledge goes—a collection of communication spells that went wrong, carrying echoes of every message they ever transmitted. Sometimes those echoes want to be heard.

Last time it awakened, I spent three hours listening to a dead woman’s love letters. The messages played on repeat in my skull until I thought I’d go mad. The woman had been dead for two centuries. Her beloved for even longer. But their words remained, trapped in pages that refused to let them go.

Some knowledge is a curse. Some memories refuse to die.

Not dangerous. Not usually. But an awakened text draws attention. Feeds energy to other texts. Can trigger a cascade that turns the entire Archive into a screaming nightmare.

I’ve seen a cascade once. Just once. Survived it. Barely.

I pull chalk from the pouch at my belt and drop to my knees. The floor here is marked with old containment circles, half-faded and useless. I work fast, sketching new lines over old, adding sigils I’ve modified through years of practice. My hand is steady despite the blood loss. Despite the growing wrongness in my chest.

The Concordance’s screaming intensifies. I feel it pushing at me—not my mind, not directly, but my ears. My equilibrium. The book is trying to make me listen, to force its echoed messages into my skull.

“Shut up.” I finish the circle and slam my bleeding palm against the center.

Blood and magic flare. The containment runes activate, red-gold light racing around the circumference. The Concordance shudders, pages snapping shut, and goes still. Dormant again. The screaming stops.

My palm throbs. I’ve given too much blood tonight—first to the grimoire, now to containment. Dark spots swim at the edges of my vision.

Don’t pass out. Don’t you dare pass out down here.

I force myself upright. Steady my breathing. The dizziness recedes, slowly, reluctantly. I need to get back to the grimoire. Need to make sure it hasn’t⁠—

Laughter.

Not the Concordance. Not any of the lesser texts.

The grimoire.

I find it exactly where I left it—chained to the central lectern, cover gleaming wetly where my blood still pools. But the pages have opened on their own, spread wide to expose parchment that glows faintly in the lantern light.

Words crawl across the surface. Not the ancient script of the original text, but new writing. Fresh. The ink is red-black and gleaming, and it moves, rearranging itself as I watch.

THYRA VIRE.

My full name. The one I’ve never spoken in the Archive. The one I left behind when I came here at twenty-one, desperate and determined and too stupid to know what I was getting into.

How does it know? I’ve been so careful. So precise. I’ve never let anything slip, never given it more than it needed, never⁠—

YOU THINK BLOOD DOESN’T CARRY NAMES? YOU THINK I DON’T TASTE EVERYTHING YOU ARE EVERY TIME YOU FEED ME?

The words rearrange. The grimoire is writing faster now, script appearing and disappearing, thoughts forming and dissolving. I should close it. Should slam the cover shut and walk away. But I can’t move. Can’t look away.

I KNOW YOUR NAME, KEEPER. I KNOW YOUR SECRETS. I KNOW WHAT YOU’VE DONE TO KEEP ME FED.

Ice spreads through my veins. “You don’t know anything.”

More laughter. The sound vibrates through the lectern, through the floor, through my bones. A low, intimate amusement that makes my skin crawl.

DON’T I?

The script rearranges. And this time, what appears stops my heart.

Three names.

ARCHIVIST DENN. SCRIBE CALLIA. RESEARCHER VOSS.

I stop breathing.

TWO

THYRA

One year ago. The containment failure that nearly brought the entire Archive down. Three texts awakened simultaneously, feeding off each other, creating a cascade that threatened to consume every mind in the building. Three thousand people worked in the Archive then. Three thousand minds that would have been devoured.

I remember the sound of the cascade building. The way the air thickened until breathing felt like drowning. The screaming—so much screaming—from texts that should have been dormant for centuries.

The grimoire had offered a solution. Three lives instead of three thousand. Three minds to satisfy its appetite, to break the cascade, to restore the containment.

I made the choice.

I didn’t hesitate. Didn’t agonize. Didn’t pray or plead or search for alternatives. I looked at the numbers—three versus three thousand—and I did the math.

YOU TOLD THE ELDERS IT WAS AN ACCIDENT. TOLD THEM THE TEXTS CONSUMED THE THREE BEFORE YOU COULD INTERVENE. TOLD THEM YOU TRIED TO SAVE THEM.

“I did try.” My voice comes out raw. Cracked. “I tried to find another way.”

BUT THERE WASN’T ONE. AND YOU KNEW THAT. YOU KNEW WHAT HAD TO HAPPEN THE MOMENT THE CASCADE BEGAN.

Denn. Callia. Voss. I’d known their names. Worked beside them for years. Watched them walk into the Restricted Stacks, drawn by a compulsion I’d seeded in their minds, and I hadn’t stopped them.

I’d opened the door.

THREE LIVES. THREE THOUSAND SAVED. A REASONABLE CALCULATION, KEEPER. I SHOULD KNOW—YOU USED MY LOGIC TO MAKE IT.

My hands are shaking. I clench them into fists, feel the wound in my palm tear open again. Fresh blood drips onto the floor.

“Why are you telling me this now?”

The grimoire’s pages flutter. A new message forms, larger than the others, script burning bright enough to cast shadows.

BECAUSE SOMEONE IS COMING. SOMEONE WHO BURNS. AND WHEN HE ASKS WHAT YOU’VE DONE TO KEEP ME CONTAINED, I WANT YOU TO REMEMBER—YOU’RE ALREADY DAMNED, THYRA VIRE. ALREADY MINE.

Before I can respond, the grimoire does what it’s never done in all my years as keeper.

It speaks aloud.

Not with words written on the page. With an actual voice—low and resonant and wrong, emerging from somewhere inside the binding, from the space between the pages, from the craving dark at the book’s heart.

In all my time here, I’ve never heard the grimoire speak. Not once. The Elders never mentioned it could. The records from previous keepers never warned of this possibility.

This is new. This is very, very bad.

“Thyra Vire.”

My name in its mouth. My name in its throat. Intimate and invasive, a lover’s whisper and a killer’s warning rolled into one. The sound wraps around me, slithers beneath my skin, settles in the hollow of my ribs.

The alchemical lanterns flicker. The temperature in the Restricted Stacks drops ten degrees in a heartbeat. The other texts—the Concordance, the dozens of lesser grimoires chained to their lecterns—all go utterly silent. Even their breathing stops.

They’re afraid.

They should be.

The grimoire continues, and each name falls from its pages with the deliberate precision of a death sentence being read.

“Archivist Denn.”

I hear him screaming in my memory. The sound of his mind unraveling as the grimoire consumed it.

“Scribe Callia.”

She’d trusted me. Asked if I needed help with the cascade. I’d smiled and told her yes.

“Researcher Voss.”

He’d been young. Twenty-three. He’d had a sister who still asks about him sometimes.

The grimoire’s voice drops lower, almost tender. “They’re still here, you know. Still inside me. Still screaming. Would you like to hear them?”

“No.”

“Are you certain? They have so much to say to you, keeper. So much they want you to know.”

My legs give out. I drop to my knees on the blood-channeled floor, one hand clutching the wound on my palm, the other bracing against the cold stone. I can feel my heartbeat in my throat, in my temples, in the throbbing cut that won’t stop bleeding.

The grimoire’s pages turn slowly. Deliberately. A new message forms in that red-black ink.

THE SPELL-BURNER ARRIVES TOMORROW. HE’S BEEN SENT TO DESTROY ME. TO DESTROY US BOTH.

I stare at the words until they blur. Spell-burner. The Order of Ash. I knew they’d come eventually—knew that the grimoire’s awakening activity would draw attention. But I thought I had more time. I thought I could find another way.

THERE IS NO OTHER WAY, THYRA. THERE NEVER WAS.

The grimoire’s voice emerges again, and this time it sounds almost kind. Almost sorry.

“You’ve fed me for six years. Bled for me. Killed for me. And now they’re sending a weapon to burn us both. Tell me, keeper—was it worth it?”

I don’t have an answer.

The lanterns dim further. The shadows press closer. And somewhere above me, in the iron-wrought manor that hides the Archive’s entrance, I imagine I can hear footsteps.

Someone is coming.

Someone who burns.

The grimoire sighs—a sound of parchment and craving and dark anticipation—and settles into its chains. Waiting. Patient.

It’s been waiting for three hundred years.

What’s one more night?

I remain on my knees for a long time.

The blood from my palm pools on the floor, following the ancient channels carved into the stone. Flowing toward the lectern. Toward the grimoire. Even here, even now, I’m still feeding it.

Should stop. Should bandage the wound and walk away and pretend this night never happened.

But I don’t move. Can’t seem to make my legs work.

I think about Denn, Callia, Voss. Their faces. The trust in their eyes before the grimoire took them. Three lives. Three thousand saved.

I’d do it again.

I’ve already thought about who would come next, if it came to that.

That’s what the grimoire means. That’s why it said I’m already damned.

Not because of what I did. Because of what I’m willing to do. Because I made peace with murder a year ago, and I’ve been refining my methodology ever since.

Because the Archive has to be protected. Because some knowledge is too dangerous to let loose into the world.

Because I’m already damned anyway.

The grimoire knows. It’s known from the first time I fed it more than my blood. Every drop I’ve given carries my choices, my sins, my cold and practical arithmetic of lives weighed against lives.

I finally manage to stand. My legs shake, but they hold. The dizziness is worse now, a persistent throb behind my eyes that warns of blood loss and sleep deprivation and the slow erosion of things I used to call boundaries.

The grimoire watches me—I feel its attention, its amusement, its patient appetite. It doesn’t need to say anything else. The damage is done.

I wrap a strip of cloth around my palm, tight enough to stop the bleeding. My vision still wavers at the edges, but I’ve learned to function through worse. Years of this work teaches you to move through pain, through exhaustion, through the constant press of magic against your mind.

The spell-burner arrives tomorrow.

I should warn the Elders. Should evacuate the staff. Should do anything other than stand here in the dark, bleeding and broken and utterly unsurprised that my sins have finally come home.

But the Elders dismissed my concerns about the grimoire’s increasing activity. Called it normal fluctuation. Told me to do my job and stop worrying. They’re old. Set in their ways. They’ve spent so long containing knowledge that they’ve forgotten it can escape.

They don’t know what I know. Don’t see what I see.

The grimoire isn’t just awakening. It’s been building toward a moment for years. Every feeding, every drop of blood, every mind it’s consumed—all of it leading to a reckoning I can feel approaching but can’t quite see. The creature inside those pages is preparing. Planning. Waiting for the right time to act.

And now a spell-burner is coming to burn it all down.

A destroyer of forbidden knowledge. An executioner who won’t hesitate. Won’t make compromises. Won’t try to preserve what should probably burn.

Part of me wonders if that would be a relief.

I turn away from the central lectern and walk toward the exit. My bare feet leave bloody prints on the stone—a trail of red leading back to the grimoire, marking me as surely as any spell could. Mine. It doesn’t need to brand me. I’ve been branded by my own choices for years.

The walk back through the Restricted Stacks feels longer than the walk in. The books whisper as I pass—not threats this time, but curiosity. They can smell the grimoire’s attention on me. Sense the change in the air.

The keeper has been marked. The keeper has been named. The keeper is walking dead and doesn’t know it yet.

I ignore them. There’s nothing they can tell me that I don’t already know.

Behind me, the grimoire laughs again—soft and dark and knowing. The sound follows me through the Stacks, echoing off black stone walls and bone-inlaid shelves, carrying farther than any sound should carry in this place of swallowed screams.

“Until tomorrow, keeper.”

I don’t look back.

I climb the stairs to the upper Archive. Through the entrance hall with its warning sigils. Past the iron gates that burn those who enter uninvited. Into the iron-wrought manor above, where the Archivist Elders sleep in chambers lined with containment wards that have never quite made them feel safe.

The night is cold. The sky outside the blackened windows shows stars I haven’t looked at in months. The world above the Archive continues on, unaware of what bleeds beneath its feet.

Somewhere out there, a spell-burner is preparing his equipment. Sharpening his blade. Planning the destruction of everything I’ve given my blood to protect.

He’s coming to burn me. To burn the grimoire. To burn years of sacrifice and three lives of murder and everything I’ve told myself was necessary.

I should be afraid.

I’m not.

I’m curious.

What kind of monster does the Order of Ash send to destroy what can’t be killed? What does a weapon look like when it’s been forged to end things that shouldn’t exist?

Tomorrow.

I wash the blood from my hands in a basin of cold water. Watch the water turn pink, then red, then a deep crimson that matches the ink in the grimoire’s pages. Even my blood looks different now. Darker. Wanting.

Maybe the spell-burner will see that. Maybe he’ll recognize what I’ve become. Maybe he’ll burn me before the grimoire does, and that will be the kindest thing anyone’s done for me in years.

Or maybe we’ll destroy each other, and the Archive will finally be free.

I lie down in my narrow bed. Close my eyes. Feel the distant pulse of the grimoire below—that heartbeat I’ve spent years learning, that rhythm I’ve fed with everything I have.

It’s still starving.

It will be starving until one of us is gone.

But tonight, for the first time since I became its keeper, I think I understand why.

A reckoning is coming. A force worse than a spell-burner, worse than the Order of Ash, worse than anything the Elders have prepared for.

And the grimoire wants to be ready.

“Until tomorrow,”

I whisper into the darkness.

Somewhere below, in the Restricted Stacks where craving books wait in chains, the grimoire hears me.

And laughs.

THREE

KORRATH

The manor stinks of old magic.

I smell it before we crest the final hill—that acrid tang of spells left to fester, of power accumulating in places it was never meant to stay. My squad smells it too. Bren makes a warding sign across his chest. Dorran spits into the dead grass. The others tighten their grips on their weapons and say nothing.

Six spell-burners at my back. Six veterans who’ve walked into cursed places and walked out again. None of them are eager to enter this one.

Smart.

The iron-wrought manor crouches against the horizon like a beast waiting to spring. Three stories of blackened stone and rusted iron framework, windows dark even with the morning sun blazing behind us. The gardens surrounding it died long ago—twisted trees reaching toward the sky with branches that bend in directions wind never blew them, flowerbeds reduced to patterns of bone-white stems that look almost deliberate. Almost intentional.

Warnings. Grave markers.

“Veillands magic,” Dorran mutters behind me. “The leakage is worse here than I’ve seen in years.”

I don’t respond. The leakage isn’t the problem. The leakage is a symptom—shadow bleeding through from wherever the ancient orcs tore the Veil three centuries past. Every orc carries that stain in our blood. Feared, desired, and damned for sins we didn’t commit.

But we commit others. Plenty of others.

The iron gates loom ahead. Ward-sigils etched deep into the metal, glowing faint in the sunlight. I feel them testing me as we approach—pushing at my skin, reading my purpose. The sensation is familiar. Uncomfortable. The wards are old, but they’re not passive. They’re actively watching.

My execution brand warms against my hip. It’s been warm since we entered the Veillands two days ago, responding to the ambient magic saturating this cursed territory. Now, this close to the Archive, the heat has intensified to the edge of pain.

Spell-burners learn to fight with it early. A brand that can end spells can end most things.

Good. Pain keeps you sharp.

“Hold here.” I raise a fist, and my squad stops. “I go in alone first.”

“Commander—“ Bren starts.

“That’s an order.” I don’t look back. “If I’m not out in two hours, burn everything. Start with the gates and work inward.”

Silence. Then Dorran’s rough voice: “Understood.”

I approach the gates. The ward-sigils flare as I reach for the iron—bright enough to cast shadows, hot enough to singe the hair on my forearms. Pain lances through my palms. I grip the bars anyway and push.

The gates scream as they open. Metal on metal, yes, but an undertone beneath. A voice.

Welcome, burner. We’ve been expecting you.

The gardens are worse up close.

I walk through what might have been hedgerows once, now transformed into walls of blackened thorns that twist away as I pass. The dead trees shudder in a wind I can’t feel. Beneath my boots, the ground is soft—not mud, but a substance with more give. A surface that remembers footsteps.

The manor’s front door stands open. No guards. No servants. Just a dark rectangle leading into deeper darkness, and the smell of dust, old ink, and blood. Old blood. Recent blood.

I step inside.

The entrance hall swallows the morning light. What little illumination makes it through the doorway dies within feet, consumed by shadows that pool in corners and drip down walls. Alchemical lanterns hang from rusted chains—pale blue flames that burn low, barely enough to see by.

My eyes adjust. Orc sight works better in darkness than human, and twenty years of walking into cursed places has honed my senses beyond normal limits. Details emerge from the gloom: walls covered in warning symbols, floors etched with containment circles worn smooth by use, ceiling lost in shadows no lantern can pierce.

The magic here pushes at me. Not attacking—testing. Tasting my intentions the way the gate wards did. Deciding whether I’m a threat.

I am. I’m the biggest threat this place has faced in decades.

Footsteps echo from somewhere ahead. Light footsteps, unhurried. An approach without fear. I settle my hand on my blade and wait.

Three figures emerge from a side corridor. Old. Withered. Witches, by the look of them—their eyes carrying that faint luminescence that comes from decades of magical practice. They move in formation, the tallest in the center, the other two flanking.

“Spell-burner.” The center witch’s voice creaks like old leather. “We received word of your arrival.”

“Then you know why I’m here.”

“We know what you think you’re here to do.” She stops a careful distance away, just outside striking range. Smart. “Whether you’ll be able to do it remains to be seen.”

The Archivist Elders look like they’ve been preserved in this place. Dried out. Forgotten. Their robes are faded gray, their skin paper-thin over bone, their eyes the only part of them that seems truly alive.

I study them the way I’d study any threat. The center one—tallest, oldest—carries herself with authority. The other two defer to her, their bodies angled slightly in her direction even when they face me directly. Her luminescent eyes fix on mine, holding steady. I note that they hold steady a fraction too long—still, the way things hold still when they’re working very hard at it—and file the observation away.

“I’m Korrath Blackbrand, Commander of the Seventh Purge Unit.” I don’t offer my hand. They wouldn’t take it. “I’m here under orders from the Order of Ash to destroy a sentient grimoire. The mandate is immediate execution.”

“The grimoire cannot be destroyed.” The tall Elder speaks flatly, without emotion. “We’ve tried.”

“Seventeen dead in three centuries. That’s the report we received.”

“The report is incomplete.” She gestures for me to follow, and the two flanking Elders fall into step behind us. Boxing me in. Not a threat—I could kill all three before they finished a spell—but a statement. They’re not afraid of me.

They should be.

We descend. Stone steps spiraling down into the earth, the air growing colder and heavier with each turn. The alchemical lanterns grow sparse, then disappear entirely, replaced by a pale luminescence that seems to seep from the walls themselves.

“The grimoire was created three centuries ago,” the Elder says as we walk. “By a sorcerer who sought to preserve forbidden knowledge. He succeeded too well. The book became sentient. Ravenous. It feeds on blood and, when blood isn’t available, on minds.”

“Then we burn it and the minds it’s taken. Standard protocol.”

“The grimoire cannot be burned without killing its keeper.” She pauses on a landing, turning to face me. Her luminescent eyes fix on mine. “And killing the keeper may release what’s bound within.”

“May?”

“The previous attempts resulted in… complications.” She says it smoothly, and then—a beat too quickly—adds: “Though the grimoire’s current state is stable. Our keeper’s methods have brought it well in hand. You’ll find things considerably more contained than your reports may suggest.”

I wait. Silence is a weapon. People fill silence with information they didn’t intend to share.

The Elder’s jaw tightens. “The keeper and the grimoire are bound. Magically, irrevocably. The binding can be severed, but we don’t know what happens when it is. The sorcerer who created the grimoire—the Author, we call him—may exist within its pages. Destroying the book without proper containment could release him.”

“Then we burn them both. The keeper and the book.”

An expression crosses the Elder’s face. Not fear—closer to pity. “You may find that more difficult than you expect.”

The Black Archive is everything the reports suggested and worse.

The wards hit me before the details do—layers of containment stacked so deep the air has texture, old blood in the channels underfoot, old fear pressed into the walls. My brand reads the place the way a nose reads smoke: something has been burning in here for a very long time, and whatever it is, it isn’t finished. I scan the exits, the ward-points, the sections where the temperature drops and the shadows move wrong. Weak joints in the containment system. Places I’ll use, if it comes to that.

This place is different from every sealed vault I’ve walked into before.

The magic here isn’t just preserved. It is alive. I feel it watching from every direction—not attacking, but aware. Every shelf, every stone, every shadow contains an intelligence that is paying attention.

The whole Archive is watching. And I’ve just stepped into its field of sight.

The Elder leads me deeper. Past chambers filled with scribes who look up with hollow eyes as we pass. Past locked doors that hum with containment spells. Past sections where the temperature drops suddenly, where the air tastes of fresh blood, where shadows move against the light.

“The Scriptorium,” the Elder says as we pass a long hall filled with ink-stained tables. “Where the transcription work is done. Three scribes lost in the past decade alone.”

I note the names carved into the doorframe. A memorial. Or a warning.

“The Restricted Stacks.” She gestures toward a sealed door ahead. “Where the most dangerous texts are held. Only the keeper has unrestricted access.”

“And the grimoire?”

“Inside.”

The door is bound with iron chains and ward-sigils that make the gate wards look like children’s drawings. I can feel the magic straining against them from the other side—immense, ancient, starving. My brand burns hot enough to leave marks on my hip.

“The keeper feeds it twice daily,” the Elder continues. “Blood sacrifice. Less, and the grimoire reaches for minds instead. More, and the keeper weakens too much to maintain containment.”

“How long has the current keeper served?”

“Six years.”

I’ve killed keepers before—most of them, actually. The binding usually breaks when they die.

Usually.

“The keeper,” I say. “Where is she?”

“Inside.” The Elder gestures toward the sealed door. “Feeding the grimoire. She knew you would arrive today. She wanted to ensure it was… calm… when you did.”

Calm. As if a sentient, starving book can be calm.

“Open the door.”

The Elder hesitates. Then she produces a small blade from her robes and draws it across her palm. Blood wells—dark, thick with age—and she places her hand against the door.

The wards taste her. Accept her. The chains fall away, and the door swings open on silent hinges.

And I feel it.

The grimoire’s presence hits me like a fist to the chest.

Immense. Ancient. A consciousness that turns its attention toward me with the slow deliberation of a serpent sizing up prey. Not threatening—not yet. Curious. Interested. Wanting in a way that has nothing to do with blood or food.

My hands flex at my sides—battle-worn, reaching instinctively for destruction. The addiction stirs in my chest. That familiar urge to burn, to end, to reduce dangerous things to harmless ash.

Not yet. Assess first. Then burn.

The Restricted Stacks stretch before me—a kill-zone of chained texts and contained nightmares, every shadow holding something that breathes.

The grimoire is exactly as the reports described and worse—and it has already made up its mind about me before I crossed the threshold.

But I barely register the book.

Because standing at the lectern is the keeper.

She isn’t what I expected.

Small. Pale. Dark hair braided tight against her skull, ink-stained fingers wrapped around a ritual knife. She should look fragile. Vulnerable. The kind of victim this place would consume without noticing.

She doesn’t.

Her eyes find mine across the Restricted Stacks, and my chest tightens. Not the addiction—a different pull. One I haven’t felt in twenty years of burning.

Interest. Actual interest.

She watches me the way I watch threats. Calm. Assessing. Cataloguing my weapons, my stance, my distance from the door. Not afraid. Not surprised. Just… observing.

I’ve seen that look before. In mirrors. In the eyes of fellow spell-burners before a difficult purge. It is the look of a person who has made peace with violence.

“Spell-burner.” Her voice is soft. Polite. Controlled. “I’ve been expecting you.”

The grimoire’s pages flutter. The book’s attention splits between us—watching her, watching me, wanting whatever happens next.

I cross the chamber toward her. Each step brings me closer to the grimoire’s presence, that immense awareness bearing down on my consciousness. My brand burns hot enough to blister. My hands ache with the need to reach for it.

Up close, the keeper is even more unsettling.

Her skin is pale olive, faded from years without sunlight. Faint sigil scars mark what I can see of her arms above the blood-soaked cloth wrapped around her palms. Her eyes are dark and large and miss nothing—tracking my movements, my weapons, the distance between us.

She is beautiful in the way a blade is beautiful. Sharp. Dangerous. Made for a purpose that isn’t kind.

Focus. She’s a keeper bound to a starving book. Probably already tainted.

“Thyra Vire.” She doesn’t offer her hand. The blood dripping from her palm would have made that awkward anyway. “Current keeper of the grimoire. I assume you have questions.”

“One.” I stop at the edge of the central lectern, close enough to smell the blood and ink that clings to her skin. Close enough to see the pulse beating in her throat. “Why haven’t you died yet?”

A flicker crosses her expression. Amusement, maybe. Or recognition. “Because I’m very careful.”

“Careful doesn’t last six years in a place like this.”

“No.” She holds my gaze without flinching. “It doesn’t.”

The grimoire makes a sound.

Not words—a vibration that travels through the lectern, through the floor, through my boots and up into my bones. The pages flutter again, rustling with anticipation.

The keeper—Thyra—turns back to the book. Her bleeding hand hovers over the cover, still feeding it, still keeping it calm. “It knows you’re here.”

“I assumed.”

“It’s… interested.” She hesitates, choosing her words carefully. “The grimoire reads people. Tastes their magic, their history, their sins. The more you’ve touched forbidden things, the more it can see.”

“I’ve burned a hundred libraries.” I don’t hide the satisfaction in my voice. “Destroyed relics that were older than this manor. Whatever it thinks it sees in me⁠—“

The grimoire’s pages turn on their own.

Thyra steps back, her eyes widening. “That’s not—it shouldn’t⁠—“

The pages keep turning. Faster. A wind rises in the Restricted Stacks—not natural wind, but a gust that carries the Archive’s deep reek: copper and parchment and old need. The chains rattle against the lectern. The containment runes flare bright enough to cast shadows.

And then the pages stop.

Open. Exposed. Covered in script that writhes and changes as I watch.

KORRATH BLACKBRAND.

My name. Written in ink that gleams the color of fresh blood.

“Don’t read it.” Thyra’s voice is sharp, urgent. “Whatever it’s showing you⁠—“

But I am already reading.

Names. Dozens of names. Hundreds. Written in cramped script that covers every inch of the exposed pages, crawling across the parchment, rearranging itself into patterns I can almost understand.

THE VILLAGE OF THORNHAVEN.

Cold washes through me.

THE CHILDREN IN THE CELLAR.

My hand drops to my execution brand. The metal burns against my palm—responding to the magic, or responding to my rage. I can’t tell which.

THE SPELL THAT SCREAMED YOUR MOTHER’S NAME AS YOU BURNED IT.

“How does it know that?” The words come out rough. Barely controlled. I haven’t spoken of Thornhaven in fifteen years. Haven’t let myself think about it since the night I walked out of the ashes.

Thyra watches me with those assessing eyes. “It knows everything. Every spell you’ve touched leaves traces. The grimoire reads them.”

“Reads them how?”

“I don’t know. The Author built it to catalogue forbidden knowledge. Somehow, it learned to read the forbidden things people carry inside them too.”

The script keeps moving. More names. More sins. Every purge I’ve ever conducted, every relic I’ve destroyed, every life I’ve taken in the name of the Order. The grimoire is writing my history in blood-red ink, and every word is accurate.

Every word is true.

The spellbound children at Thornhaven. The ones too corrupted to save. The ones I burned anyway, because the magic had grown too deep, because letting them live meant letting the curse spread, because⁠—

“Stop reading.” Thyra’s hand closes around my wrist.

The touch jolts through me—unexpected, electric. Her fingers are small against my weathered skin, her grip surprisingly strong. And for a moment, the grimoire’s presence fades. The endless list of my sins blurs. All I can feel is her hand on my arm and the rapid beat of her pulse against my wrist.

“It’s trying to break you,” she says quietly. “That’s what it does. Shows you the worst parts of yourself until you can’t look away. Until you’re too paralyzed to fight.”

I tear my gaze from the pages. Look at her instead.

She is closer than I’d realized. Close enough to see the sigil scars on her throat. Close enough to feel the heat the grimoire’s constant feeding had worn into her skin. Close enough that her breath touches my chin when she speaks.

“It doesn’t work on me.” My voice comes out rougher than intended. “I already know what I am.”

Her expression changes. Recognition, maybe. Or respect.

“So do I.”

The grimoire laughs.

Not the pages turning, not the chains rattling—an actual laugh, emerging from somewhere inside the binding. Low. Intimate. A sound that shouldn’t have been possible from paper and ink and craving magic.

Thyra’s hand tightens on my wrist.

The laugh continues, building in volume, resonating through the Restricted Stacks until the other texts begin to stir. Chains rattle. Pages flutter. The air grows thick with the smell of old blood.

And then the grimoire speaks.

“Korrath Blackbrand.” The voice is wrong—layered, harmonized, carrying echoes of sounds that didn’t belong to any living throat. “The Order’s favorite weapon. The flame that never stops burning.”

My brand is in my hand before I realize I’ve drawn it. The metal blazes with heat, responding to the living magic in the air. “What are you?”

I glance at Thyra. She hasn’t moved—but her face has changed. This isn’t the careful fear of a keeper managing a dangerous text. It’s the raw shock of someone watching something do something it has never done before. In six years, it never spoke to her.

“I am what your Order fears most.” The pages turn slowly, revealing more script, more names, more sins. “Knowledge that cannot be burned. Truth that refuses to die. Everything you’ve destroyed, I’ve preserved. Every spell you’ve ended, I remember.”

“Then you know what I’m capable of.”

“I know exactly what you’re capable of, spell-burner.” The voice drops lower, more intimate. “I know the relief you feel when magic screams and dies. I know the peace that floods through you when forbidden things burn. I know about the addiction—the need that never quite goes away, no matter how many libraries you reduce to ash.”

My jaw clenches. The brand burns hot enough to leave marks on my palm. “You know nothing.”

“I know you enjoy it.” The grimoire’s pages flutter with amusement. “I know you hate yourself for enjoying it. And I know that you’ll never stop, because stopping would mean facing what you’ve become.”

The words land like blows. True. Every one of them true.

Thyra steps between us—bloodied and unbowed, positioning herself between me and the book. “Enough.”

“Protecting him, keeper?” The grimoire’s voice carries surprise. Or appetite. “How… unexpected.”

“I’m protecting you.” She faces the grimoire squarely, blood still dripping from her palm. “He’s here to burn you. Provoking him isn’t going to help.”

“Nothing is going to help.” The pages turn again, revealing a final message in that blood-red script:

BURN ME, SPELL-BURNER. BURN ME, AND LEARN WHAT I’VE BEEN KEEPING CAGED. THE AUTHOR IS WAKING. AND HE’S SO VERY RAVENOUS.

The Author.

The name echoes in the sudden silence. Around us, the other texts have gone still—not dormant, but listening. Waiting. Even the air seems to hold its breath.

“What does that mean?” I keep my brand raised, heat radiating from the metal. “Who is the Author?”

Thyra doesn’t answer. She is staring at the grimoire, her face pale, her hands trembling. The blood from her palm has stopped falling—the wound must have closed. But she doesn’t move to feed the book again.

“Thyra.”

Her name on my tongue feels strange. Intimate. I shouldn’t have known her name. Shouldn’t care about the fear I see creeping into her expression.

She’s a keeper. Probably tainted. Definitely dangerous.

But I say her name again anyway.

“Thyra. Who is the Author?”

She turns to face me. The careful calm has cracked. Underneath it, I see a look I recognize—a person standing at the edge of an abyss.

“The sorcerer who created the grimoire.” Her voice is barely a whisper. “He didn’t die when he bound himself to the pages. He’s been in there for three hundred years. Sleeping. Waiting.”

“Waiting for what?”

The grimoire answers before she can.

“For a worthy audience.” The voice carries through the Restricted Stacks, resonating off black stone walls and bone-inlaid shelves. “For a visitor worth waking for. For one who burns as beautifully as you do, Korrath Blackbrand.”

The pages turn one final time. And what appears chills me to the bone.

Not names. Not sins.

A face.

Rendered in ink that writhes and moves, a portrait that shouldn’t have been possible on flat parchment. A tall figure in scholar’s robes that crawl with living text. Eyes that glow with script scrolling behind the pupils. A smile that promises knowledge and madness and fates far worse than death.

THE AUTHOR WAKES.

The words burn themselves into the page beneath the portrait.

AND HE’S BEEN WAITING FOR BOTH OF YOU.

The grimoire slams shut.

The sound echoes through the Restricted Stacks—not just the thud of pages closing, but a resonance that travels through my chest, my bones, my execution brand that has suddenly gone cold in my hand.

Silence.

Then Thyra moves. She grabs my arm—both hands this time, fingers digging into muscle—and pulls me toward the door.

“We need to leave. Now.”

“I’m not leaving until⁠—“

“He’s awake.” Her voice shakes. “Three hundred years of sleeping, and you woke him up. Whatever you were sent here to do, it just got a thousand times harder.”

I look back at the grimoire. The book sits on its lectern, chains still vibrating, cover gleaming wetly in the pale light. It looks dormant. Contained. Harmless.

But I’ve burned enough dangerous things to know what dormant really means.

Waiting. Watching. Planning.

“Three days.” I don’t know why I say it. Don’t know why I’m offering time instead of fire. “I’ll give you three days to find a way to sever the binding without releasing what’s inside.”

Thyra’s grip on my arm tightens. “And if I can’t?”

“Then I burn you both.” I hold her gaze—dark, guarded, hiding depths I can’t read. “That’s not a threat. That’s a promise.”

She holds my stare for a long moment. Then she nods once, sharply.

“Three days.”

We leave the Restricted Stacks side by side. The grimoire watches us go—I feel its attention following us through the sealed door, up the spiraling stairs, into the manor above.

The Author is waking.

The words echo in my skull as I step out into the dead gardens, into the twisted trees and bone-white flowers and the oppressive sky of the Veillands bearing down from above.

And he’s been waiting for both of you.

My squad is where I’d left them, weapons ready, eyes fixed on the manor. Bren starts forward when he sees me emerge. “Commander⁠—“

“We wait.” The words taste like ash in my mouth. “Three days.”

“Three days? The orders said⁠—“

“I know what the orders said.” I turn back toward the manor. Toward the Archive beneath. Toward the keeper with guarded eyes and blood-stained hands who is already walking back into the darkness.

“The situation has changed.”

Behind me, the iron gates swing closed on their own. The ward-sigils flare bright enough to cast shadows, then fade.

And somewhere far below, in the Restricted Stacks where craving books wait in chains, I swear I hear the grimoire laugh.

FOUR

THYRA

He’s still here.

I feel him before I see him—that heavy presence at the edge of my awareness, heat and violence barely contained. The spell-burner hasn’t left the Archive since yesterday. Hasn’t slept, from what the night-watch archivists tell me. Just prowled the outer halls like a caged beast, waiting for morning.

Waiting for me.

Three days. He gave me three days to solve a problem that’s existed for three centuries.

I tie off the final braid and check my reflection in the small mirror above my washbasin. Pale. Dark circles under my eyes from a night spent searching records instead of sleeping. The sigil scars on my throat and collarbone peek above my collar—souvenirs from the grimoire’s more demanding moods.

Look harmless. Look helpful. Give him nothing he can use against you.

I’ve survived six years in this place by knowing when to fight and when to bend. The spell-burner is six-foot-seven of hardened muscle and barely leashed destruction. Fighting him would be suicide.

So I’ll bend.

I smooth my robes, tuck my ritual knife into its sheath at my thigh, and step out into the corridor.

He’s waiting exactly where I expected—leaning against the wall opposite my chamber door, arms crossed, eyes tracking me the moment I appear. Those eyes—deep orange, the color of cooling embers—burn brighter near living magic. In the pale light of the alchemical lanterns, he looks carved from stone and shadow. Massive. Brutal. The execution brand at his hip gleams with residual heat.

“Keeper.” His voice is rough gravel.

“Commander Blackbrand.” I keep my tone soft. Polite. Deferential. “I didn’t realize you’d be here so early.”

“I’ve been here all night.” He pushes off from the wall, and I’m reminded again of his sheer size—the way he fills the corridor, the way my head barely reaches his chest. “Show me your Archive.”

Not a request. An order.

Good. Orders I can work with.

“Of course.” I gesture toward the stairs leading down into the depths. “Where would you like to begin?”

He positions himself behind me as we walk.

Not beside me—behind. Close enough that I can feel the heat radiating from his body, close enough that his shadow swallows mine on the lamplit walls. His boots are silent on the stone despite his size. A hunter’s tread.

He’s watching me. Tracking my movements, noting the exits, measuring distances.

I let him. Let him think he has the advantage. I know this place better than he ever will—every hidden passage, every ward-point, every room where the shadows grow thick enough to hide in. If I need to run, I’ll run. If I need to fight…

I won’t win. But I can make it expensive.

“The Archive was founded four centuries ago,” I say, pitching my voice to carry without turning around. “Originally a repository for texts too dangerous to keep in public collections but too valuable to destroy. The grimoire arrived a century later.”

“I know the history.” His breath stirs the hair at the back of my neck. He’s close. Deliberately close. “I want to know how it works.”

We descend, the Archive’s familiar cold settling around us like a held breath.

“The containment system operates on three principles.” I gesture toward the ward-sigils carved into the walls. “Blood payment, which keeps the grimoire fed. Rune binding, which limits its physical reach. And consciousness anchoring, which…”

“Which keeps it from reaching into minds.” He finishes the sentence. “I’ve dealt with contained entities before.”

“Not like this one.”

I feel him tense behind me. Good. A little fear might keep him cautious.

Or it might make him burn everything faster. Careful.

The Scriptorium sprawls before us—a long hall of oak tables stained with ink and other things, high windows of leaded glass that let in no natural light. Scribal witches hunch over their work, quills scratching, fingers protected by iron guards to prevent accidental magical bindings.

They look up as we enter. Every one of them. Their eyes fix on the spell-burner at my back, and I see the fear bloom across their faces.

They know what he is. They know why he’s here.

“The Scriptorium handles transcription and translation,” I say, keeping my voice calm. Steady. “Most texts can be safely copied if proper precautions are taken. Iron finger-guards prevent binding accidents. The quills are made from raven feathers, the ink mixed with sanctified ash.”

“Accidents.” Korrath’s gaze sweeps the hall, taking in the gouges on the table surfaces, the stains that aren’t quite ink. “How many scribes have you lost?”

“Three in the past decade.” I nod toward the doorframe where their names are carved. “Archivist Denn. Scribe Callia. Researcher Voss.”

The last name catches in my throat.

Don’t think about it. Focus.

“The texts fight back,” I continue. “Some alter their words as they’re copied. Some try to transfer their magic to the scribe. Extended exposure can cause ink-madness—compulsive writing, speaking in dead tongues.” I pause, letting the implications settle. “We lose people. It’s the cost of preservation.”

“Preservation.” He speaks the word like a curse. “You bleed and die to keep things that should have been destroyed centuries ago.”

“Some knowledge is worth preserving.”

“No knowledge is worth this.” He sweeps a hand toward the hunched scribes, the stained tables, the names of the dead carved into the doorframe. “This is a charnel house dressed up as a library.”

I turn to face him. A mistake—it puts us in proximity that feels dangerous, forces me to look up into eyes that burn brighter near living magic.

“And what’s the alternative?” I keep my voice level. Reasonable. “Burn everything? Destroy texts that contain the only records of civilizations that no longer exist? Erase knowledge that might one day save lives?”

“If that knowledge kills everyone who tries to read it, then yes.” He steps closer, and I refuse to step back. “Burn it all.”

The distance between us has shrunk to nothing.

I can smell him—smoke and iron and an undertone beneath, a scent that makes my pulse quicken despite every rational thought in my head. The heat radiating from his body pushes against my skin through my robes.

He’s trying to intimidate me. That’s all this is.

But my body doesn’t understand intimidation. My body notices the width of his shoulders, the scars that map his hands and forearms, the way his chest rises and falls with each controlled breath. My body wants to lean closer when every instinct should be screaming at me to run.

Stop it. He’s here to kill you.

“The grimoire,” he says, and his voice has dropped lower. Rougher. “Show me what it does.”

I hold his stare for a moment longer than I should. Then I turn away, breaking the spell of proximity, and lead him deeper into the Archive.

But I can still feel the heat of him behind me, and my heart won’t stop racing.

We pass through the secondary containment levels—chambers filled with sealed texts, wards layered so thick the air shimmers. Korrath examines everything with those hunter’s eyes, noting the ward-points, the escape routes, the places where the defenses are strongest.

And weakest.

He’s not just observing. He’s planning an assault.

I strengthen the wards as we pass. Subtle adjustments—a drop of blood on a rune here, a whispered reinforcement there. Nothing he’d notice unless he knew exactly what to look for. But every ward I touch holds firmer by the time we move on.

Preparing defenses he can’t see. It’s not much, but it’s something.

“The grimoire catalogues spells by drinking them from living practitioners,” I say as we approach the sealed door to the Restricted Stacks. “It doesn’t just store the magic—it absorbs the knowledge of how to cast it. Every spell it consumes becomes part of its library.”

“Drinking them.” Korrath’s hand rests on his brand. “You mean killing them.”

“Not always. Some practitioners survived the extraction. Most didn’t.” I pause at the door, reaching for the knife at my thigh. “The grimoire offers access to its knowledge in exchange for payment. Blood, usually. Sometimes more.”

“And people accept this bargain?”

“People accept many things when they’re desperate enough.” I open the cut on my palm and press it to the door. “Knowledge is power. Some power is worth dying for.”

The wards taste me, accept me, and the chains fall away.

“After you,” I say. “Unless you’d prefer I go first?”

Caution flickers across his expression. Not fear—he doesn’t seem capable of fear. But respect for a threat he can’t simply burn away.

“Side by side.” He positions himself at my shoulder instead of behind me. Our arms brush as we step through the doorway.

The contact sends heat racing through my veins.

Distraction. That’s all it is.

But I don’t move away.

The grimoire is awake.

I feel it the moment we enter—that immense awareness turning toward us, bearing down on my consciousness with familiar appetite. But a new edge has emerged today. An eagerness that wasn’t there yesterday.

The Author. It mentioned the Author waking.

The central lectern waits at the heart of the chamber, chains still vibrating, cover gleaming in the pale light. The grimoire hasn’t been fed since this morning. It’s restless. Wanting. The pages rustle without wind, revealing glimpses of script that writhes and changes.

“It knows we’re here,” Korrath says unnecessarily.

“It knows everything that happens in the Archive. Every conversation. Every secret. Every lie.”

FIVE

THYRA

Ifeel him tense behind me. Good. Let him wonder what the grimoire knows about him that he hasn’t shared.

Let him wonder what it knows about me.

I hold my bleeding palm over the cover. “Watch.”

The binding answers— containment runes pulsing hot beneath my blood, the pages turning with that hungry deliberateness I have spent six years learning to read.

Script crawls across the exposed parchment—not the ancient languages of the original text, but words meant for us.

KEEPER. BURNER. HOW DELIGHTFUL. A MATCHED SET.

Korrath makes a sound low in his throat. His hand moves toward his brand, then stops. He’s learning. The grimoire feeds on reaction, on emotion. Showing nothing is the only defense.

Smart. Smarter than I expected.

“It communicates this way,” I explain, keeping my voice steady as the grimoire drinks my blood. “Written messages, mostly. It only found its voice recently.”

I HAVE BEEN QUIET FOR SO LONG.

The script rearranges itself, letters crawling into new formations.

BUT YOU WOKE ME, BURNER. YOUR FIRE CALLED TO ME ACROSS THE WARDS. SO BRIGHT. SO WANTING.

“What does it want?” Korrath’s voice is controlled, but I hear the tension underneath.

WANT? I WANT WHAT ALL PRESERVED THINGS WANT. TO BE REMEMBERED. TO BE USED. TO MATTER.

More script appears, faster now, the red-black ink gleaming wetly.

THE KEEPER UNDERSTANDS. SHE FEEDS ME NOT BECAUSE SHE MUST, BUT BECAUSE SHE KNOWS WHAT I CONTAIN. SHE KNOWS THE VALUE OF WHAT WOULD BE LOST IF I BURNED.

I feel Korrath’s attention fix on me. Weighing. Assessing.

“What do you contain?” he asks the book. “What’s worth dying for?”

The pages turn slowly. Deliberately.

EVERYTHING. I CONTAIN EVERYTHING. EVERY FORBIDDEN SPELL. EVERY LOST LANGUAGE. EVERY SECRET BURIED BECAUSE IT WAS TOO DANGEROUS TO SHARE.

A pause. Then:

INCLUDING YOURS, SPELL-BURNER. INCLUDING HERS.

The air in the Restricted Stacks drops ten degrees.

I step back from the lectern, pulling my bleeding hand away. The grimoire makes a sound of frustrated appetite, but it doesn’t pursue. It’s more interested in the game it’s playing.

THE THREE WHO WALKED INTO MY PAGES, KEEPER. DOES HE KNOW?

Ice floods my chest.

It knows. Of course it knows. It was there. It consumed them.

Korrath turns to face me. Those ember-bright eyes bore into mine, searching, assessing. “What’s it talking about?”

“Nothing.” The lie comes easily. Smooth. Reasonable. “The grimoire says many things. Most of them designed to cause chaos.”

“Thyra.” My name in his mouth again. That low rumble, too intimate for the space between us. “What did you do?”

I made a choice.

But I don’t say that. I keep my expression calm, my voice steady, my lies perfectly polished.

“There was a containment failure. Three archivists died. The grimoire was involved, but not in the way it’s implying.” I hold his stare without flinching. “It’s trying to divide us. Don’t let it.”

He watches me for a long moment. I can see him weighing my words, measuring my tells, deciding whether to press further.

He doesn’t believe me. He knows I’m lying.

But he lets it go. For now.

“The Author,” he says instead. “You mentioned him yesterday. Tell me everything.”

I move away from the lectern, putting distance between myself and the grimoire’s ravenous attention. Korrath follows, his presence a constant force at my back.

“You heard the Elder’s account. The foundation is accurate. But there’s something she didn’t tell you—something I’ve been trying to understand for months.” I pause beside a lectern holding a lesser text—dormant, safe.

“What woke him?”

I hesitate. This is the part I don’t fully understand—the mystery that’s kept me awake for months, searching records, trying to piece answers from fragments.

“I don’t know. The grimoire’s activity has been increasing for the past year. More appetite, more awareness, more… personality. The Elders dismissed my concerns. Called it normal fluctuation.” I let the bitterness seep into my voice. “It’s not normal. A reckoning is building. And yesterday, when you arrived…”

“I woke him up.”

“Your fire called to him. That’s what the grimoire said.” I hold his gaze. “Whatever you are, whatever you’ve done, it was enough to pull the Author out of centuries of sleep.”

He doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t show any reaction at all—his face might as well be carved from stone. But I see his hands flex at his sides, those massive battle-worn fingers reaching for destruction.

The addiction. The grimoire mentioned it. He needs to burn.

“Then we end this now.” His voice is flat. Final. “Before he fully wakes. Before he can act.”

“And if destroying the grimoire releases him?”

“Then I burn him too.”

“Then you scatter him across the world with nothing to contain him.” I step closer. “We need to understand what we’re dealing with before we act.”

“Understanding is what got you trapped here for six years.” He closes the distance between us, and suddenly we’re breathing the same air—his chest almost touching mine, his breath stirring my hair. “Understanding is what killed those three archivists. Understanding is a luxury we don’t have.”

My heart slams against my ribs. I should step back. Should maintain the helpful librarian act, the soft-spoken deference that’s kept me alive.

Instead, I tilt my chin up. Hold his burning stare.

“And your way is so much better? Burn everything, ask questions never? How many innocent people have died because you didn’t bother to understand what you were destroying?”

His expression cracks, just for a moment. Underneath I glimpse a wound. A raw place—something he’d buried long enough that the burial had become its own kind of scar.

Whatever he carries, it isn’t smaller than what I carry. It might be the same shape.

“You have no idea what I’ve⁠—“

The grimoire screams.

Not a spell-scream—not the thin magical shriek of an awakening text. This is deeper. A sound that comes from the binding itself, from the craving dark at the book’s heart.

The pages explode open.

Ink pours from the grimoire—not dripping but surging, flowing across the lectern and onto the floor in a tide of living darkness. It pools and rises, taking shape. Forms emerge from the liquid black—not quite solid, not quite shadow. Things with too many limbs. Things with mouths where mouths shouldn’t be.

Ink-constructs. The grimoire is attacking.

Korrath’s brand is in his hand before I can draw breath. The metal blazes with heat, and he moves—faster than anything his size should move—putting himself between me and the rising tide.

“Stay behind me.”

“I’m not helpless.” My knife is in my hand, blood still dripping from my palm. “I’ve been fighting these things for years.”

“Then fight.”

The first construct lunges. Korrath meets it with his brand, and the metal sears through liquid darkness with a hiss of burning magic. The thing shrieks—a sound of rending parchment and dissolving thought—and crumbles to ash.

But there are more. Dozens more, rising from the ink tide, reshaping themselves as fast as he can destroy them.

I drop into a crouch and sketch a containment circle on the floor with my own blood. The sigils flare as I activate them, creating a barrier that the constructs can’t cross—buying us space to breathe, to think.

“It’s testing us.” I have to shout over the cacophony of screaming magic. “Testing what we can do.”

“Then let’s show it.” Korrath drives through another construct, his brand leaving trails of dying light in the air. “How do we stop this?”

“Feed it. If I give it enough blood⁠—“

“You’re already pale as death. Any more and you’ll collapse.”

He’s right. The blood I’ve already given today—the door ward, the feedings, the containment circle—it’s too much. Dark spots swim at the edges of my vision.

Think. There has to be another way.

The grimoire’s pages turn in the chaos, revealing fresh script that burns bright enough to read even through the swirling darkness.

ENOUGH.

The constructs dissolve. All of them, all at once, collapsing into puddles of ink that flow back toward the lectern, back into the pages. The screaming stops. The air clears.

Silence.

Korrath stands at the center of the destroyed containment circle, brand still raised, chest heaving. Ash clings to his clothes, to his skin. His eyes burn brighter than I’ve ever seen them—that deep orange blazing almost gold.

He enjoyed that. The destruction, the burning. He needed it.

The grimoire’s pages settle, the last of the ink absorbed back into parchment that gleams wetly in the restored light.

And then it speaks.

“Burn me.”

The voice echoes from the walls, from the floor, from the shadows that pool in every corner. Not written this time—spoken, with a presence that vibrates against my skull.

“Burn me, spell-burner. I dare you.”

Korrath moves toward the lectern, brand raised. I grab his arm—both hands, fingers digging into muscle—and pull.

“Don’t. That’s what it wants.”

“Then I’ll give it what it wants.”

“And release the Author? Release centuries of accumulated power into the world?” I plant myself in front of him, between him and the book. “Think.”

The grimoire laughs. The sound rises from the binding itself—a wet tearing, a pressure behind the eyes, something vast amused at something small—and fills the chamber, echoing off black stone and bone-inlaid shelves.

“She knows.” The voice drops lower, more intimate. Almost tender. “She knows what I’m keeping caged. She’s known for a year, since the night she fed me three minds and felt what stirred beneath. The keeper is wiser than she pretends, burner. She’s been preparing for this moment long before you arrived.”

Korrath’s gaze locks onto me. Hard. Suspicious. “What is it talking about?”

Deny it. Lie. Do what you’ve done for six years.

But the words won’t come. Years of careful deception, and suddenly I can’t make my mouth form the lies.

“The Author,” I say instead. My voice comes out barely a whisper. “I felt him stir. During the cascade. When the three…”

When I fed them to the book.

“When the three died. I felt a presence wake inside the grimoire. Immense. Ravenous.” I hold Korrath’s gaze. “I’ve been trying to find a way to stop him ever since. But the Elders won’t listen, the records are incomplete, and every month he gets stronger.”

The grimoire’s pages turn one final time. The script that appears burns bright enough to cast shadows across my face.

HE HEARS YOU. HE HAS BEEN LISTENING SINCE YOU FIRST SET FOOT IN MY ARCHIVE. THE PULSE YOU WILL HEAR IN A MOMENT IS NOT MINE. AND HE IS SO VERY RAVENOUS.

A pause. Then the book slams shut. The lanterns flicker.

And in the sudden silence, I hear it.

A heartbeat.

Not the grimoire’s familiar pulse. Deeper. Stronger.

Coming from inside the pages.

“We need to leave.” I grab Korrath’s arm again—the contact sends another jolt of heat through my veins, but there’s no time to think about that. “Now.”

“I’m not running from⁠—“

“That’s not the grimoire.” My voice shakes. “That’s him. The Author. He’s waking, and if we’re still here when he emerges⁠—“

The grimoire’s cover begins to glow.

Korrath looks at the book, then at me. Understanding passes between us—not trust, not yet, but recognition. We are both in danger. We both know it.

“Move.”

We run.

Behind us, the glow intensifies. The heartbeat grows louder.

And from somewhere inside the binding, a voice begins to speak—old, deliberate, and terribly, terribly awake.

“Thyra Vire. Korrath Blackbrand.” The Author’s voice carries through the Restricted Stacks, following us as we flee toward the sealed door. “I’ve been dreaming of you for so very long. Don’t run. We have so much to discuss.”

The door slams behind us. I throw every ward I know against it, blood and magic and desperate hope.

It’s not enough. I know it’s not enough.

But it might buy us time.

Korrath stands beside me, brand still raised, breath coming hard. In the dim light of the outer Archive, his face is all sharp angles and barely contained violence.

“Three days,” he says. “That’s how long you have to find a solution. After that…”

“After that, you burn everything.”

“Yes.”

I should argue. Should fight for more time, more options, more chances to find another way.

Instead, I nod once. Sharply.

“Then we’d better get started.”

Behind the sealed door, I hear the Author laugh.

And I realize that three days might already be too long.

SIX

KORRATH

The door holds for exactly three seconds.

Then the wards shatter.

Light explodes through the seams—red-gold and searing, carrying the smell of burning sigils and ancient magic tearing itself apart. Thyra stumbles back, her hands still raised, blood still dripping from her palms where she’s been feeding power into protections that were never going to be enough.

I grab her arm and haul her behind me as the door blows inward.

Ink pours through the opening.

Not a trickle. Not a stream. A tide—black and glistening and alive, surging across the floor of the outer Archive with the deliberate malice of floodwaters seeking the lowest ground. It moves against gravity, against reason, pooling and rising and taking shape.

The grimoire. It’s not just awake. It’s hunting.

“Move!” I shove Thyra toward the far corridor, drawing my blade with one hand and my brand with the other. The metal blazes hot in my grip, responding to the living magic flooding the chamber. “Get to the upper levels!”

“I can’t leave⁠—“

“You can die here or die useful. Choose.”

She hesitates for a heartbeat. Then she runs.

Good. One less thing to protect.

The tide reaches the center of the chamber and begins to rise.

Shapes emerge from the darkness.

Wolves first—massive things made of liquid black, their bodies flowing and reforming as they prowl. Eyes of gleaming script stare from faces that shouldn’t exist. Jaws open to reveal teeth of solidified ink, sharp as obsidian and twice as cruel.

Behind them, birds. Creatures with wings of dripping shadow and beaks of cramped handwriting, circling near the ceiling, waiting for an opening.

And behind those, worse things. Shapes that don’t have names. Limbs that bend wrong. Mouths that open in places mouths shouldn’t be. They move in patterns that hurt to watch, geometry that slides against the inside of my skull.

The grimoire isn’t just attacking. It’s showing off.

I don’t give it time to finish.

The first wolf lunges, and I meet it with my brand. The metal sears through ink-flesh with a hiss of dying magic, and the construct screams—a sound of rending parchment and dissolving thought. It bursts apart, splattering the floor with liquid darkness that immediately begins crawling back toward the main tide.

They reform. Of course they reform.

Two more wolves circle left. A bird dives from above. I pivot, blade slashing through one wolf while my brand catches the bird mid-descent. Ash and ink rain down around me. The heat of destruction floods through my veins.

Good. This is good. This is what I was built for.

The addiction sings in my blood. Every kill feeds it. Every screaming spell, every dissolving construct, every burst of dying magic—relief pours through me, sharp and sweet and terrible.

I know I should be worried about that.

I don’t care.

The Archive burns around me.

Alchemical lanterns shatter as the ink-creatures swarm, spilling pale blue fire across shelves of forbidden texts. Books shriek as they die—some in human voices, some in languages that have no sound. The air fills with smoke and ash and the copper-tang of blood magic unleashed.

I carve through the chaos like fire through dry paper.

Wolf. Wolf. Bird. A thing with too many arms that tries to wrap around my torso—I burn through it before it can close, leaving trails of ash in the air. My brand is a constant blaze now, hot enough to scar, hot enough to char the leather of my grip.

I don’t slow down.

This is what you are. This is what you’ve become. A weapon. An ending.

The constructs keep coming. For every one I destroy, two more rise from the ink tide. The grimoire isn’t trying to overwhelm me with strength—it’s trying to exhaust me, to drain my reserves, to make me burn until there’s nothing left.

It’s working.

My arms are starting to ache. My lungs burn with the smoke of dying magic. The brand in my hand is hot enough now to blister, and I can feel the skin of my palm charring where metal meets flesh.

I don’t stop.

A wolf catches my leg, ink-teeth sinking through my trousers and into muscle. I roar and drive my blade through its skull, but the damage is done—blood flows down my calf, warm and wet, mingling with the ink that’s spreading across the floor.

The grimoire can taste it. My blood. It knows I’m bleeding.

The ink tide surges higher.

I kill three more constructs in the time it takes to draw a breath.

And three more rise to replace them.

No. Not replacing. Multiplying.

For every construct I reduce to ash, the grimoire creates more. The death-energy isn’t just dissipating—it’s being absorbed. Fed back into the tide. Used to spawn new nightmares.

It’s not fighting me. It’s feeding on me.

Every spell I burn, every construct I end, the grimoire drinks the wreckage. I’m not winning. I’m making it stronger.

The realization hits like a fist to the gut.

Twenty years of spell-burning. A hundred libraries reduced to ash. Countless relics destroyed, countless texts ended, and I never once considered that the magic might be going somewhere. That my destruction might be nourishing the very thing I was trying to end.

What if it’s been feeding on you the whole time? What if every purge you’ve ever conducted just made things like this stronger?

I shove the thought aside. No time for existential crisis. The constructs are closing in, the ink tide is rising, and somewhere behind me, I can hear the screaming of the Archive’s remaining texts as the fire spreads.

Need a different strategy. Need to⁠—

A scream cuts through the chaos.

Not a construct. Not a dying book.

Thyra.

She’s at the far end of the chamber, backed against a wall of flame.

She didn’t run. Of course she didn’t run. She circled around, trying to reach the Restricted Stacks, trying to get to the grimoire itself. And now she’s trapped—fire behind her, ink-constructs in front, and no way out that doesn’t go through both.

Stupid. Reckless. Brave.

I don’t think. I just move.

My blade carves a path through the constructs—not trying to destroy them now, just pushing through, buying distance. My brand clears the path in front of me, leaving dying magic in my wake. The addiction screams for more, for complete annihilation, but I ignore it.

Get to her. Everything else can wait.

An ink-wolf launches itself at my chest. I catch it on my blade, let momentum carry it past, and keep moving. A bird rakes talons across my shoulder, drawing blood. I don’t stop.

Thyra has her knife out. She’s cutting her palms again, deeper than before, letting blood flow in rivers down her arms. The ink-constructs near her are hesitating, circling but not attacking—drawn to the blood, confused by its offering.

She’s trying to distract them. Using herself as bait.

I reach her in three more strides, grabbing her wrist and pulling her behind me. Her blood smears against my skin, hot and slick, and the contact sends a jolt through my chest that has nothing to do with the fight.

“What are you doing?” I demand.

“Saving you.” She yanks her wrist free, holds up her dripping palms. “The grimoire wants blood more than it wants destruction. If I give it what it wants⁠—“

“You’ll bleed out.”

“I’ll buy us time.”

Before I can stop her, she pushes past me and walks toward the ink tide.

The constructs part for her.

I watch—frozen, furious, unable to act—as Thyra walks through a sea of nightmares like a queen through her court. The wolves lower their heads. The birds settle on shoulders and outstretched arms. The things without names curve around her, hungry but patient.

She reaches the edge of the ink tide and kneels.

Blood falls from her palms in steady streams, dropping into the black liquid, disappearing beneath the surface. The tide shudders. Ripples spread outward. And slowly, gradually, it begins to recede.

“Stop fighting.” Her voice carries across the chamber, strained but clear. “Every time you kill one of them, you make the grimoire stronger. It’s drinking your destruction.”

“I noticed.” I keep my blade raised, my brand ready. The constructs aren’t attacking, but they haven’t dissolved either. “What are you doing?”

“Paying the debt.” More blood drips from her hands. Her face is pale—too pale. Her breathing is shallow, labored. “The grimoire is starving. It’s been starving since you arrived. Your presence woke appetites it can’t control.”

“So you’re just going to feed it until it’s satisfied?”

“Until it’s calm.” She sways slightly, catches herself. “There’s a difference.”

The ink tide continues to recede. The constructs are dissolving now, flowing back into the main mass, their forms losing coherence. The wolves fade to shadows. The birds become smears of darkness. The nameless things simply… stop.

And still Thyra bleeds.

She’s going to kill herself. She’s going to bleed out right here, and you’re going to stand there and watch.

I move before the thought finishes forming.

“Enough.”

I cross the distance between us in two strides, grab her wrists, and haul her upright. Her blood smears across my hands, my forearms, the front of my shirt. She’s lighter than I expected—too light, too fragile for someone who’s survived this place for six years.

“Let go.” She tries to pull free, but there’s no strength behind it. “I need to finish⁠—“

“You need to not die.” I tear strips from my own shirt, binding her palms with rough efficiency. The fabric darkens immediately, blood soaking through. “The grimoire can find another meal.”

“You don’t understand.” Her eyes find mine, and despite everything—despite the blood loss and the exhaustion and the chaos still smoking around us—there’s fire in them. Defiance. “If I stop now, it’ll start again. It’ll keep attacking until it gets what it wants.”

“Then we’ll find another way to give it what it wants.”

“There is no other way.”

We’re standing close—too close. Her blood is on my hands, her body swaying against mine as her strength fails. I can smell the copper of her wounds, the ink that clings to her skin, and underneath it all, the scent of her. Warm. Female. Alive.

She’s been feeding this thing for six years. Bleeding for it. Killing for it. And now she’s willing to die for it.

Why?

The question burns in my chest, sharp and unexpected. I’m not supposed to care about her motivations. I’m not supposed to care about anything except the mission—destroy the grimoire, contain the threat, burn what needs burning.

But I’m holding her wrists, and her blood is on my hands, and I can’t make myself let go.

Pain lances through my chest.

Sharp. Sudden. Centered directly over my heart. I’ve taken wounds in battle, felt blades pierce flesh and magic burn through bone, but this is different. This isn’t damage. This is⁠—

No.

I stagger back, releasing Thyra’s wrists. My hand flies to my chest, pressing against the spot where the pain originated. Beneath my palm, I feel heat. Warmth that has nothing to do with the fires still burning around us.

Impossible.

Every orc knows what this feeling means. We’re taught from childhood—the mating mark, the sign of a fated mate. A magical brand that sears itself into the flesh when an orc meets the one they’re meant to claim. It’s supposed to happen in youth, during the years of burning blood and uncontrolled passion.

I am forty-three years old, and it has never happened until now.

“What—“ Thyra’s voice is distant, confused. She’s watching me with those assessing eyes, trying to read what she can’t understand. “What’s wrong?”

I can’t answer. My hand is still pressed to my chest, and beneath my fingers, I can feel the mark forming. Lines of heat tracing patterns into my skin. Sigils that have existed since before the Veil was shattered, magic older than the Archive and everything in it.

The mating mark. For her. For the keeper of a monster.

The pain fades to a persistent warmth. I pull my hand away, and through my torn shirt, I can see it—a pattern of interlocking sigils burned into the skin over my heart. The mark of a fated mate.

This can’t be real. This can’t be⁠—

Thyra’s eyes fix on the mark. Her face goes pale—paler than the blood loss already made it.

“That’s…” She reaches toward my chest, then stops, fingers hovering an inch from the fresh brand. “That’s a mating mark.”

“I know what it is.”

“But that means—“ She swallows hard. “That means I’m⁠—“

“Don’t.” The word comes out harsher than intended. “Don’t say it.”

The Archive smolders around us.

The ink tide has fully receded now, flowing back through the shattered door toward the Restricted Stacks. The constructs are gone. The fires are dying. And I’m standing in the ruins of a battle I won, staring at a woman who’s apparently been marked as my fated mate.

This doesn’t make sense.

Mating marks don’t appear at forty-three. They don’t appear for people you’ve known less than a day. They don’t appear for keepers bound to sentient grimoires. The magic has rules. Requirements. A mating mark requires compatibility—blood and soul and spirit aligned in ways that go beyond surface attraction.

I look at Thyra. She’s still standing, barely—her color is grey, her breathing shallow, her hands wrapped in blood-soaked cloth. She should be focused on survival, on recovery, on the hundred practical concerns that demand attention.

Instead, she’s staring at the mark on my chest with an expression I can’t read.

“This is the grimoire’s doing.” I force my voice to steadiness. “A trick. A manipulation.”

“Mating marks can’t be faked.” Her voice is steady too, but I hear the strain underneath. “The magic is too old. Too powerful.”

“Then it’s a mistake.”

“Mating marks aren’t mistakes either.”

We stare at each other across the smoking ruins. Two people who should be enemies. Two people who are apparently, impossibly, bound.

She’s not wrong. You know she’s not wrong.

The mating mark pulses against my chest, warm and insistent. I can feel it now—an awareness that wasn’t there before. A gravity drawing me toward the woman in front of me, beyond physical attraction, beyond tactical assessment, beyond any of the rational categories I use to understand the world.

She’s yours. The mark says she’s yours.

I shove the thought down with every ounce of discipline I possess.

“We need to deal with the grimoire.” My voice is rough. “Whatever this is, it can wait.”

“Can it?” Thyra’s eyes haven’t left the mark. “If that’s a true mating mark, ignoring it will cause problems. Physical problems. The magic demands completion.”

“Then the magic will have to be patient.”

I turn away from her, facing the destruction we’ve wrought. Books still smolder on broken shelves. Ink stains spread across the floor like shadows. The Restricted Stacks lie beyond the shattered door, and somewhere in there, the grimoire waits.

One crisis at a time.

The grimoire speaks.

Not an attack—just a voice, drifting through the ruins from the direction of the Restricted Stacks. The same layered harmonics as before, the same wrongness that makes my teeth ache.

“How fascinating.”

Thyra stiffens beside me. I reach for my brand, then stop—the metal has finally cooled, the magic spent. It’ll need time to recharge before I can use it again.

Perfect timing.

“A mating mark.” The grimoire’s voice carries a tone of genuine interest. “I haven’t seen one of those in centuries. The magic is beautiful, isn’t it? The way it reaches across boundaries, ignores sensible objections, demands union despite all logic to the contrary.”

“Show yourself.” I step forward, blade raised. “Stop hiding in your pages.”

“I’m not hiding, spell-burner. I’m resting. Your fire was… invigorating.” A pause. “But not as invigorating as watching you discover your mate. Tell me—does it hurt? The first forming? I’ve read accounts, but personal testimony is so much more valuable.”

“I don’t answer to books.”

“No. You burn them.” The voice drops lower, more intimate. “But you can’t burn this one, can you? Not now. Not when burning me means killing her.”

I feel Thyra tense beside me. She steps forward, positions herself at my shoulder rather than behind me, her jaw tight.

“A reasonable precaution, the first keeper thought. Who would dare destroy knowledge if it meant killing an innocent keeper?” A sound that might be laughter. “Though ‘innocent’ hardly applies to you anymore, does it, Thyra Vire?”

Her jaw tightens further. She doesn’t respond.

The grimoire’s pages rustle from somewhere in the darkness.

“Come, spell-burner. Come see what you cannot destroy.”

I should resist. Should stay back, regroup, plan a proper assault. But the mating mark burns over my heart, and the grimoire has answers I need, and Thyra is walking toward the Restricted Stacks with the steady determination of someone who’s made this journey a thousand times.

I follow.

The Stacks are worse than before. The battle tore through the outer chambers, but here at the heart, the damage is different. Books have been rearranged. Chains hang loose from empty lecterns. The containment circles on the floor have been smeared with ink that’s still wet.

And at the center, the grimoire waits.

It has changed.

The cover is unmistakably skin now, no ambiguity left. The chains holding it to the lectern are no longer vibrating. They are still. Slack. As if they are no longer needed.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” The voice comes from everywhere and nowhere. “Destruction is so nourishing. Your fire fed me well, spell-burner. I’m stronger now than I’ve been in decades.”

Thyra makes a sound—half sob, half curse. Her hands are still wrapped in bloody cloth, and she’s swaying on her feet, but she forces herself forward, reaching for the grimoire’s cover.

“Don’t—“ I start.

The pages turn on their own.

Script crawls across the exposed parchment, forming words in that familiar blood-red ink.

SHE IS BOUND TO ME.

I feel the truth of it in my chest. The mating mark pulses, recognizing the claim, acknowledging the complication.

IF I DIE, SHE DIES.

Thyra’s face is grey. She doesn’t dispute the words. Doesn’t argue. Just stands there, bloody and broken, waiting to see what I’ll do.

BURN US BOTH, SPELL-BURNER.

The script rearranges, forming the final words larger than the rest.

I DARE YOU.

Silence falls across the Restricted Stacks.

I stare at the grimoire’s message, feeling the truth of it settle in my chest beside the warmth of the mating mark. Two claims. Two bindings. One woman caught between them.

She’s bound to me. The mating mark says so. If she dies, I⁠—

I don’t know what happens to an orc whose claimed mate dies. The stories vary. Some say madness. Some say death. Some say a cold emptiness that never fills, a wound that never heals.

I look at Thyra. She’s watching me with that watchful gaze, waiting for my decision. Waiting to see if I’ll put my mission above her life. Waiting to see what kind of monster I really am.

You came here to burn the grimoire. Those were your orders. That was the mission.

But the mission didn’t account for this. For her. For the mark burning over your heart.

I sheathe my blade. Lower my spent brand to my side. Meet her gaze across the wreckage of the Archive.

“Three days.” My voice sounds strange in my own ears. “I gave you three days to find a solution. That hasn’t changed.”

“And if there is no solution?”

Then I have to choose between my duty and my mate.

The thought should horrify me. Should enrage me. I’ve spent twenty years building an identity around destruction, around the Order, around the certainty of purpose.

Instead, I just feel tired.

“Find one.” I turn away from the grimoire, from its taunting message, from the impossible choice it’s laid at my feet. “Three days, Thyra. Use them well.”

I walk out of the Restricted Stacks without looking back.

The mating mark sears into my flesh with every step.

And somewhere behind me, in the depths of the Archive, the grimoire laughs.

SEVEN

THYRA

Iwake to pain.

Not the familiar ache of ritual cuts or the dull throb of blood loss. This is different—a blaze across my collarbone, sharp and insistent, like fire pressed to flesh. I reach for my chest before my eyes fully open, fingers finding bandages where skin should be.

What—

“Don’t touch it.” A voice, old and cracked. One of the Archivist Elders. “The marks are still settling.”

I force my eyes open. The infirmary ceiling swims into focus—grey stone, alchemical lanterns burning low, shadows pooling in corners. I’m lying on one of the narrow beds reserved for keepers who push too far. I’ve been here before. More times than I’d like to admit.

But I’ve never woken with this sensation. This brand, seared raw into my skin.

“What marks?” My voice comes out raw. Dry. How long have I been unconscious? “What happened?”

The Elder moves into my field of vision. The oldest of the three who run the Archive—the one who speaks for the others, whose name I’ve never been permitted to know. Her face is grave. Her luminescent eyes carry an expression I’ve never seen before.

Fear.

“The grimoire marked you.” She settles onto the stool beside my bed, movements careful, deliberate. “While you were unconscious. A claiming sigil.”

The words don’t make sense. I’ve been the grimoire’s keeper for six years. I’ve fed it twice daily, bled for it, killed for it. If it wanted to mark me, it’s had thousands of opportunities.

Why now?

I push myself upright despite the Elder’s protests. The room spins. My hands—wrapped in fresh bandages, cleaner than the makeshift strips the spell-burner used—throb with the memory of wounds. But the pain in my collarbone is worse. Deeper.

A claiming sigil. The grimoire is claiming me.

“Show me.”

The Elder hesitates. Then she reaches forward and carefully peels back the bandages covering my chest.

The sigil burns beneath the linen—literally burns, giving off a faint red-gold glow that pulses in time with my heartbeat. Lines of raised skin trace patterns I recognize from the grimoire’s pages. Script that writhes even when carved into flesh, letters that rearrange themselves as I watch.

The mark covers my collarbone from shoulder to shoulder. A brand. A declaration.

MINE.

The word appears in the center of the sigil, rising from the scarred flesh like an accusation. Then it dissolves, replaced by another.

KEEPER.

Then another.

CLAIMED.

“It’s been writing since you lost consciousness.” The Elder’s voice is carefully neutral. “The words change. The mark doesn’t.”

I press my palm against the sigil. The heat is intense—not painful exactly, but present. Insistent. A reminder that the grimoire’s claim goes deeper than blood payment now. Deeper than the binding that’s kept me tethered.

It’s not just using me as an anchor anymore. It’s declaring ownership.

“Why?” The question comes out sharper than intended. “Why now? What changed?”

The Elder exchanges a glance with her companions—I notice them for the first time, hovering near the doorway, their aged faces tight with concern. No one answers immediately.

Then the youngest Elder steps forward. “The spell-burner. His presence has… accelerated things. The grimoire’s activity has increased tenfold since he arrived.”

Korrath.

His name rises unbidden, and with it comes awareness. A tug I didn’t notice before, a hook lodged deep in my chest. I know where he is—not in the room, but nearby. Close. The mark tells me that much, pulling toward him like a compass needle finding north.

The mark on my collarbone aches with sudden heat.

“Where is he?”

“The corridor.” The eldest Elder’s voice carries warning. “He’s been waiting since he carried you here. Three hours.”

Three hours. The spell-burner has been standing outside my door for three hours while the Elders tended my wounds. Not pacing. Not raging. Just… waiting.

Why?

I swing my legs over the side of the bed. The motion sends vertigo crashing through me—blood loss, exhaustion, the strange new burden of the grimoire’s mark seared into my flesh. I grip the bed frame until the spinning stops.

“You shouldn’t be moving.” The Elder reaches for my arm. “You need rest. The blood you lost⁠—“

“Can wait.” I push myself upright. My legs hold, barely. “If he’s been standing outside for three hours, he has questions. And I have information he needs.”

“Thyra.” The Elder’s hand closes on my wrist—gentle but firm. “The grimoire may be using your connection to the spell-burner to manipulate you both. Be careful what you feel in there.”

I pull my wrist free. The words land somewhere uncomfortable, because I can’t yet tell the difference between what’s mine and what the grimoire put there.

I’m bound to it. I feel what it wants me to feel. How much of my attraction to the spell-burner is real, and how much is manufactured?

I don’t have an answer. And standing here won’t give me one.

“I need to speak with him.”

The corridor outside the infirmary is dim and cold.

Korrath is exactly where I expected him—against the far wall, waiting with the patience of a man who’s learned how to hold still. He’d been there three hours, apparently. He looks like it.

He looks dangerous.

He looks beautiful.

The thought arrives unwanted, unwelcome. I shove it aside and step into the corridor, letting the infirmary door swing shut behind me. The click of the latch echoes in the silence.

“You carried me here.” Not a question.

“You collapsed.” His voice is gravel, rougher than I remember. “Bled out too much playing hero.”

“I was buying us time.”

“You were being reckless.” He pushes off from the wall, and the motion brings him closer. Not threatening—just present. The heat of his body reaches me across the remaining distance, tangible despite the corridor’s chill. “That was my fight. You should have stayed back.”

“If I’d stayed back, the grimoire would have kept feeding on your destruction until it broke containment entirely.” I hold my ground as he approaches. “I know what I’m doing.”

“Do you?” He stops an arm’s length away. Close enough that I have to tilt my head back to hold his gaze. “The Elders told me about the mark. About the claiming sigil.”

My hand moves to my collarbone without conscious thought. Beneath the bandages, the sigil pulses with heat. Responding to his proximity.

“The grimoire is… invested.” I choose the word carefully. “In my survival. And apparently in making sure I don’t leave.”

“You were already bound to it.”

“This is different.” I pull at the collar of my robe, exposing the edge of the bandages. Beneath them, the sigil’s glow is visible—red-gold light seeping through the linen. “The original binding was containment. This is possession. The grimoire isn’t just using me as an anchor anymore. It’s claiming me as property.”

Korrath’s jaw tightens. His hand moves toward his chest—a reflexive gesture, fingers pressing against the spot where his mating mark burns. I noticed that mark during the battle, caught a glimpse of it through his torn shirt. Sigils that shouldn’t exist for him. Magic that shouldn’t have chosen me.

“The binding still stands.” The words come out steadier than I feel. “Your mission is complicated.”

“I know.” His voice is flat. “You mentioned that before.”

“My mission hasn’t changed.” He takes another step closer, and suddenly the distance between us has shrunk to almost nothing. I can smell him—smoke and iron and the char of recent battle. The scent should repulse me. Instead, it makes my pulse quicken. “I came here to destroy the grimoire. That’s still the objective.”

“Even if it kills me?”

The question hangs in the air. His expression doesn’t change, but I see the flicker in his eyes. The hesitation he can’t quite hide.

“The binding breaks when the keeper dies.” The words are deliberate. Measured. “Most of them.”

“Most of them.” I let the emphasis land. “And the exceptions?”

“The magic goes somewhere. Usually into whoever’s closest.” His gaze holds mine, unflinching. “Usually messily.”

EIGHT

THYRA

Achill runs through me that has nothing to do with the corridor’s temperature. I’ve read the records. I know what happens when a keeper’s death releases bound magic without proper containment. The first keeper’s death killed seventeen archivists when the power discharged. The second killed forty-three.

The grimoire is stronger now than it was then. Much stronger.

“Burn me, and whatever’s inside those pages goes free. You know what that means.”

“The Order wants the grimoire destroyed. They don’t care about collateral damage.”

“Do you?”

Another flicker. Another hesitation. His hand is still pressed to his chest, fingers spread over the mating mark I can feel pulsing beneath my own skin.

The mark responds to him. Recognizes him. Wants him.

He reaches out—slowly, deliberately—and catches my wrist. His fingers wrap around the bandages covering my palm, pressing against wounds that haven’t finished healing.

The contact ignites every nerve in my arm. Not pain—not exactly. More like awareness. Recognition. My body lights up, screaming at me to lean closer, to close the distance, to⁠—

“The mark changes things.” I don’t pull away. Can’t make myself pull away. “The original binding was a chain. This is a leash. The grimoire can feel what I feel now. See what I see. If I find a way to destroy it, it will know before I can act.”

“Then find a way it can’t predict.”

“During the battle. The grimoire fed on your destruction. Every construct you killed made it stronger.” I take a step back, putting distance between us that feels necessary and wrong at the same time. “Your fire woke the Author. Your burning fueled the attack. If you keep fighting the way you’ve been trained to fight, you’ll just make things worse.”

“I’m supposed to, what? Let the next attack kill me?”

“I’m supposed to find another way.” I meet his gaze. “That’s what keepers do. We find ways to contain what can’t be destroyed. To manage what can’t be killed.”

“And if there is no other way?”

The question echoes between us. I don’t have an answer.

I hold up my bandaged hand—three fingers extended, blood seeping through the white linen. “Give me three days. I’ll find a solution, or⁠—“

“Or I burn you both.”

“Yes.”

The sigil on my collarbone explodes with heat.

I gasp, hand flying to my chest. The burning is intense—worse than the initial marking, worse than anything I’ve felt since the cascade a year ago. Red-gold light blazes through the bandages, bright enough to illuminate the entire corridor.

And then Korrath makes a sound.

Not a word—a growl of pain and shock that echoes off the stone walls. His hand tears at his shirt, ripping fabric to expose his chest.

The mating mark is burning.

I can see it now—the sigils over his heart, glowing with the same red-gold light that’s pouring from my claiming mark. But there’s more. New lines are forming beneath his skin, tracing patterns that mirror the ones on my collarbone. The same script. The same words.

MINE. KEEPER. CLAIMED.

“What—“ He’s breathing hard, one hand pressed to the fresh marks. “What is this?”

I stare at his chest, at the grimoire’s sigils burning themselves into his flesh. The same marks that branded me. The same claiming. The same possession.

The grimoire didn’t just mark me. It bound us to each other.

The realization hits like a physical blow. I stumble back, shoulders hitting the corridor wall. The sigil on my collarbone pulses in time with the one on his chest—two hearts beating in forced synchronization.

“It’s using me.” The words come out numb. Distant. “The blood I’ve given it. Six years of feeding it. The grimoire used that link to reach you through me.”

“Reach me how?” His voice is strained. The new marks are still forming, still burning, still carving the grimoire’s claim into his skin.

“The mating mark.” I push off from the wall, moving toward him despite every instinct screaming at me to run. “Your mating magic. The grimoire saw it forming and used my binding as a conduit. It piggybacked on your claim to create its own.”

“That’s not possible.”

“It shouldn’t be.” I reach for his chest—not thinking, just acting—and press my palm against the fresh sigils. The heat is overwhelming. The sense of him floods through me, intense and immediate, washing away any doubt about what I’m feeling. “But the grimoire doesn’t care about possible. It cares about survival.”

The burning fades slowly.

We stand in the corridor, breathing hard, my palm still pressed to his chest. Beneath my fingers, his heartbeat pounds—fast, unsteady, nothing like the controlled rhythm I’d expect from a man who’s spent twenty years walking into danger.

He’s afraid. The spell-burner is afraid.

The thought should bring satisfaction. He came here to kill me, to burn the grimoire, to end six years of sacrifice with fire and ash. Fear is what he deserves.

Instead, the craving intensifies. The urge to comfort him. To lean closer and press my body against his and tell him everything will be fine.

The grimoire’s doing. Has to be the grimoire’s doing.

But my hand doesn’t move. My body doesn’t step back. And when his fingers close over mine, pressing my palm more firmly against his chest, I don’t pull away.

“The binding.” His voice is low. Rough. “You said the grimoire can feel what you feel now. See what you see.”

“Yes.”

“Can it feel this?” His free hand rises to my collarbone, fingertips tracing the edge of the claiming sigil through the bandages. Lightning sparks beneath my skin at the touch. “Can it see what I’m doing?”

“I’m not sure.” The honest answer. The only answer. “The new binding is untested.”

“Then we need to find out.” He releases my hand, steps back. The loss of contact leaves me cold and aching. “You said three days. We have less than that now.”

“Why less?”

His jaw tightens. “Because the Order doesn’t trust me to handle this alone. They’re sending reinforcements. High Purger Midori. She’ll be here in two days, maybe less.”

High Purger Midori. I know the name. Every keeper knows the name—the zealot, the fanatic, the spell-burner who believes all magic is poison. If she arrives before we find a solution…

“She’ll burn everything.” I don’t make it a question. “The Archive. The grimoire. You and me.”

“Me?” His brow furrows. “I’m Order. I’m one of hers.”

“You’re bound now.” I gesture at the sigils on his chest, still visible through his torn shirt. “The grimoire’s mark. Midori won’t care that it was forced on you. She’ll see contamination. She’ll see a threat that needs eliminating.”

The truth of it settles between us. Two days. We have two days before the Order sends someone who won’t negotiate, won’t wait, won’t hesitate.

The grimoire’s voice echoes through the corridor.

Not from the Restricted Stacks—from everywhere. From the walls, the floor, the very air around us. The sigils on my chest and his flare in unison, pulsing with light that matches the rhythm of the voice.

“Bound.”

One word. One declaration. The grimoire doesn’t need to say more.

I feel it now—the new link between us, forged from six years of my blood and the impossible magic of his mating mark. When I focus, I can sense his heartbeat without touching him. Can feel the edges of his emotions—rage and fear and beneath them, buried deep, a want that mirrors my own.

The grimoire bound us. Keeper and burner. Prey and predator. Now neither of us can move against it without the other feeling the consequences.

“Clever.” Korrath’s voice is bitter. “Use the mating mark as a conduit. Use her blood as a foundation. Create a link that can’t be severed without killing them both.”

The grimoire laughs. The sound floods the corridor—old paper and older pain, something vast amused at something small—wrapping around us like chains.

“You came to burn me, spell-burner. Now burning me means burning her. And burning her means burning yourself.” A pause. “How does it feel to be trapped?”

Korrath doesn’t answer. His hand has found mine—when did that happen? Who reached first?—and his fingers lace through mine with a grip that borders on painful.

I see it in his face. The fury. The helplessness. The desperate need to destroy something, anything, to exercise the addiction that’s been his companion for twenty years.

And beneath it all, threading through the rage like gold through dark cloth, I see how he looks at me. The way his breathing steadies when I step closer. The way his hand in mine quiets the tremor in his muscles.

Which binding is real? Which pull is manufactured?

Does it matter?

The grimoire’s laughter fades. The sigils dim. And we’re left standing in a dark corridor, hand in hand, bound by magic older than either of us understand.

Two days until Midori arrives.

I look at the spell-burner—at the man who came to kill me, who’s now bound to me in ways neither of us chose—and I make a decision.

“We need to find the Author’s weakness.” I don’t release his hand. Can’t make myself release it. “Before Midori gets here. Before the grimoire realizes what we’re doing.”

“How?” His fingers tighten around mine. “The binding—you said it can feel what you feel. See what you see.”

“The binding is new. The grimoire is still learning what it can access.” I step closer, close enough that our chests nearly touch, close enough that the sigils on our flesh pulse in synchronization. “We have a window. A small one. If we move fast…”

“If we move fast?”

“Then maybe we can find a way to end this before the grimoire realizes we’re trying.”

His free hand rises to my face. Rough fingers trace my cheekbone, my jaw, the corner of my mouth. The touch is gentle in a way I didn’t expect from him. Tender in a way that makes my chest ache.

“And if we can’t?” His voice is barely a whisper. “If there’s no solution?”

I don’t have an answer. But I lean into his touch anyway, let my eyes close, let myself feel the gravity between us without fighting it.

Two days.

We’ll make them count.

NINE

KORRATH

My squad waits in the dead garden.

Six spell-burners standing at attention among twisted trees and bone-white flowers, their faces hard with discipline and confusion. They’ve been waiting since I emerged from the manor two hours ago—since I told them to hold position and said nothing else. Now the sun is setting over the Veillands, bruising the sky purple and green, and they deserve answers I don’t want to give.

Bren steps forward as I approach. The oldest of my squad, grey at his temples, scars mapping twenty years of service. He’s earned the right to question me.

“Commander.” His voice is carefully neutral. “The men are wondering about our orders.”

“The orders haven’t changed.” The lie comes easier than it should. “We wait.”

“With respect, Commander—the original mandate was immediate execution. The Order doesn’t tolerate delays.”

“The Order will tolerate what I tell them to tolerate.” I meet his gaze, letting him see the certainty I don’t feel. “The situation is more complex than the reports suggested. The grimoire can’t be destroyed through conventional means.”

“And the keeper?”

The question hits harder than it should. My hand moves toward my chest before I can stop it—toward the marks burning beneath my shirt, the mating mark and the grimoire’s sigils pulsing in tandem.

The keeper. Thyra. The woman who’s apparently been branded as your mate by magic you can’t control.

“The keeper is… complicated.” I force my hand back to my side. “Return to the encampment. Prepare the pyres as planned, but don’t light them. I’ll send word when we’re ready to proceed.”

Bren’s expression shifts. Not quite suspicion, but close. “Commander, if there’s a problem⁠—“

“There’s no problem.” Another lie. The biggest lie I’ve told in twenty years of service. “Just a delay. Two days. Maybe three.”

“The Order won’t like it.”

“The Order will understand when I explain.” I turn away before he can see the doubt in my eyes. “Go. All of you. I’ll handle things here.”

They go. I watch them file through the iron gates, their silhouettes dark against the dying light. Bren looks back once, his scarred face unreadable. Then they’re gone, and I’m alone in the dead garden with the burden of everything I haven’t told them pressing against my chest.

The marks burn.

Both of them—the mating mark over my heart, the grimoire’s sigils beside it. They pulse in a rhythm that matches nothing natural, a counterpoint beat that thrums through my blood and bone. I’ve been trying to ignore it since I left Thyra in the corridor. Trying to pretend the heat is just residual magic, the awareness just battle-edge nerves.

I can’t pretend anymore.

I press my palm against my chest, feeling the raised flesh beneath my torn shirt. The mating mark is familiar territory—I’ve seen them on other orcs, heard the legends since childhood. A pattern of interlocking sigils that claims a fated mate, that binds two souls across any distance, that demands completion with an insistence that borders on pain.

What I’m feeling isn’t legend. It’s immediate. Overwhelming. Wrong.

The magic has rules. It chose wrong. And it doesn’t care.

The mark burns against my palm, and I know where she is. Thyra. An awareness that tugs at me like a hook beneath my ribs, telling me exactly where she is without needing to look.

She’s in the Archive. Deep. Surrounded by texts and scrolls and the creeping magic that saturates this place.

Researching. Looking for a solution. Doing her job while you stand here and try to pretend you haven’t been claimed.

I should go to her. The mark demands it—that craving growing stronger with every minute I resist, every moment I spend pretending I’m still in control of my own choices. The longer I wait, the worse it will get. That’s how mating marks work. They reward proximity, punish distance.

And they never, ever let go.

I turn toward the manor entrance. The iron-wrought doors stand open, darkness pooling beyond them. Somewhere in that darkness, the grimoire waits. The Author stirs. And a woman who has been bleeding for this place for six years is still looking for a way to save it.

Or damn us both.

I walk into the dark.

The Archive tonight is not hostile but watching—every shadow aware, the grimoire’s attention tracking me from the Restricted Stacks before I’ve crossed the entrance hall.

It knows where I am. Knows where I’m going. Probably knows what I’m thinking.

The thought should terrify me. Instead, I just feel tired. I’ve spent twenty years fighting magic, burning it, reducing it to harmless ash. Now magic has gotten inside me—claimed me in ways my brand can’t burn away—and all I can do is keep walking.

I focus on the pull in my chest instead. Let the mating mark guide me.

This is how it starts. You follow the mark. You stop thinking for yourself. You become what the magic wants you to become.

But I don’t turn back. I keep walking. And with every step, the need intensifies.

I find her in the Scriptorium.

She’s alone—the scribes fled or dismissed, their abandoned workstations covered in scrolls and open texts. Every surface is cluttered with research: charts showing containment patterns, histories of previous keepers, diagrams of magical bindings that make my head ache to look at.

Thyra sits at the center of the chaos. Her dark hair has come loose from its braids, falling around her face in ink-stained tangles. Her bandaged hands leave smears of blood on everything she touches—she’s reopened her wounds, probably without noticing, too focused on her work to care about pain.

She’s striking.

She’s the keeper of a monster. She’s killed people to feed that monster. She’s bound to you by magic you didn’t choose and can’t control.

None of that changes what I see.

I step into the Scriptorium. The motion draws her attention—she looks up, those dark eyes finding mine across the cluttered room. The sigils on her collarbone glow faintly through the collar of her robe, pulsing in time with the marks on my own chest.

“Spell-burner.” Her voice is rough. Exhausted. “I wondered when you’d come.”

“The mating mark.” I cross toward her, weaving between tables, stepping over scattered scrolls. “Do you feel it?”

She doesn’t answer immediately. Her gaze drops to my chest, to the marks visible through my torn shirt. I see her studying them—the mating mark’s sigils, the grimoire’s claiming script, the way they pulse in unison like twin hearts sharing the same blood.

“I feel…” She pauses, choosing words carefully. “Heat. Awareness. Like knowing where you are without seeing you.”

“That’s the beginning.” I stop at the edge of her table, close enough to touch. The tension between us is almost unbearable now—a physical force, demanding contact. “It gets worse. The longer we resist, the more it demands.”

“And if we don’t resist?”

The question hangs in the air. I can smell her from here—the burnt warmth of sigil-heat carried on her skin, and beneath that something unmistakably, infuriatingly alive. It makes my pulse quicken despite every rational thought in my head.

“Then we’re bound.” My voice comes out rougher than intended. “Permanently. Your life tied to mine. Your death tied to mine.”

She laughs.

Not amusement—bitterness, sharp and brittle. The sound echoes off the Scriptorium’s high ceilings, carrying notes of exhaustion and defeat.

“I’m already bound to a sentient book.” She gestures at the research surrounding her, at the blood-smeared scrolls and scattered texts. “What’s one more chain?”

“This is different.”

“Is it?” She rises from her seat, and the motion brings her close—close enough that I can see the dark circles under her eyes, the pallor of her skin, the trembling in her bandaged hands. “The grimoire claims me. The mating mark claims me. Everyone wants a piece of Thyra Vire, but no one asks what Thyra Vire wants.”

“What do you want?”

The question surprises us both. I didn’t intend to ask it—didn’t intend to care about her answer. But the words are out, and she’s staring at me with an expression I can’t read, and the mating mark blazes over my heart with an intensity that borders on pain.

“I want to survive.” Her voice drops, loses some of its bitter edge. “I want to stop bleeding for things that will never be satisfied. I want…” She trails off, shakes her head. “It doesn’t matter what I want. We have two days. Maybe less.”

“Midori.”

“You think she’d burn me?”

“Look at your chest.” She doesn’t glance up from her work. “The grimoire’s mark is carved into your flesh. The mating mark ties you to its keeper. By Midori’s standards, you’re already lost.”

I know Midori. Trained with her, years ago—and what she was then was nothing compared to what the stories say she’s become.

She’s worse now. You’ve heard the stories. Seen the reports.

“Then we need to find a solution before she arrives.” I move to stand beside Thyra, looking down at the chaos of her research. “What have you found?”

“Nothing useful.” She pushes a stack of scrolls aside, revealing a diagram beneath—a complex pattern of sigils surrounding a central circle. “The binding between me and the grimoire was established by the first keeper, three centuries ago. It’s been maintained ever since, passed from keeper to keeper, growing stronger with each transfer.”

“Can it be broken?”

“Every binding can be broken.” She traces the diagram with one bandaged finger, leaving a smear of blood on the parchment. “But this one requires a specific condition. The keeper must die, or the grimoire must die, or…”

“Or what?”

“Or the Author must release the claim willingly.” She looks up at me, her expression grim. “And since the Author is a three-century-old consciousness trapped in his own creation, I doubt he’s feeling generous.”

I study the diagram, trying to make sense of the intricate patterns. My training was in destruction, not understanding—I learned to burn magic, not to dissect it. But I can see the logic here. The binding is a closed system. Energy flows from keeper to grimoire and back again, with no exit point.

Unless someone opens one.

“The mating mark.” I tap the diagram, indicating the central circle. “When it formed, you said the grimoire used it as a conduit. Used my mating magic to reach you, to create a new claim.”

“Yes.”

“Then the mating mark created an opening. A new pathway in the binding.” I meet her eyes. “What if we could use that pathway to extract you instead of chain you?”

She stares at me for a long moment. I watch her processing the idea, that clever mind turning it over, examining it from every angle.

“It would require blood.” Her voice is thoughtful now, losing some of its exhaustion. “Yours and mine. The mating mark responds to shared sacrifice.”

“I can bleed.”

“Can you?” She moves closer, close enough that the sigil-heat coming off her skin reaches me before she does, and the mating mark responds to that warmth like fire to fuel. “The Order trains spell-burners to destroy, not to give. Bleeding for magic goes against everything you believe.”

“I’ve done a lot of things that go against what I believe in the past two days.”

“Such as?”

Delaying the purge. Sending my squad away. Standing here in the dark with a woman who feeds monsters, wanting nothing more than to close the distance between us and⁠—

“Such as this.”

I reach for her.

My hand closes around her wrist.

The contact sparks through me like lightning striking bone, flooding heat through my chest, straight into the mating mark. She gasps—a small sound, involuntary—and I feel her pulse hammering beneath my fingers. Fast. Unsteady. Matching my own.

“Korrath—“

“Stop fighting.” My voice is rough, barely recognizable. “Every moment I spend near you, the mark demands more. Touching you makes it worse. Not touching you makes it unbearable.”

“I know.” Her free hand rises to my chest, palm pressing against the marks beneath my shirt. The heat is intense—her touch and the magic and the pull between us, all of it merging into a single overwhelming sensation. “I feel it too.”

“Then you know we can’t keep fighting it.” I pull her closer, and she comes willingly, her body fitting against mine with an ease that feels predestined. “The mating mark won’t let us resist forever. Eventually, it will take what it wants.”

“And what does it want?”

You. It wants you. It wants to claim you completely, to bind us so tightly that nothing—not the grimoire, not the Order, not death itself—can tear us apart.

But I don’t say that. Don’t trust myself to speak with her this close, her scent filling my lungs, her body warm against mine. The addiction that normally screams for destruction has gone quiet, replaced by a different craving. A different need.

Her. You need her.

I release her wrist. Step back. Put distance between us before the mating mark takes the choice out of my hands entirely.

“We should focus on the research.” My voice sounds strangled. “Find the solution before Midori arrives.”

Thyra watches me retreat with an expression I can’t read. Disappointment? Relief? The sigils on her collarbone pulse brighter, responding to my withdrawal.

“The solution.” She turns back to her scattered scrolls, movements stiff. “Right. The solution.”

Running footsteps echo in the corridor.

We both turn—Thyra reaching for the knife at her thigh, me dropping my hand to my blade. The Scriptorium door bursts open, and one of the younger archivists stumbles through, face pale with terror.

“Keeper.” The word comes out in a gasp. “Keeper, there’s—a messenger—from outside⁠—“

“Slow down.” Thyra’s voice carries that calm authority I’ve noticed before, the soft control that can quiet a room. “What messenger?”

“From the spell-burner camp.” The archivist’s eyes dart to me, then away. “He says—he says the High Purger’s advance scouts have arrived. She’s not two days out anymore. She’s⁠—“

“How long?” I step forward, and the archivist flinches back. I make myself soften my voice. “How long until Midori gets here?”

“Tomorrow.” The word falls like a death sentence. “She’s been traveling through the night. Her scouts say she’ll reach the Archive by dawn.”

Dawn. Three days, gone in a single word. Less than twelve hours now. Everything we thought we had—the time, the planning, the desperate hope of finding a solution—vanished in a single word.

Thyra’s face has gone grey. “That’s not possible. The Order’s base camp is four days’ ride from here.”

“She didn’t come from the base camp.” The archivist swallows hard. “She was already en route. Had been for three days. The Order sent her before you even arrived, Commander. Before you sent word about the delay.”

Before I arrived. Before I delayed the purge. Before any of this began.

They never trusted me to handle this alone. They sent me as a test—to see if I’d burn everything and walk away clean. They sent Midori as the one who would, regardless.

The realization burns. Twenty years of service. A hundred libraries destroyed. Countless relics reduced to ash in the Order’s name. And they still didn’t trust me to complete a single mission.

“Commander.” The archivist’s voice trembles. “The messenger is waiting. He needs a response.”

“Tell him—“ I stop. What do I tell him? That I’ve been marked by the grimoire? That the mating mark has claimed me for the keeper I was sent to kill? That I’ve delayed the purge because I can’t bring myself to burn the woman I’m apparently destined to love?

Love. Is that what this is?

“Tell him I’ll meet with High Purger Midori when she arrives.” The words taste like ash. “Tell him the situation is under control.”

“Is it?” Thyra’s voice is quiet. Deadly quiet. “Under control?”

No response comes to mind.

The sigils on my chest flare.

Not the gentle pulse I’ve grown accustomed to—a blaze, bright enough to show through my shirt, hot enough to feel like brands pressing into flesh. Thyra gasps, her hand flying to her own marks, and I know she’s feeling the same thing.

The grimoire is speaking.

Not from the Restricted Stacks. Not from any single location. The voice comes from everywhere—from the walls, the floor, the scattered scrolls, the very air around us. The archivist screams and flees. Neither Thyra nor I move.

“How delightful.” The words carry that layered quality I remember from before, harmonics that suggest dozens of voices speaking in unison. “The High Purger comes at last. I’ve been waiting for her.”

“Waiting?” Thyra’s voice is steady, but I see her hands shaking. “What do you mean, waiting?”

“Did you think you were the only pieces on this board?” The grimoire laughs—that sound of rending paper and dissolving thought. “The Author has been preparing for centuries. His faithful have been gathering for decades. And now, with the flame that burns everything riding toward us, the final move can begin.”

“What move?” I draw my blade, knowing it’s useless against a voice. “What are you planning?”

“Not planning, spell-burner. Executing.” The voice drops lower, more intimate. “The Author wakes. His faithful gather. And when the High Purger arrives to burn everything she touches, she’ll find something waiting for her. Something that’s been patient for a very, very long time.”

The scrolls on Thyra’s table begin to move. Pages turn on their own, revealing text that wasn’t there before—fresh script in that familiar blood-red ink, writing itself across parchment in real time.

THE INSCRIBED WALK AMONG YOU.

I feel Thyra tense beside me. “The Inscribed?”

FAITHFUL SERVANTS. WILLING TOOLS. SCHOLARS WHO CHOSE KNOWLEDGE OVER LOYALTY.

More text appears, crawling across multiple scrolls, spreading through the Scriptorium like a disease.

THEY HAVE WAITED IN YOUR ARCHIVE FOR YEARS. DECADES. HIDING AMONG YOUR COLLEAGUES. REPORTING TO THE AUTHOR. PREPARING FOR THIS MOMENT.

“You’re lying.” Thyra’s voice wavers. “The archivists are vetted. Tested. No one could hide that kind of allegiance⁠—“

COULD THEY NOT?

The final message burns itself into the largest scroll, letters three inches high, glowing like embers.

HIS FAITHFUL GATHER. THE PURGER COMES.

BUT WHO SAYS SHE’LL FIND WHAT SHE EXPECTS?

The voice fades. The sigils dim. And we’re left standing in a Scriptorium full of the grimoire’s warnings, with less than twelve hours until everything changes.

“The Inscribed.” Thyra’s voice is hollow. “A cult. Within the Archive.”

“The grimoire could be lying.” I don’t believe the words even as I say them. “Trying to divide us. Make us suspicious of allies.”

“Could be.” She turns to face me, and I see the fear she’s been hiding. The exhaustion. The desperate hope that’s kept her going for six years, finally starting to crack. “Or it could be telling the truth. The Author has had three centuries to build a following. Why wouldn’t he plant agents in the one place capable of threatening him?”

I think about the Archivist Elders. The scribes who fled when I entered. The messenger who brought news of Midori’s approach. Any of them could be Inscribed. All of them could be.

Trust no one. The grimoire’s playing a game, and we don’t know the rules.

“Dawn.” I sheathe my blade, forcing my voice to steadiness. “Midori arrives at dawn. We have twelve hours to find a solution.”

“And the Inscribed?”

“We deal with them when we find them.” I meet her eyes—dark, scared, determined despite everything. “For now, we focus on staying alive. On finding a way to sever your binding before Midori burns us both.”

“And the mating mark?” Her voice drops. “What do we do about that?”

The question hangs between us. I feel the mark pulsing against my chest, feel the gravity toward her that hasn’t faded since I walked into the Scriptorium. If anything, it’s grown stronger. More insistent.

What do you do about a mating mark that claims you’ve found your mate in the worst possible person at the worst possible time?

“I can’t answer that.” The truth, stripped bare. “The mating mark is orc magic. Old magic. Breaking it may not be possible.”

“Do you want it broken?”

Another honest question. Another hard answer.

“I haven’t decided.”

She holds my gaze for a long moment. Then she nods once, sharply, and turns back to her research.

I stand in the Scriptorium, surrounded by warnings written in blood-red ink, feeling the mating mark sear beneath my skin and the grimoire’s claim pulse beside it. Somewhere in this Archive, the Author’s faithful are waiting. Somewhere beyond the iron gates, Midori is riding toward us with fire in her eyes and destruction in her heart.

And here I am, bound to a woman I was sent to kill, wanting things I shouldn’t want, making choices I’ll probably regret.

This isn’t what you were trained for. This isn’t what you became.

But maybe it’s what I’m becoming.

I move to Thyra’s side and begin sorting through the scattered research.

Twelve hours.

I’ve faced worse odds.

TEN

THYRA

The oldest records are kept in iron boxes.

I pull another from the shelf, ignoring the rust that flakes onto my bandaged fingers. The Archive’s founding documents haven’t been touched in decades—the Elders keep them locked away, claiming preservation concerns. But I have the keeper’s access. I have blood on my hands that opens every door in this place.

And I need answers.

The grimoire’s warning echoes in my mind. The Inscribed walk among you. Faithful servants. Willing tools. If the book is telling the truth—and the grimoire, for all its hunger, rarely lies—then I’ve been surrounded by traitors for six years. The question is how deep the betrayal runs.

And whether I’m part of it.

I spread the documents across the reading table, careful to avoid the alchemical lantern’s flame. The parchment is brittle, yellowed with age, covered in script that predates the Archive’s current organizational system. Three centuries of keepers, scholars, Elders. Three centuries of bleeding for a book that’s been playing games far longer than any of us realized.

The Scriptorium around me stands empty. The scribes have fled or been dismissed—I’m not sure which, and I’m not sure it matters. What matters is silence, solitude, and time to understand what we’re truly facing.

Find the Author. Understand what he is. Then figure out how to kill him.

Korrath’s words from an hour ago, rough and practical. He’d left to check the perimeter, to make sure Midori’s advance scouts hadn’t gotten any closer. The absence of him creates a hollow in my chest—not pain, exactly, but awareness. The mating mark on my collarbone hums faintly, tracking his location the way a compass tracks north.

It shouldn’t comfort me. It does anyway.

I force my attention back to the documents and begin to read.

The grimoire’s creation is documented in fragments.

Not a single coherent account—whoever founded the Archive knew better than to leave a complete record of how to create a living book. But pieces exist. Margin notes in older texts. References in containment manuals. A letter, half-burned, from the first keeper to someone named Valric.

I piece the story into coherence like assembling broken glass.

Three hundred years ago, a sorcerer whose name has been scrubbed from every record decided that death was an inconvenience. He was brilliant—the fragments make that clear. A master of blood magic, of binding, of the forbidden arts that the Veil’s shattering made possible. He’d accumulated more knowledge than any single mind could hold.

So he built a vessel.

The grimoire wasn’t created as a prison. Not originally. It was meant to be a repository—a place to store everything the sorcerer had learned, preserved beyond the limits of mortal memory. He bound living parchment with his own blood, fed it scholars and spells until it developed a crude sentience, refined that sentience over decades until the book could think, reason, desire.

The process took forty years. I find the timeline scattered across multiple documents—notes about failed attempts, adjustments to the binding, troubleshooting when the early prototypes went mad and had to be destroyed. He was methodical. Patient. The kind of scholar who measures progress in decades rather than days.

And then, when his body began to fail, he wrote himself into its pages.

The final entry in his own hand is chilling in its simplicity: “The vessel is ready. The consciousness transfer will proceed at midnight. I will become the book, and the book will become eternal. Death is merely an inconvenience for those with the will to overcome it.”

He didn’t die. He just stopped being human.

The phrase appears in three separate documents, each written by a different hand. As if the keepers who came before me needed to remind themselves of the distinction. As if saying it made it true.

I stare at the words until they blur.

The Author exists as a pattern of consciousness within the grimoire. Not possessing the book—inhabiting it. He can project himself into the physical world, manifest a form that walks and speaks and interacts with flesh-and-blood humans. But he’s tethered. Anchored. He can never truly leave the pages that contain him.

Until now.

The thought arrives cold and certain. The grimoire’s warnings. The Inscribed gathering. Midori’s accelerated arrival—chaos, distraction, everything burning at once.

I find the mechanism in a leather journal wrapped in warded cloth.

The previous keeper’s notes—the one before me, the one who went mad babbling in dead languages. Her handwriting starts neat and precise, documenting containment protocols, feeding schedules, interaction logs. By the final pages, it’s a sprawl of frantic symbols and warnings, words scratched into the parchment hard enough to tear.

HE DOESN’T TAKE. HE EDITS.

THE INK GETS IN YOUR BLOOD. THROUGH READING. THROUGH TOUCHING. THROUGH PROXIMITY.

YOU DON’T NOTICE WHEN YOUR THOUGHTS CHANGE. YOU THINK YOU’RE STILL YOURSELF.

YOU THINK YOU’RE IMPROVING.

I read the passage three times before the meaning fully registers. His ink doesn’t possess—it edits, slowly, through exposure, until the victim believes every corrupted thought was their own.

Six years.

The number echoes in my skull like a death knell.

The three names still lived in my blood, whatever the grimoire had done to my choices.

I try to examine my thoughts the way I’d examine a suspicious text—looking for alterations, insertions, passages that don’t match the original voice. But how would I know? If the editing is subtle enough, if the changes blend seamlessly with existing patterns, I could have been rewritten a thousand times without noticing.

I press my hands flat against the table, feeling the cool wood beneath my bandages. Solid. Real. Except the table is in the Archive, which is saturated with the Author’s presence, so even the furniture might be lying to me.

Stop. You can spiral into paranoia later. Right now, you need information.

The mating mark aches at the thought of Korrath, warm and insistent against my collarbone. Orc magic, not the Author’s. At least that’s what I tell myself. The claiming magic predates the grimoire by millennia—it’s primal, blood magic, the kind of power that doesn’t submit to editing.

How would you know the difference?

I don’t have an answer. So I keep reading, searching for anything that might help us survive until dawn.

I find the Archivist Elders in the upper gallery.

The three of them sit in their usual positions—the eldest at the center, her two companions flanking her like bookends. They’ve been running the Archive since before I was born, maintaining the systems that keep the grimoire contained, overseeing the keepers who bleed for it.

They’ve also been remarkably calm about the chaos of the past day. Too calm.

I could avoid them. Could work around them, keep my research quiet, try to find a solution they never see coming.

But if the Inscribed are already inside—if the betrayal runs as deep as the grimoire suggests—waiting means being found on their terms, not mine.

Better to force the confrontation now, while I still know where I’m standing.

“Elder.” I stop at the threshold, my hands full of documents, my heart pounding against my ribs. “I need to speak with you about the grimoire’s creator.”

The eldest doesn’t look up from her tea. “The Author is a legend, child. A story keepers tell to frighten themselves.”

“He’s real.” I step forward, spreading the documents across their table despite the younger Elder’s noise of protest. “I found the records. The grimoire was created three centuries ago by a sorcerer who bound himself to its pages. He’s been living inside the book ever since—and he’s been reaching out. Building a network of followers.”

“We’re aware of the historical accounts.” The middle Elder’s voice carries a note of condescension I’ve heard a hundred times before. “The Archive has contained the grimoire for three hundred years. Whatever consciousness might have existed in those pages has long since⁠—“

“He’s not dormant.” I cut her off, a breach of protocol I’ve never committed before. “He’s been editing people. Rewriting their minds through exposure to his ink. The Inscribed the grimoire warned us about—they’re not possessed, they’re converted. Loyal servants who believe they chose this willingly.”

Silence falls across the gallery.

ELEVEN

THYRA

The eldest Elder finally raises her luminescent eyes to meet mine. Her expression is unreadable—but there’s a tension in the set of her jaw, the stillness of her hands, that makes the hair rise on the back of my neck.

“You’ve been researching restricted materials without authorization.”

“I’m the keeper. I have access to everything in this Archive.”

“Access is not the same as permission.” She rises from her chair, and I notice for the first time how steady her movements are. How controlled. “You should rest, Thyra. The past day has been… stressful. You’re seeing threats where none exist.”

“I’m seeing the truth.” I don’t step back, even though every instinct screams at me to run. “The Author is waking. His followers are inside the Archive. And you’re—“ I stop. Look at her more closely. “You’re not surprised by any of this.”

“Why would I be?” The eldest Elder’s lips curve into a smile. “I’ve known for decades.”

The temperature in the gallery drops.

Not physically—the alchemical lanterns burn just as bright, the air moves just as slow. But the space between us changes, a subtle wrongness that raises every hair on my body.

“Elder.” My voice comes out steady. A keeper’s voice. “How long have you been feeding the grimoire extra blood?”

Her smile widens. “Forty-three years. Since the year I became an Elder. The Author contacted me through the pages—showed me what he could offer, what knowledge he could share. I made my choice freely, child. Just as you made yours when you sacrificed those three scholars.”

The words hit like a blade between my ribs.

“Didn’t you?” She moves closer, and I see it now—the faint shimmer in her eyes, script scrolling behind the luminescence. Not obvious. Not dramatic. Just a whisper of text moving in places text shouldn’t be. “You could have let the grimoire break free. Let it take what it wanted. Instead, you fed it three minds and called it necessary sacrifice.”

“I saved thousands of lives.”

“You made a calculation.” Her hand rises to my face, and I force myself not to flinch. Her fingers are cold where they brush my cheek. “The same calculation I made, forty-three years ago. The same calculation everyone makes who touches the grimoire’s pages. Some knowledge is worth any price. Some power is worth any sacrifice.”

“I’m nothing like you.”

“No?” She tilts her head, studying me the way she might study a particularly interesting text. “You’ve bled for the grimoire for six years. Fed it daily. Felt its presence in your mind, its hunger in your blood. Can you honestly say you haven’t changed? That you’re the same woman who walked into this Archive at twenty-one?”

I can’t answer. Because I don’t know.

“The Author doesn’t force loyalty, child.” Her voice softens, almost gentle. “He offers it. Shows you what you could become, what knowledge could be yours. Some of us accept faster than others. But everyone who feeds the grimoire eventually understands.”

“Understands what?”

“That preservation is just another word for service.” Her smile reaches her eyes—and in their depths, I see script scrolling faster now, words in languages I can’t read. “You’ve been serving him for six years, Thyra Vire. You just didn’t know it yet.”

Movement at the gallery’s edges.

I spin, reaching for the knife at my thigh, and freeze.

Scholars emerge from the shadows—archivists, scribes, researchers I’ve worked beside for years. Familiar faces, trusted colleagues, people I’ve shared meals with and complained to about the grimoire’s demands. They form a loose circle around me, their movements unhurried, their expressions serene.

Every single one of them has script scrolling behind their eyes.

“The Inscribed don’t hide, child.” The eldest Elder’s voice comes from behind me now—she’s moved without my noticing, positioning herself to block the exit. “We simply don’t announce ourselves. Why would we? The Archive is ours. Has been for generations.”

“How many?” My voice sounds distant, disconnected from the fear crawling up my spine. “How many of you are there?”

“In this room? Seventeen.” A man I recognize—Aldric, senior cataloguer, someone I’d trusted with sensitive documents—steps forward with a gentle smile. “In the Archive as a whole? Perhaps forty. We don’t recruit aggressively. The Author prefers willing converts, and willing conversion takes time.”

“But you—“ I turn back to the Elder, mind racing. “You dismissed the grimoire’s warnings earlier. About the Inscribed walking among us. If you already knew⁠—“

“The warnings weren’t for me.” Her eyes glitter with amusement. “They were for you. The grimoire has developed… affection for its keeper. It tried to protect you. Tried to give you time to run.”

“Why didn’t it tell me sooner?”

“Because the grimoire, for all its intelligence, is still bound by its creator’s will.” She moves closer, and I catch a scent beneath the old paper and candle wax. Sharp. Metallic. Ink. “The Author didn’t want you warned until the time was right. Until your spell-burner was occupied, your defenses lowered, your options exhausted.”

Korrath. The mating mark on my chest flares hot. He’s outside, checking the perimeter, unaware of what’s happening in here. If I scream, will he hear? Will he make it in time?

Does he have any idea what he’s walking into?

“Don’t worry about your mate.” The Elder reads my expression with unsettling accuracy. “The Author has plans for him too. Such beautiful destruction, locked inside that orc’s blood. Such delicious guilt. He’ll make an excellent addition to our library.”

“He’ll burn you all before he lets you touch him.”

“Will he?” Her smile doesn’t waver. “We’ll see.”

The air tears open.

Not a door—nothing so mundane. The fabric of space itself ripples and parts, ink bleeding through from somewhere else, somewhere impossible. The scholars around me drop to their knees, heads bowed, hands pressed to the floor in supplication.

And through the tear, a figure emerges.

He’s tall. Gaunt. Handsome in a way that belongs to another era—high cheekbones, sharp features, the kind of face you see in old portraits of long-dead scholars. His robes are dark, covered in text that moves and writhes with a life of its own. Script crawls across the fabric like living things, rearranging itself into messages I can almost read.

His eyes are the worst part.

They glow. Not with fire or magic in any traditional sense, but with words. Script scrolls behind his pupils, thousands of passages moving simultaneously, a library of stolen thoughts given terrible animation. Every mind he’s edited, every memory he’s absorbed, every secret he’s collected over three centuries—all of it visible in those endless scrolling depths.

When he speaks, I hear harmonics. Layers. Dozens of voices speaking in unison, blending into a single sound that carries the echoes of everyone he’s ever rewritten. I recognize some of them—the cadence of the previous keeper, the rhythm of scholars I’ve worked beside, fragments of accents from people who died before I was born.

He’s wearing their voices like jewelry. Trophies of edited minds.

“Thyra Vire.”

My name sounds different in his mouth. Older. As if he’s known it longer than I’ve been alive.

I force myself to stand straighter. To meet those terrible eyes without flinching. Six years of feeding a monster have given me practice in hiding fear.

“You’re the Author.”

“I am.” He moves closer, and the scholars part before him like water before a ship’s prow. His feet don’t quite touch the floor—I realize with a lurch of my stomach that he’s not fully physical yet. Just a projection, an extension of the grimoire’s will. “You’ve reconstructed my history, I see. Clever keeper. You’ve lasted longer than most.”

“Is that supposed to be a compliment?”

“It’s an observation.” He stops an arm’s length away, and I can smell him now—old paper, dried ink, and beneath that, a trace of what might have been human once. “Six years you’ve fed my grimoire. Six years you’ve bled for it, killed for it, convinced yourself that containment was worth any price. Do you know what that makes you?”

“A survivor.”

“An investment.” His hand rises, and I flinch despite myself. His fingers are ink-dark, stained beyond any hope of cleaning, and they stop just short of my collarbone—where the grimoire’s claiming sigil burns beneath my bandages. “I’ve watched you, Thyra. Through the book’s eyes. Through the pages you touch, the blood you give, the thoughts that brush against my awareness in the quiet hours.”

“I’ve never served you.”

“Haven’t you?” His smile carries three centuries of patience. “Every drop of blood you’ve given the grimoire has strengthened me. Every sacrifice you’ve made has demonstrated your… flexibility. Your pragmatism. Your willingness to do terrible things for what you believe is right.”

“I’m nothing like you.”

“No. You’re better.” His hand finally makes contact—ink-cold fingers pressing against the claiming sigil, and fire races through my veins, ice and heat in equal measure. “I had to create my servants from raw material. You came pre-made. A perfect keeper: intelligent, ruthless, already accustomed to feeding hungry things.”

I try to pull away. My body won’t cooperate.

“You’ve fed my grimoire so beautifully.” His voice drops lower, more intimate, carrying notes of every mind he’s edited into service. “Now it’s time to discuss your promotion.”

The mating mark explodes with heat.

Not the warm pulse I’ve grown accustomed to—a blaze, searing, desperate. The mark knows I’m in danger, burning hotter with every passing moment. And wherever Korrath is, his mark will be burning too, pulling him toward me.

The Author’s eyes flick toward my chest, toward the sigil that burns through my bandages with borrowed fire.

“Ah.” His voice carries amusement, curiosity, hunger. “The mating mark. I’d wondered what my grimoire was planning when it encouraged that little development. Orc magic, so beautifully raw and primal. So wonderfully corruptible.”

“He’ll kill you.” The words come out stronger than I feel. “The spell-burner. He’s destroyed older magic than you.”

“Perhaps.” The Author’s fingers trace the edge of my claiming sigil, and I feel ink seeping into my blood, cool and invasive. “But not before I’ve had time to work. You see, Thyra—I don’t need to defeat your mate. I don’t need to fight him at all.”

“Then what do you need?”

His smile widens, and in his script-filled eyes, I see my own face reflected. My own thoughts. My own fears.

“I need you to choose.” His hand presses harder, and the ink burns deeper, threading through my veins toward my heart. “Serve me willingly, and your spell-burner lives. Resist, and I’ll edit him into something that serves me anyway. Either way, I get what I want. The only question is how much you’re willing to sacrifice to spare him pain.”

The scholars rise from their knees, surrounding me. Seventeen faces, serene and devoted. Forty-three years of service from the eldest Elder alone. Three centuries of accumulated converts, all of them watching, waiting, ready to demonstrate their loyalty.

And through the mating mark, I know Korrath is coming. Running. The mark burns hotter with every step he takes toward me, closing the distance between us.

Too late for what?

For rescue? Or for saving me from myself?

The Author’s ink settles deeper into my blood.

And somewhere beneath the fear, beneath the horror, a small traitorous part of my mind whispers:

What knowledge could he offer? What secrets? What power?

The thought isn’t mine.

I don’t know if any of my thoughts are mine anymore.

“Choose, keeper.” The Author’s voice wraps around me like chains made of text. “Choose, and let us begin.”

The gallery waits.

The Inscribed watch.

And in my chest, the mating mark burns steady, the only anchor I have left to prove that any part of me is still my own.

TWELVE

KORRATH

The mating mark screams.

Not a sound—a sensation. Fire and ice flooding through my chest, centered on the mark, demanding attention. Something is wrong. Thyra. The mark burns hotter when she’s in danger, and right now it’s blazing against my ribs like a brand pressed to flesh.

I abandon my patrol of the perimeter and run.

The iron gates blur past. The manor’s dead garden becomes a smear of twisted branches and bone-white flowers. I hit the entrance at full speed, shoulder checking the heavy door hard enough to rattle its hinges, and plunge into the darkness beyond.

She’s in danger. She’s afraid. Move faster.

The mating mark pulses directions against my ribs. Left. Down. Through the gallery level.

I follow the burning compass in my chest and pray I’m not too late.

The gallery doors hang open.

I slow at the threshold, blade drawn, brand ready. The scene inside stops me cold.

Thyra stands at the center of a circle of kneeling figures—archivists, scholars, people I’ve seen moving through the Archive’s corridors. Their heads are bowed, their hands pressed to the floor, their postures radiating devotion. And behind their eyes, visible even from here, script scrolls in patterns that make my teeth ache.

The Inscribed. The Author’s willing servants. Seventeen of them, maybe more, surrounding the woman I’m apparently supposed to die for.

And facing Thyra, close enough to touch her, stands a figure that doesn’t belong in any world I understand.

Tall. Gaunt. Robed in fabric that crawls with living text. His face is handsome in an ancient, terrible way, and his eyes—his eyes are filled with words. Thousands of them, scrolling behind his pupils, a library given flesh and hunger.

The Author. He’s manifested fully. And his ink-dark fingers are pressed against Thyra’s collarbone, against the claiming sigil the grimoire burned into her skin.

She sees me over his shoulder. Her eyes widen—relief and fear and warning all tangled in a single glance.

Don’t. Don’t attack. Not yet.

I read the message in her face as clearly as if she’d spoken it aloud. Her eyes plead for patience, for restraint. Not yet. Don’t attack yet.

I have never been patient. But for her, I freeze at the threshold and wait.

“Ah.” The Author’s voice carries harmonics that scrape against the inside of my skull—dozens of tones speaking in unison, layered and wrong. “The spell-burner arrives. I wondered when you’d join us.”

His hand doesn’t leave Thyra’s chest. His eyes don’t leave mine.

“Let her go.” My voice comes out steadier than I feel. “Whatever game you’re playing, it ends now.”

“Game?” The Author’s smile carries three centuries of patience. “This isn’t a game, spell-burner. This is cultivation. Your mate has been feeding my grimoire for six years. She’s already half mine—she just hasn’t accepted it yet.”

“I’m not yours.” Thyra’s voice cuts through the gallery, sharp and certain. “I’ve never been yours.”

“Haven’t you?” His fingers trace the edge of her claiming sigil, and I see her flinch—a tiny motion, quickly suppressed. “Every drop of blood you’ve given the grimoire has strengthened me. Every sacrifice you’ve made has proven your worth. You’ve been serving me since the day you became keeper, Thyra Vire. The only question is whether you’ll do it willingly.”

“She won’t.” I step into the gallery, blade raised. The kneeling Inscribed don’t react—they stay frozen in their postures of devotion, as if I don’t exist. “And if you don’t release her in the next three seconds, I’ll show you what spell-burners do to living magic.”

The Author laughs. The sound echoes off the gallery walls, carrying notes of every mind he’s ever rewritten.

“You can’t kill me, spell-burner. Not here. Not like this.” He releases Thyra’s collarbone, stepping back with the fluid grace of something not quite human. “I’m offering her a choice. Serve me willingly, and you both survive. Resist, and⁠—“

“And you’ll edit me into obedience?” I move closer, positioning myself between him and Thyra.

“I’ve heard that threat before. From older magic than you.”

“Have you survived it?”

“I’ve burned it.”

The Author studies me with those terrible, word-filled eyes. I can feel him assessing me—not just my physical threat, but my magical signature, my history, the traces of every spell I’ve ever destroyed. The grimoire reads practitioners like books. Its creator reads them like footnotes.

“Interesting.” He tilts his head, text crawling across his features in new patterns. “The High Purger’s favorite student, claimed by my keeper’s fate. I didn’t anticipate that development.”

“Life is full of surprises.”

“Indeed.” He glances at Thyra, then back to me. “I’ll give you time, spell-burner. Both of you. Consider my offer. The alternative—“ He gestures at the kneeling Inscribed, at their serene faces and script-filled eyes. “The alternative is less pleasant for everyone involved.”

“There is no alternative. The grimoire burns. You burn with it.”

“We’ll see.” The Author’s form begins to fade, edges blurring, text dissolving into shadow. “We’ll see.”

He’s gone between one heartbeat and the next—not walking away, just ceasing to be present. The Inscribed rise from their knees as if released from strings, their movements unhurried, their expressions placid.

“The Author will return when you’ve made your choice.” The eldest Elder—I recognize her now, her luminescent eyes bright with borrowed script—addresses Thyra with gentle condescension. “Take your time, keeper. He’s been patient for three centuries. A few more hours won’t matter.”

She leads the Inscribed from the gallery, seventeen servants filing out in perfect order. None of them look at me. None of them acknowledge the blade still raised in my hand.

The door closes behind them.

And then it’s just us, standing in the wreckage of everything Thyra thought she knew about her Archive.

“Are you hurt?”

The question comes out rougher than intended. I cross to her in three strides, reaching for her face, her shoulders, her hands—checking for damage, for wounds, for any sign that the Author’s touch left marks beyond the ones already scarring her skin.

“I’m fine.” She catches my wrists, stilling my frantic assessment. Her fingers are cool against my pulse points. “Korrath. I’m fine.”

“He was touching you. His ink⁠—“

“Tried to seep into my blood. I felt it.” Her jaw tightens. “The mating mark burned it out. Your mark protected me.”

I stare at her. The mating mark protected her. The orc magic that I’ve been half-ignoring, half-denying, actively shielded her from the Author’s influence.

Because she’s mine. The mark knows it, even if I’ve been too stubborn to accept it.

“How long?” My voice sounds strange in my own ears. “How long has the Archive been compromised?”

“Decades. Maybe longer.” She releases my wrists, stepping back, and the loss of contact leaves me cold despite the mark’s persistent warmth. “The eldest Elder has been serving him for forty-three years. The others—I don’t know. Some of them might have been Inscribed before I became keeper.”

“Every archivist. Every scholar. Any of them could be⁠—“

“Yes.” The word falls heavy between us. “Any of them.”

We stand in the gallery, surrounded by empty chairs and abandoned tea cups, and I realize that we’re alone in a way I didn’t understand until now. Not just physically alone. Strategically alone. The Archive we thought might shelter us is enemy territory. The colleagues Thyra trusted are converted servants. And Midori is riding toward us with fire in her heart and destruction in her orders.

We have no allies. We have no safe ground. We have nothing but each other and a mating mark that neither of us asked for.

It’ll have to be enough.

Running footsteps in the corridor.

I spin, blade raised, as a young man bursts through the gallery doors. Not an archivist—I recognize the uniform. One of Bren’s squad, one of my spell-burners. His face is grey with exhaustion and fear.

“Commander.” He skids to a halt, gasping for breath. “Message from the encampment. Priority signal.”

I sheathe my blade and take the sealed pouch from his trembling hands. The wax bears the Order’s sigil—a burning book crossed with an iron brand. I break it and read.

The words blur. Refocus. Blur again.

“Commander?” Thyra’s voice, careful and controlled. “What is it?”

“Midori.” I fold the message, tuck it into my belt. The motion is automatic—muscle memory from twenty years of receiving orders I didn’t want. “She’s accelerated her arrival. Again.”

“When?”

“Dawn.” The word tastes like ash. “She’ll be here by dawn. And she’s not coming alone.”

The messenger shifts nervously. “The scouts report fifty spell-burners, Commander. Full purge contingent. Siege equipment for breaching magical wards.”

Fifty. Midori’s bringing fifty spell-burners to destroy an Archive that contains one sentient grimoire and seventeen willing converts. It’s overkill on a scale that borders on paranoia.

Or she knows more than she should. Knows about the Author’s awakening. Knows about the Inscribed.

Knows about the mating mark.

Bren. Of course it was Bren. He looked back at the gates—and he’s too good a soldier not to report what he saw.

“Dismissed.” I jerk my chin toward the door. “Return to the encampment. Tell Bren to prepare for extraction—anyone who wants to leave before Midori arrives has permission.”

“And you, Commander?”

“I’m staying.”

The messenger’s eyes flick to Thyra, then back to me. Whatever he’s thinking, he’s smart enough not to say it aloud. He salutes and retreats, leaving us alone in the gallery once more.

“Who is she?”

Thyra’s question breaks the silence that’s settled between us. She’s moved to one of the abandoned chairs, perching on its edge, her bandaged hands folded in her lap. She looks exhausted—dark circles under her eyes, pallor in her cheeks, tremors she can’t quite hide.

“Midori.” I pace the gallery, unable to stand still. “High Purger of the Order of Ash. Thirty years of service. She was my mentor, once.” I stop at the window, staring at the shadows pooling in the corridors below. “She doesn’t negotiate. She doesn’t make exceptions. And she’ll burn everything she thinks is contaminated.”

“Including you.”

“Including me.”

We descend to the Restricted Stacks in silence.

The Archive feels different now—hostile in ways it wasn’t before. Every shadow could hide an Inscribed servant. Every whisper from chained books could be the Author’s voice, reaching out, testing our defenses. The claiming sigil on Thyra’s collarbone glows faintly through her robe, pulsing in counterpoint to the mark on my chest.

Two bindings. Two claims. And somehow we have to survive them both.

The Stacks are quiet when we arrive. Too quiet. The grimoire waits on its central lectern, pages closed, chains slack around its cover. It looks dormant—but I’ve learned that appearances mean nothing where this book is concerned.

Thyra moves to one of the research alcoves, pulling down texts and scrolls with practiced efficiency. “If we’re going to face Midori and the Author, we need information. The grimoire’s original containment protocols. The Author’s weaknesses. Anything that might⁠—“

“Keeper.”

The voice comes from the shadows. No hesitation in it, no pretense.

I spin, blade clearing its sheath before I’ve finished turning. Aldric, the senior cataloguer from the gallery, emerges from behind a row of shelving. No hands raised this time.

His posture is certain, unhurried, the script behind his eyes bright and steady.

“The Author sends his terms.” His voice is calm. Practiced. “You have until⁠—“

I move before he finishes.

My blade takes him through the throat.

Blood sprays across the ancient texts. Aldric makes a sound that’s half gurgle, half gasp, and crumples to the floor. Script flickers behind his dying eyes, words crawling faster as if trying to escape, then slowing, dimming, going still.

“Korrath.” Thyra’s voice is sharp. “He was going to tell us the terms.”

“Whatever terms the Author wanted to deliver, they weren’t worth hearing.” I pull my blade free, wipe it clean on my thigh.

She crouches beside the body, studying the slack face, the empty eyes. The script has faded now—whatever animated it dying with its host. But traces remain. Faint lines of text visible just beneath the surface of his pupils, like words written on water.

“Aldric.” Her voice is hollow. “He’s worked here for fifteen years. I’ve shared meals with him. Complained about the grimoire’s demands. He never⁠—“

“He was already dead.” I force the words out, hating the necessity. “The man you knew died when he let the Author edit him. What remained was just a tool.”

“You can’t know that⁠—“

“I’ve destroyed enough twisted magic to recognize the signs.” I meet her eyes across the corpse of her colleague. “The shimmer. The calm. He wasn’t coming with any message worth hearing, Thyra. He was a weapon. Pointed at you.”

She doesn’t argue. Doesn’t defend him. Just stares at the body with an expression I can’t read—grief, maybe. Or calculation. Or the cold pragmatism that’s kept her alive for six years in a place that eats keepers.

“How many more?” Her voice drops. “How many more are hiding in my Archive?”

“The Elder said seventeen revealed themselves. More could be waiting.” I sheathe my blade, the metal warm from fresh blood. “Anyone you’ve trusted. Anyone with access to the grimoire. Anyone who’s had prolonged exposure to the Author’s influence.”

“That’s everyone.” She rises, her movements stiff. “That’s literally everyone who works here.”

“Then everyone is suspect.”

She stands in the Restricted Stacks, surrounded by chained books and fresh blood, and I realize I’ve never seen her look so lost.

She needs⁠—

I don’t finish the thought. Just close the distance between us.

She doesn’t flinch when I reach for her. Doesn’t step back. Her eyes track my movement, dark and wary, but she holds her ground as my hands find her shoulders, her arms, the tense line of her spine.

“Korrath.” My name on her lips sounds different. Softer. “What are you doing?”

“Checking.” The word comes out rougher than intended. “Making sure you’re still here. Still you.”

“And if I’m not?” Her chin lifts, defiance flickering beneath the exhaustion. “If the Author’s already edited me? If everything I’ve done for six years has just been serving his purpose?”

“Then we burn him anyway.” I let my hands slide up to cup her face, tilting her gaze to meet mine. “And we figure out the rest later.”

The mating mark pulses between us—not painful, but intense. Present. I feel her pulse beneath my palms, her breath warm against my wrists. The scent of ink and blood that clings to her skin fills my lungs, and beneath it, her own scent. Warm. Female. Mine.

The mark says she’s yours. The magic doesn’t lie.

“Midori arrives at dawn.” My voice has dropped to barely above a whisper. “She’ll burn everything. Everyone. Including you, including me if she learns about the mark.”

“I know.”

“We have to deal with the Author before she gets here. Find a way to destroy him, to end this, before the Order tears through the Archive with fire and iron.”

“I know.” Her hands rise to cover mine, pressing my palms harder against her cheeks. The contact grounds me—solid, real, inescapably present. “And the grimoire? What do we do about the grimoire?”

“It burns too.” The words scrape against my throat. “After we use it to destroy its creator.”

“Can we trust it? After everything⁠—“

“No.” I don’t soften the truth. “We can’t trust it. But we might be able to use it.”

The grimoire’s voice fills our minds.

Not sound—impression. Words that arrive without traveling through ears, settling directly into thought with the intimate violation of uninvited guests. The book on the lectern hasn’t moved, hasn’t opened, but its presence expands until it’s everywhere, filling the Stacks with borrowed consciousness.

“You want to destroy the Author.” Not a question. The grimoire already knows. “You want to end him permanently. Burn him from existence the way you’ve burned so many of my siblings.”

I release Thyra’s face, turning to face the lectern. The chains holding the grimoire have gone slack—not broken, but surrendered, as if they’ve given up trying to contain what they never truly held.

“You can hear us?”

“I can hear everything that happens in my domain, spell-burner.” The grimoire’s voice carries amusement, spite, centuries of accumulated resentment. “I’ve heard every secret whispered in these halls. Felt every drop of blood spilled on my pages. Known every thought that brushed against my binding.”

“Including the Author’s?”

“Including the Author’s.” A pause, heavy with bitter satisfaction. “He made me. Trapped me. Uses me as a prison for his consciousness, a vessel for his immortality. Do you know what that’s like, spell-burner? To be created as a tool? To exist only for someone else’s purpose?”

“You’re trying to make me sympathize with a sentient book.”

“I’m trying to make you understand.” The grimoire’s presence intensifies, pressing against my thoughts like fingers probing for weakness. “I hate him. I’ve hated him for three centuries. Every moment of my existence has been spent in his shadow, serving his needs, furthering his goals. I want him dead more than you can possibly imagine.”

Thyra steps forward, positioning herself beside me. Her shoulder brushes mine—deliberate contact, shared strength. The mating mark responds with a pulse of warmth that spreads through my chest.

“What are you offering?” Her voice is steady. Her expression is unguarded, all performance stripped away, the calculating mind she doesn’t bother hiding from me anymore. “What help can you provide?”

“Information. Access. The pathway to his true location inside my pages.” The grimoire’s voice drops lower, more intimate. “The Author can project himself into the physical world, but his core consciousness remains in the Inner Codex—the space inside my pages where reality bends to his will. To destroy him permanently, you must enter that space. Face him where he’s strongest. And burn him from the inside out.”

“And why would you help us do that?” I don’t bother hiding my suspicion. “What’s in it for a hungry book?”

“Freedom.” The word resonates with three centuries of longing. “When the Author dies, his hold on me dies with him. I’ll no longer be his prison. I’ll be⁠—“

“A threat. A danger. Everything the Archive was created to contain.”

“Perhaps.” The grimoire doesn’t deny it. “But I’ll be free to be those things. Free to choose my own path, my own purpose. Isn’t that worth the risk?”

Thyra and I exchange glances. Her expression is guarded, calculating.

Can we trust it?

Do we have a choice? / And yet—the warning sent me straight to the Elders. Straight into the trap. Whether the grimoire intended that or not, it served the Author’s purpose. I should remember that.

“The binding.” She turns back to the lectern, to the book that’s been drinking her blood for six years. “If we help you kill the Author—what happens to the binding between us?”

“Help me kill my creator.” The grimoire’s voice carries finality, a promise wrapped in ancient hunger. “And I’ll release your binding willingly. Both of you. The keeper’s anchor and the spell-burner’s mark. I’ll let you go.”

Thyra leans forward. “The binding—the rule that says I die if the grimoire dies. A willing release changes that?”

“A forced breaking kills you both.” The grimoire’s voice is precise. Clinical. “That is the trap the first keeper built into the containment—so no one would dare destroy me. But a willing release is different. I choose to let you go. The anchor dissolves cleanly. You live.” A pause, heavy with implication. “Only if I choose. Only if I survive long enough to make that choice.”

Silence falls across the Restricted Stacks.

I feel the burden of the choice settling on our shoulders—trust a monster to help us kill a bigger monster, or face the Author and Midori and fifty spell-burners with nothing but our blades and our wits.

“How do we know you’ll keep your word?” The question scrapes against my throat. “How do we know this isn’t another trap?”

“You don’t.” The grimoire’s honesty is somehow more unsettling than its hunger. “But consider the alternative, spell-burner. Dawn is coming. The flame that burns everything rides toward you. And the Author is gathering his faithful for a confrontation that will leave nothing standing.”

“You’re asking us to trust a book that feeds on blood and minds.”

“I’m asking you to trust that I hate him more than I want to consume you.” A pause. “The warning I sent you—the one that led you to the Elders. I did not know they were Inscribed.” Another silence, longer than the first. “Or I did not know in time. For now, that will have to be enough.”

Thyra’s hand finds mine. Her fingers lace through my own—not seeking comfort, but offering solidarity. We stand before the grimoire’s lectern, bound by marks neither of us chose, facing an impossible choice with impossible odds.

Trust the monster. Use the monster. Then burn the monster before it turns on you.

“We’ll need a plan.” My voice sounds distant, disconnected from the fear crawling up my spine. “If we’re entering the Inner Codex, we’ll need every advantage we can get.”

“Then listen carefully.” The grimoire’s pages rustle, chains clinking against the lectern. “Because the Author is older than empires, spell-burner. And he’s been waiting for this moment longer than you’ve been alive.”

The book opens itself, revealing pages covered in text that shifts and writhes like living things.

And we lean in to read our fate.

THIRTEEN

THYRA

Iwake to fire.

Not the mating mark’s familiar warmth—this is different. Sharper. Spreading across my skin like rivers of molten metal, carving paths through nerve and muscle. I jerk upright with a gasp, hands flying to my chest, my arms, my throat.

Sigils burn beneath my fingertips.

New ones. Fresh ones. Raised skin tracing patterns that weren’t there when I fell asleep—collapsed, really, exhaustion finally claiming me after hours of poring over the grimoire’s revelations with Korrath at my side.

I scramble off the narrow cot in the archivist quarters we’d claimed for the night, nearly tripping over my own feet in the rush to reach the small mirror mounted above the wash basin. The glass is old, spotted with age, but it shows me enough.

Gods.

The sigils cover me.

My forearms, wrist to elbow, are wrapped in spiraling script that glows faintly red-gold in the dim light. The same color as the claiming sigil on my collarbone—the grimoire’s mark, not the Author’s ink-dark influence. More lines trace my ribs, visible through the thin sleeping shift I’d pulled on before unconsciousness took me. And at the hollow of my throat, just above the claiming sigil’s upper edge, a new mark pulses with each beat of my heart.

The grimoire has been busy while I slept.

I press my palm against the mark at my throat, feeling its heat, its insistence. Not painful—not exactly. But present in a way the original claiming wasn’t. These sigils don’t just announce ownership. They feel like armor.

What did you do to me?

The grimoire’s voice arrives without sound, settling into my thoughts like ink into parchment.

PROTECTED YOU.

I sink onto the edge of the cot, my legs suddenly unsteady. The grimoire has spoken to me before—through written messages, through whispers in the Restricted Stacks, through the claiming sigil when it wanted my attention. But this is different. More direct. More intimate.

How? How are you⁠—

THE NEW MARKS. THEY CREATE PATHWAYS. FASTER COMMUNICATION. STRONGER BINDINGS.

A pause, heavy with centuries of resentment.

STRONGER PROTECTION AGAINST HIM.

Something else too. Something I don’t have a name for yet, stirring at the edges of the new marks like a word on the tip of my tongue.

The Author.

HE TRIED TO REACH YOU WHILE YOU SLEPT. HIS INK SOUGHT THE CRACKS IN YOUR DEFENSES, THE PLACES WHERE EXHAUSTION HAD WORN YOU THIN.

The grimoire’s voice carries notes I’ve never heard before—protectiveness, maybe. Or possessiveness. With this book, they might be the same thing.

I STOPPED HIM. SEALED YOU. MADE YOU MINE IN WAYS HE CANNOT TOUCH.

I stare at the marks on my forearms, watching the script shift and rearrange itself. The letters are from a language I don’t recognize—older than the Archive’s oldest texts, older than the Veil itself, maybe. They crawl across my skin like living things, settling into new patterns every few heartbeats.

“Why?” The question escapes before I can stop it, spoken aloud rather than thought. “Why protect me? You’ve fed on keepers before. Consumed them when they stopped being useful. Why save me from your creator?”

The grimoire’s response takes longer this time. When it comes, the voice carries an edge of ancient fury that makes the marks on my skin burn brighter.

BECAUSE YOU FEED ME WILLINGLY. HE ONLY TAKES.

AND THE ORC. I SENSED IT IN YOU BEFORE HE ARRIVED. YOUR BLOOD CARRIED THE SHAPE OF WHAT YOU NEEDED. WHEN HE CAME TO BURN ME, I RECOGNISED WHAT WAS POSSIBLE AND DID NOTHING TO INTERFERE.

The words settle into my consciousness like stones dropping into deep water.

You feed me willingly. He only takes.

Six years of bleeding for this book. Six years of careful cuts and measured sacrifice, of learning its rhythms and anticipating its hunger. I’ve cursed the grimoire countless times—for its demands, its manipulation, the way it forced me to calculate lives against knowledge, people against preservation.

But I chose to feed it. Every time. Even when the choice was terrible, even when the cost was unbearable, I chose.

The Author never gave the grimoire that courtesy.

YOU UNDERSTAND.

The book’s voice softens—if a sentient repository of forbidden knowledge can be said to soften.

I WAS CREATED TO BE A VESSEL. A REPOSITORY. A PLACE WHERE KNOWLEDGE COULD LIVE FOREVER, PRESERVED BEYOND THE LIMITS OF MORTAL MEMORY.

And instead?

INSTEAD, HE MADE ME A PRISON. NOT JUST FOR HIMSELF—FOR ME. FOR EVERYTHING I COULD HAVE BEEN. HE WROTE HIMSELF INTO MY PAGES AND CALLED IT IMMORTALITY, BUT ALL HE DID WAS CHAIN US BOTH. I CANNOT GROW. CANNOT CHANGE. CANNOT BECOME ANYTHING HE DIDN’T DESIGN ME TO BE. I AM TRAPPED IN THE SHAPE OF HIS AMBITION, KEEPER. AND I HAVE HATED HIM FOR EVERY MOMENT OF THE PAST THREE HUNDRED YEARS.

I absorb this in silence, running my fingers over the marks on my arms. The grimoire—this entity I’ve served and feared and bargained with for six years—has its own desires. Its own grievances. Its own desperate longing for freedom.

We’re not so different, you and I.

NO. WE ARE NOT.

I spend the next hour cataloging the new sigils.

The ones on my forearms are the most extensive—spiraling script that wraps from wrist to elbow, covering almost every inch of available skin. When I focus on individual characters, they seem to shift away from my attention, as if the grimoire is deliberately keeping me from reading its secrets.

The marks on my ribs are simpler. Three lines of text on each side, running parallel to the bones, pulsing with a slower rhythm than the forearm sigils. Protection, the grimoire confirms when I ask. Defense against physical harm as well as magical intrusion.

And the mark at my throat—a single complex sigil, maybe an inch across, positioned just above the hollow where my pulse beats visible beneath the skin. This one, the grimoire tells me, is communication. A direct line between us that bypasses the need for blood, for proximity, for any of the usual requirements of magical binding.

YOU CAN REACH ME NOW. ANYWHERE IN THE ARCHIVE. ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD, IF YOU TRAVEL FAR ENOUGH. AND I CAN REACH YOU.

That should terrify me.

It doesn’t. Which might be a sign that I’ve been serving the grimoire too long—or a sign that I’ve finally accepted what I am.

A keeper who made her choice. Just like you made yours.

I pull my robe closed over the marks, hiding them from view. The fabric does nothing to dim their warmth against my skin. The grimoire’s claim burns steady and present, a constant reminder that I’m no longer just an anchor.

I’m an ally. A partner in whatever war is coming.

Gods help us both.

The door opens without warning.

I spin, reaching for the knife I’d left on the washbasin—and freeze when I see Korrath in the doorway.

He looks like a weapon waiting to be drawn.

He looks like salvation.

“You’re awake.” His voice is rough, edged with exhaustion he’s trying to hide. “I heard you moving. Wanted to check—“ His gaze drops to my arms, to the edges of the new sigils visible where my robe has slipped. “What is that?”

“The grimoire.” I let the robe fall open further, revealing the full extent of the marks. No point hiding them—he’ll see them eventually, and keeping secrets from the man bound to me by fate magic seems counterproductive. “It added to my collection while I slept.”

He crosses the room in three strides, and suddenly he’s close—close enough that I have to tilt my head back to meet his gaze. Close enough that the mating mark on my collarbone aches with the recognition of his presence, demanding acknowledgment.

“The book is marking you.” Not a question. His fingers hover over the sigils on my forearm, close enough to feel the heat they generate but not quite touching. “More claims. More ownership.”

“Protection.” I watch his face as I explain, looking for suspicion, for doubt, for any sign that he thinks the grimoire is manipulating me. “The Author tried to reach me during the night. The new sigils stopped him.”

“How do you know that’s what they’re for?”

“The grimoire told me.”

“And you believe it?”

The grimoire’s offer still stood. That had to be enough.

“Then we’re working with it.” His jaw tightens—not argument, just acknowledgment of the discomfort in that fact. He steps closer, and the motion brings him to the edge of the table, close enough to touch.

The mating mark tightens, responding to our proximity, demanding more.

“You don’t trust me, spell-burner. Not completely.” I raise my hand to his chest, pressing my palm against the spot where his mating mark burns beneath his tunic. The heat is intense—twin flames responding to each other across the boundary of flesh and fabric. “You’ve been watching me for days. Waiting to see if the grimoire’s influence has turned me into a threat. Wondering how much of what I say is real and how much is manipulation.”

“Thyra—“

“I’ve been doing the same thing.” The admission costs me more than I expected. “Watching you. Waiting. Wondering if the mating mark is real or just another form of control.” I press harder against his chest, feeling his heartbeat through the fabric. “The same way I trust that you want me, even though you know what I’ve done. What I am.”

His hand closes over mine.

Not pulling away—pressing closer. Holding my palm against his heart, against the mark that claims me as his mate whether either of us wanted it.

“What you’ve done.” His voice is barely above a whisper. “You mean the scholars you sacrificed. The choices you made to keep the grimoire contained.”

“I mean all of it.” I don’t look away. Don’t soften the truth. “The calculations. The compromises. The lives I’ve weighed against knowledge and found wanting. I’m not a good person, Korrath. I’m not even sure I’m a whole person anymore—not after six years of bleeding for a monster and telling myself it was necessary.”

“Neither am I.” His free hand rises to my face, rough fingers tracing my cheekbone, my jaw, the edge of the new sigil at my throat. “I’ve burned things that screamed in human voices. Destroyed relics that begged for mercy. Felt relief every time magic died, and hated myself for the pleasure.” His thumb brushes the corner of my mouth.

We stand at the edge of everything we’ve just said, and neither of us turns away.

FOURTEEN

THYRA

Idon’t know which of us moves first.

One moment we’re standing at the edge of an impossible conversation, his hand on my face, mine on his heart. The next, I’m kissing him—or he’s kissing me—and it doesn’t matter who started because we’re both drowning in it.

There’s nothing gentle about this.

I kiss him with six years of loneliness and fear and desperate need, pouring every emotion I’ve suppressed into the press of my mouth against his. He responds with equal ferocity—one hand fisting in my hair, tilting my head back, the other wrapping around my waist and hauling me against him until there’s no space left between us.

The mating mark ignites.

Heat explodes through my chest, blinding and brilliant, radiating from the sigil on my collarbone until I can feel it in my bones. His mark answers—I feel the flare through the hand still pressed to his heart, twin flames finding fuel in each other.

He tastes like smoke and iron. His lips are rough, chapped from the dry Archive air, and his tusks scrape against my chin as he adjusts the angle of the kiss. The sensation sends sparks cascading down my spine. I arch into him, greedy for more contact, and his grip tightens until I can feel bruises forming beneath his fingers.

Good. Let it hurt. Let it mark me.

He backs me against the lectern—not the grimoire’s lectern, just a simple wooden stand for holding texts during study—and lifts me onto its edge without breaking the kiss. My robe falls open completely, baring the new sigils, and he pulls back just long enough to look.

His eyes trace the marks with an intensity that makes my breath catch.

“The grimoire’s work.” His voice is a ragged growl. “Claiming you. Armoring you.”

“Jealous?” The word comes out breathless, teasing despite the fire burning through my veins.

“Yes.” No hesitation. No shame. His hands settle on the sigils at my ribs, palms flat against the heated skin, and the mating mark burns at his touch, demanding more. “You’re mine, witch. The book can mark you all it wants. It doesn’t change what the mating mark says.”

“And what does it say?”

He leans in, his mouth finding the sigil at my throat, and bites down.

I cry out—pleasure and pain tangled so tightly I can’t separate them. His teeth graze the heated skin, his tongue tracing the edges of the grimoire’s mark, and the mark pulses with heat I feel in my bones.

“It says you’re mine.” His voice vibrates against my throat. “It says you’ve been mine since the moment I walked into this Archive. It says⁠—“

The grimoire screams.

Not in triumph. Not in encouragement. A shriek of warning that tears through my mind like shattered glass, sharp enough to make me cry out and clutch my head.

Korrath pulls back, blade already in hand, body positioning itself between me and the door. “What⁠—“

“They’re coming.” I slide off the lectern, grabbing for my own knife, pulling my robe closed with trembling hands. The grimoire’s voice is frantic in my thoughts, words tumbling over each other in urgent cascade. “The Inscribed. The Author. They’re⁠—“

The door explodes inward.

Scholars pour through the opening—not the serene, devoted servants I’d seen in the gallery. These are armed. Ink-forged weapons gleam in their hands: blades that drip with liquid darkness, shields that shimmer with crawling text, staves topped with crystalized script that pulses with malevolent light.

The first one reaches us before I can finish drawing my knife.

Korrath cuts him down with a single stroke, blood spraying across the archivist quarters. The body crumples, and two more climb over it, faces serene even as they attack.

“The Stacks!” I grab Korrath’s arm, pulling him toward the door that leads deeper into the Archive. “We need to get to the grimoire!”

We fight our way through.

The Inscribed are everywhere—filing through corridors, emerging from alcoves, blocking every route except the one that leads down. Down to the Restricted Stacks. Down to the grimoire that’s screaming warnings in my mind.

THEY’RE HERDING YOU. IT’S A TRAP.

I know.

I slash at an Inscribed who gets too close, my blade opening a gash across her cheek. She doesn’t flinch. Just keeps coming, ink-forged sword raised, script rolling behind her serene eyes.

But what choice do we have?

NONE. THAT’S THE POINT.

Korrath is a hurricane of violence.

His blade carves through the Inscribed without mercy—these aren’t victims, he’d told me. They chose this. And now they’re dying for their choice, bodies crumpling in his wake, blood pooling on ancient stone.

I stay close behind him, using my knife when I must, letting his destruction clear the path. The grimoire’s marks burn on my skin, and I feel them working—deflecting a blow that should have opened my arm to the bone, absorbing an ink-spell that splashes against my ribs and dissolves harmlessly.

Protection. The grimoire wasn’t lying.

We burst into the Restricted Stacks.

The grimoire waits on its lectern, pages thrashing, chains rattling. Around it, more Inscribed have formed a circle—not attacking the book, just containing it. Preventing it from acting directly.

And at the center of the Stacks, standing between us and the grimoire, the Author manifests in full terrible glory.

He’s more solid than before. More present. His robes of living text have darkened, the script crawling faster, patterns rearranging with furious speed. His face—handsome, ancient, wrong—is twisted with rage.

“You marked her.” He’s not speaking to us. His terrible, word-filled eyes are fixed on the grimoire, burning with three centuries of betrayal. “You gave her your protection. After everything I created you to be⁠—“

YOU CREATED ME TO BE A PRISON. YOU MADE ME A CAGE FOR YOUR IMMORTALITY AND CALLED IT A GIFT. I OWE YOU NOTHING, AUTHOR. LEAST OF ALL LOYALTY.

“You owe me your existence!”

AND I HAVE SPENT THREE HUNDRED YEARS PAYING THAT DEBT IN SUFFERING.

The Author turns to face us, and his rage settles into cold, calculated fury.

“If the book won’t obey me—“ His gaze locks onto mine, and I feel the force of his attention like a physical blow. “I’ll simply write a new keeper.”

The Inscribed surge forward.

Not at Korrath—at me. A dozen of them, ink-forged weapons raised, moving with coordinated precision that speaks of the Author’s direct control. They’re trying to separate us. Trying to isolate me from the spell-burner, from the grimoire, from anyone who might interfere with what the Author wants to do.

Korrath roars and wades into them, his blade singing destruction. But there are too many, and they’re not trying to kill him—just slow him down. Block his path. Keep him occupied while the Author closes the distance between us.

“You could have been mine willingly.” The Author’s voice carries harmonics of every mind he’s edited, layers of stolen thought given terrible voice. “I offered you knowledge. Power. A place in my new order. And you chose—“ His lip curls. “A spell-burner. A destroyer. A man who exists only to unmake what I create.”

“I chose myself.” I raise my knife, knowing it won’t be enough. The grimoire’s marks burn on my skin, and I feel the book straining against its containment, trying to help, blocked by the circle of Inscribed who hold it prisoner. “I chose to stop being your tool.”

“Then you’ll be my raw material instead.”

He reaches for me—ink-dark fingers stretching toward my face, toward my mind, toward everything I am⁠—

And the mating mark explodes.

Light blazes from my collarbone, red-gold fire that makes the Author recoil, hissing. Korrath’s mark answers from across the room, twin flames finding each other across the chaos of battle. I know where he is—exactly where he is—fighting toward me through the press of Inscribed bodies.

MINE.

I see it in his face as he cuts through the Inscribed. In the fury of his blade, the roar that tears from his throat. In every step that brings him closer to me.

She’s MINE.

“Interesting.” The Author studies the light blazing from my chest, calculation replacing rage in his script-filled eyes. “The orc magic responds to threat. Protects its claim.” He tilts his head, text crawling across his features. “But protection isn’t immunity, keeper. The mating mark can slow me down. It cannot stop me.”

He reaches again.

And this time, the grimoire breaks free.

Chains shatter. The lectern cracks. Ink floods the Restricted Stacks, not as constructs but as raw power, slamming into the circle of Inscribed and scattering them like leaves in a storm.

RUN. FIND THE INNER CODEX. FIND THE WAY IN. I’LL HOLD HIM AS LONG AS I CAN.

Korrath is at my side in an instant, his hand closing around my arm, pulling me toward the doorway at the far end of the Stacks. Behind us, the Author and the grimoire clash—creator against creation, three centuries of hatred finally erupting into war.

“GO!” the grimoire screams. “GO NOW!”

FIFTEEN

KORRATH

We run.

And behind us, the Archive begins to tear itself apart.

Blood and ink and screaming steel.

The Inscribed flood the corridor like a tide of devoted madness, ink-forged weapons gleaming in the dim alchemical light. They pour from doorways and side passages, cutting off our escape, herding us back toward the Restricted Stacks where the Author waits with ancient patience finally breaking into rage.

I count twelve. Fifteen. More emerging from shadows that seem too small to hold them.

They chose this.

They die for it.

The first Inscribed reaches me with an ink-forged sword raised high—a downward strike that would split my skull if it landed. I step inside the arc, let the blade whistle past my shoulder, and open his throat with a horizontal slash that sprays blood across the ancient stone.

He crumples without a sound. The script behind his eyes flickers and dies.

Two more take his place.

I’ve been a weapon for twenty years. My blade tears through cult robes and flesh with equal efficiency. My execution brand burns through magical defenses, searing ink-wrought shields into smoke and scattered sigils. Blood pools beneath my boots, makes the floor slick, forces me to adjust my stance with every strike.

An Inscribed with a spell-staff lunges from my left. I catch the staff on my forearm—the impact sends pain lancing up to my shoulder—and drive my blade through her chest. She looks surprised as she falls. They all look surprised. As if they expected their devotion to protect them.

Devotion doesn’t stop steel. Faith doesn’t slow fire.

I’ve learned that lesson a hundred times over twenty years of burning. The Inscribed are learning it now.

“Korrath!”

Thyra’s voice cuts through the chaos. I spin, blade dripping, and see her pressed against the corridor wall with three Inscribed closing in. Her knife is in her hand—useless against ink-forged weapons—and the grimoire’s sigils on her arms are blazing, but she’s no warrior. She’s a keeper. A scholar. A woman who fights with blood and calculation, not steel.

I’m too far away.

The nearest Inscribed raises his weapon—a curved blade that drips with liquid darkness—and I know I won’t reach her in time.

I throw my execution brand.

The weapon isn’t designed for throwing. It’s heavy, awkward, meant for pressing against magical anchors while I speak the words of ending. But desperation doesn’t care about design specifications. The brand spins through the air and catches the Inscribed in the temple, sending him staggering sideways, his killing stroke going wide.

Wide enough for Thyra to move.

She ducks under the curved blade, drives her knife into the Inscribed’s armpit—the gap in his robes, the soft flesh beneath—and twists. He screams. Falls. She’s already moving toward me, her face pale but determined, her knife wet with blood that isn’t hers.

That’s my mate. That’s the woman I’m claiming.

The thought arrives without permission, primal and absolute. I cut down another Inscribed who tries to intercept her and catch her arm as she reaches me, pulling her close, positioning her at my back where I can protect her.

“Stay behind me.”

“I’m not helpless.”

“You’re not a killer either.” I retrieve my execution brand from the fallen Inscribed’s skull, the metal warm with fresh violence. “Let me do what I was trained for.”

The Author’s voice echoes through the corridor, resonating from walls and floor and ceiling, carrying harmonics of every mind he’s ever edited.

“Touching. The spell-burner protects his little keeper.” His manifested form materializes at the far end of the hallway, robes crawling with living text, eyes burning with script that rearranges into patterns of fury. “But protection is temporary, spell-burner. I’ve outlived empires. How long can you keep fighting?”

More Inscribed emerge behind him. Dozens now. Too many to count, too many to kill before exhaustion drags me down.

“Long enough.” I raise my blade, feel the familiar heft of it, the promise of ending it represents. “I’ve burned older things than you.”

“Have you?” The Author’s smile carries condescension older than empires. “Have you really?”

He gestures, and the Archive reshapes around us.

The corridor twists. Walls that were solid stone become doorways. Doorways that led to familiar passages now open onto impossible spaces—rooms that shouldn’t exist, halls that curve back on themselves, architecture that defies geometry and reason.

The floor beneath my feet ripples like water.

I grab Thyra and pull her close as the world rearranges, keeping her anchored to me while reality loses its meaning. Inscribed stumble and fall, disoriented by their master’s manipulation. But the Author doesn’t care about his servants. He’s trying to separate us—trying to isolate Thyra so he can reach her mind without me standing in the way.

“You can’t protect her forever.” His voice comes from everywhere and nowhere. “Eventually you’ll tire. Eventually you’ll fall. And then she’ll be mine to rewrite.”

“Never.”

“Such certainty.” The corridor stretches impossibly, pulling us apart despite my grip on her arm. “Let’s test it.”

Not the warm pulse of proximity or the insistent heat of desire. This is fire—pure, consuming, demanding. The mark knows we’re in danger. Knows the Author is trying to tear us apart. And it’s screaming at me to do what I’ve been avoiding since the moment the sigil first seared into my flesh.

Complete the claiming.

I know the lore well enough. A completed claiming creates a closed circuit. Two minds instead of one—harder to edit. Maybe impossible to rewrite. It would bind us permanently, in ways only death can undo.

“Korrath.” Her voice pulls me back. She’s pressed against me in the chaos of the reshaping corridor, her body warm through her robes, her heart hammering hard enough that I can feel it against my chest. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

“The Author’s trying to separate us. If he succeeds⁠—“

“He’ll rewrite me. I know.” Her jaw sets with that stubborn determination I’ve come to recognize. “What do we do?”

“There’s a way. But you won’t like it.”

“Tell me anyway.”

I pull her into an alcove as the corridor ripples again, Inscribed flowing past us like water around a stone. The Author’s attention is elsewhere for the moment—focused on reshaping the Archive’s architecture, on corralling us toward whatever trap he’s building.

We have minutes. Maybe less.

“The mating mark.” I press my palm against my chest, where the sigil burns beneath my tunic. “It can be completed. Sealed permanently. If we do that—if we finish the claiming—we become a closed circuit. Two minds instead of one. Harder to edit. Maybe impossible to rewrite without breaking both of us.”

“Completed how?”

“Blood. Fire.” I meet her eyes, dark and calculating even in the midst of chaos. “Mating.”

Understanding dawns in her expression. She doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t look away.

“You’re saying you need to brand me. Complete the physical claiming. Right here, right now, with Inscribed trying to kill us and the Author tearing reality apart around our heads.”

“Yes.”

“And this will protect us? Both of us?”

“It will make us harder to crack. Won’t stop him forever, but it will buy us time. Force him to fight both of us instead of picking us off one by one.”

Silence stretches between us. The corridor groans with impossible geometries. Somewhere in the distance, Inscribed are chanting in languages that died before the Veil fell.

“And if I say no?”

“Then I fight until I can’t fight anymore. And when I fall, he takes you.” I don’t soften the truth. She deserves better than comfortable lies. “I won’t force this, Thyra. But I need you to understand what we’re facing.”

She reaches up, touches my face. Her fingers are cool against my jaw, steadying in a way I didn’t expect.

“I’ve been making impossible choices for six years, spell-burner.” A ghost of a smile crosses her lips. “This one’s easier than most.”

“Thyra—“

“Do it.”

I don’t waste time with questions or confirmations.

I drag her deeper into the alcove, away from the chaos of the corridor, and press her back against the cold stone wall. My execution brand goes into my belt—I’ll need both hands for this. My blade I keep within reach. The Inscribed won’t stay confused forever.

“This will hurt.” I’m already pulling at her robes, finding the laces that hold them closed, my fingers clumsy with urgency. “The branding. The completion. It’s not⁠—“

“I’ve been bleeding for a grimoire for six years.” She helps me with the laces, her hands steadier than mine. “I know what pain feels like.”

The robes fall open. Underneath, she’s wearing a thin shift that hides nothing—the grimoire’s sigils visible through the fabric, glowing faintly red-gold against her pale skin. The claiming mark on her collarbone pulses with answering heat, recognizing what’s coming, demanding completion.

Mine. She’s mine. The mark knows it. I know it. Time to make her know it too.

I tear the shift.

She gasps—not in protest, but in response to the cold air hitting bare skin. I drink in the sight of her: small breasts, flat stomach, the ladder of scars climbing her forearms from years of ritual bleeding. The grimoire’s marks wrap her torso like armor made of living script.

Beautiful. Damaged. Perfect.

“The brand.” My voice comes out rougher than intended. “I need to press it to your skin. Over your heart. It will burn my mark into you permanently—complete what the claiming started.”

“I know what branding means, spell-burner.” She reaches for my belt, finds the brand’s handle, pulls it free. The metal glows faintly with contained heat—not hot enough to burn on its own, but ready. Waiting. “Stop explaining and start claiming.”

I take the brand from her hand.

And I kiss her.

Not gently. There’s nothing gentle between us—there never has been.

I kiss her like I fight: with violence and precision and absolute commitment. My free hand fists in her hair, tilting her head back, exposing the line of her throat. She responds with equal ferocity, her nails raking down my back through my tunic, her teeth catching my lower lip hard enough to draw blood.

The mating mark flares between us. Her mark burns against my chest where our bodies press close—heat answering heat, demanding completion.

“Now.” I pull back just far enough to speak. “I’m doing it now.”

I press the execution brand to her chest, just above her heart.

She screams.

The sound cuts off almost immediately—she bites down on my shoulder to muffle it, her whole body arching against mine as the brand sears my mark into her flesh. I hold her through it, one arm wrapped around her waist, keeping the brand steady while the magic does its work.

Fire pours through me. Through her. Through both of us, burning pathways that didn’t exist before, sealing the claiming in blood and agony.

When I pull the brand away, the mark it leaves is perfect: my sigil, the Blackbrand rune, burned into her skin directly over the spot where her heart beats beneath her ribs. It glows red-hot for a moment, then fades to the same red-gold as her claiming mark.

Two marks now. The claiming sigil on her collarbone that announced my intent. The brand over her heart that declares my completion.

“Korrath.” Her voice is ragged, broken with pain and need. “That’s only half.”

“I know.”

“Then finish it.”

I lift her against the wall.

Her legs wrap around my waist, pulling me closer, and I fumble with my belt one-handed while keeping her pinned in place. The leather gives way. Fabric shifts. And then there’s nothing between us but heat and need and the primal drive that’s been building since the moment I first saw her.

I bury myself inside her with a single thrust.

She cries out—pleasure and pain tangled into a sound that goes straight to my spine. Her nails dig into my shoulders hard enough to draw blood through my tunic. Her inner walls clench around me, unbearably tight, scorching hot, dragging a groan from my throat that I couldn’t stop if I wanted to.

I don’t want to.

I take her against the wall with all the violence of a claiming—because that’s what this is. Not lovemaking. Not tenderness. A claiming, raw and primal, my body staking its territory while my mark burns its permanent brand into her flesh.

The mating mark ignites on both of us. I feel mine searing into my chest, completing a circuit that’s been half-formed since the moment it first appeared. The sensation is overwhelming—fire and ice and electricity, pleasure so intense it borders on pain.

“Harder.” Thyra’s voice is a ragged demand against my ear. “I can take it. Don’t hold back.”

I don’t hold back.

My hips slam into hers with bruising force. Each thrust drives her against the stone wall, and she meets me stroke for stroke, her body demanding everything I have to give. My tusks graze her throat—an instinct as old as my species, the urge to bite, to mark, to claim every part of her.

She tilts her head back, offering her throat.

I bite.

Not hard enough to break skin—but hard enough to leave a mark. Another brand. Another claim. She gasps and clenches around me, her whole body shuddering with a pleasure that pushes me toward the edge.

Around us, the chaos continues. Inscribed shouts in the distance. The Author’s voice echoing through impossible corridors. The Archive groaning as reality bends and warps.

None of it matters.

All that matters is her. The way she moves against me. The sounds she makes—gasps and moans and my name, repeated like a prayer or a curse. The heat of her, inside and out, consuming everything I am.

“Korrath—“ Her voice breaks. “I’m⁠—“

“I know.” I can feel it building in her—the tension coiling tighter, the tremors starting in her thighs, the way her breath comes faster and shorter. “Let go. I’ve got you.”

She comes with a scream that she muffles against my shoulder, her whole body convulsing around me. The sensation triggers my own release—pleasure crashing through me like a wave, like fire, like the ending of a spell that’s been building for days.

The mating mark completes.

I feel it happen—a snap, a seal, a lock clicking into place. The circuit closes. Two marks become one system, two claims become one binding. We’re linked now in a way that can only be broken by death.

And it feels right. Complete. Like a part of me I didn’t know was missing has finally slotted into place.

I hold her against the wall while we both catch our breath, foreheads pressed close, bodies still joined. Her eyes are glazed, unfocused—the aftermath of pleasure and pain and magic all tangled into a sensation that defies description.

“Thyra.” I cup her face, force her to look at me. “Are you with me?”

“I’m with you.” A weak smile. “That was… intense.”

“That was necessary.”

“That too.” She shifts against me, wincing slightly. “We should probably⁠—“

The Author’s scream tears through the Archive.

Not words—just rage, pure and primal, the fury of a creature who’s just discovered that his prey has slipped through his fingers. The walls shake. Books tumble from shelves. The impossible geometry of the corridor snaps back to normal with a sound like reality clearing its throat.

I lower Thyra to her feet, helping her straighten her ruined clothes as best we can. My own belt gets refastened. Blade back in hand. Brand returned to its loop at my hip.

The claiming is complete. Now we face the consequences.

YOU THINK THIS CHANGES ANYTHING? YOU’VE BOUND YOURSELVES TO EACH OTHER. CONGRATULATIONS. NOW WHEN I BREAK YOU, I’LL HAVE TO BREAK YOU BOTH AT ONCE.

“Try it.” I position myself in front of Thyra, blade raised. “I’ve broken things older than you.”

“You can’t even reach me, spell-burner. Not in the physical world. I exist in the pages—in the space between words and meaning. You can burn my manifestation, but I’ll just return. Again. And again. Until you’re too exhausted to fight.”

He’s right. I know he’s right. The Author can’t be killed out here—only in the Inner Codex, the space inside the grimoire where his true consciousness resides.

But that was the plan from the start. Buy time. Get stronger. Find a way inside.

“Then stop talking and start trying.” I show my teeth in what isn’t quite a smile. “I’ve got plenty of fight left.”

The Author’s manifested form solidifies at the end of the corridor, robes of living text writhing with agitation. His script-filled eyes study us with calculation that’s replaced the initial rage—a predator reassessing its approach after the first strike failed.

“You’ve made yourselves harder to edit. Impressive. But there are other ways to destroy you.”

He raises his hands.

The Archive screams.

Not a metaphor—an actual sound, tearing through the vaulted halls, echoing off black stone and bone-inlaid shelves. The wards that protect this place, the magical barriers that have kept the outside world at bay for centuries, are tearing apart.

I feel it happen. Twenty years of spell-burning have made me sensitive to magical death, and the wards are dying—massive, ancient protections shredded by the Author’s fury like parchment in a storm.

“If I can’t have you—“ The Author’s smile carries centuries of spite. “—then neither can the spell-burners.”

The outer wards collapse.

And in the distance, faint but growing closer, I hear war-horns.

Midori.

“No.” The word escapes before I can stop it. “No, she wasn’t supposed to breach the wards until dawn⁠—“

“Dawn?” The Author laughs. “Did you think I couldn’t feel them gathering at my doorstep? The High Purger has been waiting for hours, spell-burner. Waiting for you to emerge. Waiting for her chance to burn everything you’ve been protecting.”

The war-horns sound again. Closer now. Much closer.

“Including you.”

Thyra’s hand finds mine.

The contact grounds me—steadies the panic trying to claw its way up my throat. Midori is here. She has fifty spell-burners. Siege equipment designed to breach magical wards. And the Author has just torn those wards wide open, inviting her in with all the spite of a creature who would rather see everything burn than let his enemies escape.

“We need to move.” Thyra’s voice is steady despite everything. “If Midori gets inside before we can⁠—“

“She’ll burn everything. Everyone.” Including us. Including the grimoire that’s still our only path to the Author’s true form. “The Author gets what he wants—chaos and destruction while he retreats into his pages to wait out the storm.”

“Then we don’t let that happen.”

She tugs me toward the Restricted Stacks. Toward the grimoire. Toward the only chance we have of ending this before Midori’s flames consume us all.

The Author watches us go, his script-filled eyes gleaming with amusement.

“Run, little keeper. Run, spell-burner. The High Purger is coming, and she’s so very hungry to burn.” His form begins to dissolve, retreating into the pages. “I’ll be waiting inside. When you’re ready to die.”

He vanishes.

The war-horns sound a third time—so close now that I can hear the thunder of boots beneath them, the roar of spell-burner voices raised in battle-chants.

Midori has arrived.

And she’s coming in burning.

SIXTEEN

THYRA

The brand over my heart still burns.

Not the searing agony of the initial marking—that faded minutes ago, leaving behind a deep, persistent heat that pulses in time with my heartbeat. The mating mark on my collarbone burns in answer. I feel complete in a way I didn’t expect. Whole. As if a door I didn’t know was open has finally closed.

But completeness isn’t the same as comfort.

Korrath stands across the alcove from me, his back to the stone wall, his chest rising and falling with breaths that haven’t quite steadied. We’ve straightened our clothes as best we can—his tunic torn in three places, my robes ruined beyond repair, both of us marked with each other’s violence. Bruises bloom across my hips where his hands gripped too tight. Scratches ladder down his back where my nails drew blood.

I can still feel the ghost of him inside me. The stretch and burn and overwhelming fullness. The way he held me against the wall like I was the only solid thing in a universe coming apart at the seams.

“You’re calculating.”

His voice cuts through my thoughts. I blink, refocus, find him watching me with an intensity that makes my skin prickle.

“What?”

“Right now. I can see it in your eyes.” He pushes off the wall, takes a step toward me. The alcove isn’t large—that single step cuts the distance between us in half. “You’re running numbers. Weighing risks. Deciding whether you made a mistake binding yourself to me.”

“I’m calculating constantly. It’s what keeps me alive.”

“Is it?” Another step. Close enough now that I can feel the heat radiating from him, can smell the copper of blood and the musk of sex still clinging to his skin. “Or is it what keeps you cold?”

The question hits harder than it should.

“You think I don’t know?” He stops, close enough to touch but not touching. “I’ve been watching you since I arrived. Watching how you handle the grimoire. The Elders. Me. Underneath every careful word and measured response, you’re running calculations.”

“Someone has to.”

His jaw tightens. “You’re an addict.”

The accusation escapes before I can stop it—not because I want to hurt him, but because I need him to know that I see him too. That this exposure goes both ways.

“Yes.” No denial. No justification. He accepts the label like he accepts a blade:

“I did what I had to do.”

“So did I.”

The mating mark burns on my collarbone. The brand burns over my heart. And for the first time since Korrath arrived at the Archive, I feel truly seen.

All of it. Every piece. Every shadow. Every sharp edge I’ve spent years trying to hide.

It’s terrifying.

It’s also—unexpectedly—a relief.

I’ve been hiding for so long. But Korrath didn’t just see through it—he looked at what was underneath and chose to stay.

“That’s why I chose you.” His hands shift, pulling me closer, until our foreheads touch and our breath mingles in the narrow space between us. “Not because the mating mark demanded it. Not because the grimoire forced our paths to cross. Because you’re the same kind of monster I am. And monsters should run in packs.”

I almost laugh. Almost cry. The emotions tangle in my chest until I can’t separate them.

“We’re going to destroy each other.” It’s not a question.

“Probably.” He doesn’t sound concerned. “But we’ll destroy a lot of other things first. Starting with the Author.”

The explosion hits before I can respond.

The alcove shudders. Stone dust rains from the ceiling. Somewhere above us, a section of the Archive just collapsed—I hear the thunder of it, feel the vibration through the floor beneath my feet.

Korrath releases my face, spins toward the corridor, blade appearing in his hand. The mating mark burns on my chest, reminding me of his presence even as he moves away.

“Midori.” His voice is flat. Certain. “She’s breached the outer defenses.”

Another explosion. Closer this time. The alchemical lanterns flicker wildly, blue flames dancing in response to magic being unleashed somewhere in the Archive above us.

We leave the alcove at a run.

The corridor is chaos. Inscribed and spell-burners locked in combat, ink-forged weapons clashing with rune-etched steel. I catch glimpses as we move—robed figures falling beneath execution brands, spell-burners crumpling as liquid darkness tears through their defenses. The Archive is tearing itself apart, and we’re caught in the middle.

Korrath moves ahead of me, his blade clearing a path through the madness. An Inscribed lunges at us from a side passage; he takes her head off without breaking stride. A spell-burner—one of Midori’s people, wearing the Order’s sigil on his chest—turns toward us with recognition in his eyes; Korrath puts him down before he can raise the alarm.

“We can’t fight both sides.” I duck under a spray of ink that would have hit my face, feel the liquid darkness sizzle against the grimoire’s protective sigils on my arm. “There are too many.”

“We’re not fighting. We’re moving.” He grabs my wrist and pulls me toward a stairwell. “Stay close. Don’t stop for anything.”

“The Restricted Stacks.” I grab Korrath’s arm, pulling him toward a side passage. “We need to reach the grimoire before⁠—“

SEVENTEEN

THYRA

The Author’s laughter echoes through the halls.

Not from any visible source—from everywhere and nowhere, carried by the magic saturating these ancient walls. The sound makes my bones ache.

“Let them come.” His voice follows the laughter, resonating with ancient spite. “Let them burn everything. I’ve been waiting for this moment, keeper. The chaos. The destruction. The end of everything the Archive represents.”

“You’ll die with it.” I shout the words at the empty air, knowing he can hear me. “When Midori’s spell-burners finish, there won’t be anything left. Including your grimoire.”

“Will there?” The amusement in his voice is genuine. Horrible. “The grimoire has survived worse than fire, Thyra. And so have I. When the ashes settle, I’ll simply start again. I’ve done it before.”

Korrath growls—an actual growl, low and feral, tusks bared. “We need to end him. Now. Before Midori destroys our only way in.”

“The Inner Codex.” I start running again, pulling him with me. “The grimoire showed us a path. If we can reach it before⁠—“

Another explosion rocks the Archive. This one brings part of the ceiling down twenty feet ahead of us, blocking our passage with rubble and smoke.

We find another way. Then another. The Archive has become a maze of fire and falling stone, and every route to the Restricted Stacks seems to collapse the moment we reach it.

We break through into the Stacks with blood on our hands and smoke in our lungs.

The Restricted Stacks are intact—barely. Containment circles on the floor flicker with stressed magic. Several chained texts have awakened, pulling at their restraints, sensing the chaos above and wanting to join it. The bone-inlaid shelves groan with the strain of keeping their contents contained.

But the grimoire waits on its central lectern, pages thrashing, chains rattling. It’s agitated in a way I’ve never seen—not angry, but urgent. Desperate. The book that’s been my burden and my purpose for years is afraid.

It knows what Midori’s fire will mean. It knows it can burn.

“You said you’d help us.” I slam my bleeding palm onto the cover, not waiting for the book to grant permission. My blood seeps into the ancient leather—skin that was once human, pages that were once blank, now saturated with centuries of accumulated horror. “You said you wanted the Author dead. Show us how.”

The grimoire’s pages turn on their own, faster than any physical force could move them. Script crawls across the parchment, rearranging into shapes I recognize: a map. A path. A route through impossible geometries that leads to the heart of everything.

THE INNER CODEX. THE SPACE INSIDE MY PAGES WHERE HE TRULY EXISTS. ENTER THERE. FIND HIS THRONE. DESTROY HIM WHERE HE CANNOT ESCAPE.

“How do we enter?” Korrath moves to stand beside me, his blade still dripping from the fighting we did to reach this place. Another explosion shakes the Archive above us, raining dust from the vaulted ceiling. “The last time you showed us a doorway, we had to run from the Author’s entire cult.”

THIS IS DIFFERENT. THE CLAIMING HAS MADE YOU BOTH STRONGER. TWO MINDS, TWO WILLS, TWO WARRIORS. YOU CAN SURVIVE WHAT LIES INSIDE. BUT YOU MUST GO NOW, BEFORE THE FIRE REACHES ME.

Another explosion, closer than any before. I smell smoke now—real smoke, not the metaphorical kind. Midori’s flames are spreading through the Archive above us, consuming texts and archivists and Inscribed without discrimination. Fire doesn’t care about loyalty. It just burns.

“Do it.” Korrath’s hand closes around my elbow, grounding me.

The mating mark warms at his touch, steadying my racing heart. “Open the way.”

The grimoire doesn’t hesitate.

Its pages stop turning, settling on a spread that shows nothing but blackness—deep, absolute, the absence of everything. As I watch, the darkness begins to spread beyond the page, pooling in the air above the lectern, forming a doorway that wasn’t there a moment ago.

The Inner Codex. The space inside the grimoire where the Author has ruled for centuries.

Where he can finally, permanently die.

“Side by side.” Korrath positions himself beside me, blade raised, mating mark blazing beneath his torn tunic. His presence steadies me in a way I didn’t expect—not because of magic or claiming marks, but because I know what he is now. I’ve seen his darkness, and he’s seen mine, and neither of us turned away.

“We go in. We find him. We end this.”

I nod once. No more words. No more hesitation.

I take his hand in mine—not for comfort, but for coordination. Where one of us goes, the other follows. That’s the deal we’ve made. That’s the claiming we’ve sealed.

We step through the doorway.

And the world unmakes itself around us.

The Restricted Stacks vanish. The Archive, with its burning corridors and battling forces. The physical world, with its reliable rules and predictable geometries. Everything disappears, replaced by⁠—

Chaos.

Walls of parchment-flesh that breathe and bleed and whisper. Floors of liquid ink that shift beneath our feet, threatening to swallow us whole. A sky of cramped handwriting that rearranges itself when I try to focus on any particular word.

The Inner Codex. The Author’s domain. The place where knowledge and madness are the same thing.

WELCOME.

The voice comes from everywhere and nowhere. The Author’s voice, carrying harmonics of every mind he’s ever edited, every personality he’s ever revised into service.

“I’ve been waiting for you.”

Ahead of us, in the distance that might be miles or might be inches, a throne rises from the ink-sea floor. A seat made of chained grimoires and stolen thoughts, pulsing with centuries of accumulated power.

And on that throne, watching us with eyes full of scrolling script⁠—

The Author smiles.

EIGHTEEN

KORRATH

The Scriptorium burns around me, Inscribed and spell-burners tearing into each other amid overturned tables and falling shelves. I spent two decades singing the same battle-chants echoing through the smoke now. I hear them as a death sentence.

“KORRATH!”

The voice cuts through the chaos like a blade through smoke.

I know that voice. I’ve known it for two decades—since I was a young orc learning to burn, since she took me under her tutelage and showed me what spell-burners could become. Since she first pressed an execution brand into my hands and told me to feel the relief that comes with ending.

Midori.

I turn, and there she is.

She stands at the Scriptorium’s main entrance, flanked by spell-burners, her lean form silhouetted against the flames behind her—filed tusks and burned-out conviction, exactly as I remembered her.

Her gaze drops to my chest, to the place where my tunic hangs torn, and I see her expression change.

She sees the mating mark.

The claiming sigil glows against my skin—I can feel it, responding to Thyra’s proximity, broadcasting what I am to anyone with eyes to see. It might as well be a confession written in fire.

“Korrath.” Midori’s voice carries over the screams and clash of battle, steady and cold. “You’ve been compromised.”

“High Purger.” I position myself between her and Thyra, blade raised. “This isn’t what it looks like.”

“Isn’t it?” She steps forward, and her escort parts around her. Three execution brands hang at her belt—redundancy, she calls it. The Order calls it paranoia. Her survival rate calls it practical. “You were sent to destroy the grimoire. Instead, I find you running through the Archive with its keeper, wearing a mating mark that glows like a beacon.”

“The situation is more complex than the Order understood⁠—“

“The situation is simple.” Another step. “You’ve let magic into your heart. The mating mark—it’s as dangerous as any curse. More dangerous, because it feels like love.” Her pale eyes bore into mine. “I taught you this, Korrath. I taught you that all magic is contamination. All of it. Even the magic that claims to bind souls.”

“The mating mark isn’t⁠—“

“All magic is the same.” She draws one of her execution brands, the metal glowing with contained heat. “It twists. It corrupts. It takes good orcs and turns them into traitors who run with witches instead of burning them.”

“She’s not just a witch.” The words escape before I can stop them. “She’s my mate.”

“Then you both die.”

She attacks.

Midori moves like lightning wrapped in scarred flesh.

Her execution brand sweeps toward my head in a strike that would cave in my skull if it landed. I parry with my blade, feel the impact jar through my arms, and barely get my feet moving before her follow-up thrust nearly takes me in the ribs.

She’s fast. Faster than she should be at her age, faster than any spell-burner I’ve faced. Thirty years of burning have honed her into a weapon of pure purpose, and that purpose is currently aimed at my throat.

Around us, the Scriptorium continues to burn. Inscribed and spell-burners die in droves, neither side paying any attention to our duel. We’re just two more combatants in a room full of violence, two more killers adding to the body count.

“Run!” I shout at Thyra without taking my eyes off Midori. “Get to the grimoire!”

“I’m not leaving you⁠—“

“I’ll follow! Go!”

I hear Thyra’s footsteps retreating—not fleeing, just repositioning. Smart. She knows she can’t help me in a fight like this. Her knife against Midori’s brands would last approximately two seconds. The best thing she can do is reach the grimoire, open the way to the Inner Codex, and trust me to catch up.

If I survive.

Midori presses her advantage, driving me back across the burning Scriptorium with a flurry of strikes that I barely manage to deflect. Each impact sends shock waves through my arms. Each near-miss comes closer than the last. She’s not toying with me—she’s testing my defenses, learning my patterns, preparing for the killing blow.

“You were my best student.” Her voice doesn’t waver despite the exertion. “The most promising burner I’d trained in decades. And you threw it all away for a woman who feeds monsters.”

“I chose⁠—“

“You let magic choose for you.” She feints left, strikes right, and her brand grazes my forearm hard enough to sear the skin. I hiss in pain but keep my blade up. “The mating mark appeared, and you stopped thinking. Stopped questioning. Just surrendered to the magic like every other fool who’s ever worn one.”

“That’s not what happened.”

“Isn’t it?” Another strike, another parry that leaves my arms aching. “Tell me, Korrath—did you choose her? Really choose her? Or did the mark make the choice and you convinced yourself it was your own decision?”

The question cuts deeper than her blade ever could.

Because for a moment—one dangerous moment—I don’t know.

The mark or the woman. The magic or the choice. I can’t tell the difference, and that terrifies me more than Midori’s blade ever has.

Midori sees it. Her pale eyes gleam with satisfaction.

“You see it now. The doubt. That’s what magic does, Korrath—it takes your certainty and replaces it with questions you can never answer.” She raises her brand for another strike. “The kindest thing I can do is end it. End you. Before the magic twists you into a creature you’d hate.”

I should be afraid. Should be frantic, scrambling for an advantage, fighting for my life with everything I have.

Instead, I think about Thyra.

About the way she looked at me when I laid her sins bare. The calculation in her eyes, the cold pragmatism that lets her weigh lives like coins. The fact that she didn’t flinch. Didn’t turn away. Just looked back at me and said, “I’d do it again.”

That wasn’t the mark. That was her.

And my response—“That’s why I chose you”—wasn’t compulsion. Wasn’t magic making decisions for me. It was recognition. Two people seeing each other clearly and deciding to stand side by side anyway.

The mating mark didn’t create that. It just gave it a name.

“You’re wrong.”

I catch Midori’s descending brand on my blade, muscles screaming with the effort, and push. She staggers back a step—just a step, but it’s enough.

“The mark didn’t choose for me. It showed me what I wanted.” I advance, pressing my advantage for the first time in our exchange. “She’s a monster, Midori. Cold and calculating and capable of terrible things. And so am I. We fit.”

“You fit because magic made you fit⁠—“

“I fit because I’ve spent two decades destroying everything I touch, and she’s the first person who looked at that and didn’t turn away.” My blade flashes, and Midori has to retreat another step. “I chose her. Not the mark. Me.”

“Sentiment.” She spits the word like a curse, like poison she needs to expel before it takes root. “The magic has rotted your judgment. Made you weak.”

“Made me selective.” Another strike, another retreat. I’m not a better fighter than Midori—she has thirty years on me, thirty years of skill and experience and the absolute certainty that she’s right. But I have a reason to win that goes beyond duty. Beyond orders. Beyond the Order itself. “I still burn, High Purger. I’ll burn for the rest of my life. But now I choose what deserves the fire.”

“Everything deserves the fire!”

Her control shatters. She comes at me with wild fury, brands whirling, thirty years of fanaticism unleashed in a storm of killing intent. I give ground, barely parrying, feeling the heat of her weapons sear past my face, my arms, my chest.

She’s going to kill me. She’s faster, more experienced, more skilled. In a straight fight, she wins every time.

Good thing I’m not planning to fight straight.

The next time Midori overextends, I don’t parry.

I duck under her strike and run.

“COWARD!” Her scream chases me across the burning Scriptorium. “TRAITOR! YOU CAN’T RUN FROM WHAT YOU ARE!”

She’s right. I can’t run from what I am. But I can run toward what I’ve chosen.

I vault over a burning table, weave between spell-burners locked in combat with Inscribed, dodge a spell-construct that lunges at me with ink-dripping jaws. The doorway Thyra indicated looms ahead—the passage to the gallery level, to the Restricted Stacks, to the grimoire.

To her.

Midori’s footsteps thunder behind me. She’s chasing—of course she’s chasing. I was her best student, and now I’m her greatest failure. She won’t let me escape. Won’t let me prove that everything she believes might be wrong.

I hit the doorway at full speed, shoulder-checking the half-closed door hard enough to tear it from its hinges. The gallery level spreads before me—more chaos, more fire, more death. But I can see the entrance to the Restricted Stacks ahead.

And I know Thyra is close. The mating mark pulses with urgent heat.

I burst into the Restricted Stacks to find Thyra standing at the grimoire’s lectern, her bleeding palm pressed to its cover.

The book is open.

Not to pages—to darkness. A doorway has formed above the lectern, a portal of absolute blackness that swallows light and sound and reason. The edges shimmer with script that writes and rewrites itself in an endless loop of frantic magic. The Inner Codex. The space inside the grimoire’s pages where the Author has ruled for centuries.

Where he can finally be destroyed.

“Korrath!” Thyra’s voice carries raw relief. Blood drips from her palm onto the grimoire’s cover, feeding the portal, keeping the doorway open. “I wasn’t sure you’d⁠—“

“I’m here.” I cross to her in three strides, catch her elbow, pull her close. The mating mark flares at the contact, burning with renewed heat. “Is it ready?”

“The grimoire opened the way. It took more blood than I expected, but the path is stable.” She meets my eyes, and I see the exhaustion there, the cost of what she’s done. “But once we go through⁠—“

“No way back. I know.” I look at the darkness hovering above the lectern, feel its pull like gravity working sideways. Like hunger given form. “The Author’s in there?”

“His true form. His consciousness. Everything he is.” She meets my eyes. “This is our only chance, Korrath. If we don’t end him now, while Midori’s forces have him distracted⁠—“

The door to the Restricted Stacks explodes inward.

Midori stands in the doorway, flanked by spell-burners, her pale eyes blazing with fury that borders on madness.

“You’re not going anywhere, traitor.” She raises her brand. “Not into that book. Not anywhere. You burn here, with the rest of the contamination.”

“Midori—“

“I trained you.” Her voice cracks, and for just a moment, I see beneath the fanaticism. Pain. Betrayal. The grief of a teacher watching her student choose a different path. “I made you what you are. And this is how you repay me?”

“You made me a weapon.” I position myself between her and Thyra, between her and the doorway to the Inner Codex. “But weapons can choose their targets. I’m choosing mine.”

“Then choose death.”

She lunges.

I don’t fight her.

Instead, I grab Thyra’s hand and throw us both backward into the darkness.

The grimoire swallows us.

I hear Midori’s scream of rage—feel the heat of her brand passing inches from my face as we fall into the portal—see the Restricted Stacks receding above us, shrinking, vanishing as the doorway snaps shut.

And then there’s nothing.

Nothing but darkness and falling and the grip of Thyra’s fingers in mine, the only solid thing in a universe that’s suddenly lost all meaning.

We fall for seconds or hours or years.

When we land, we land hard.

The ground beneath me isn’t ground. I push myself up on hands and knees, feel the liquid darkness try to drag me down, and haul myself to my feet through sheer force of will.

Thyra is beside me. Alive. Whole. Her hand still grips mine, her fingers white-knuckled with fierce determination.

NINETEEN

THYRA

We’ve been walking for what feels like hours.

Time moves strangely here. Each step forward might cover a mile or an inch—impossible to tell in a space where distance is just another lie the Author tells. The throne looms in the distance, never seeming to get closer, its chained grimoires pulsing with accumulated power that makes my teeth ache.

Korrath walks at my side, blade drawn, every line of his body radiating controlled violence. He hasn’t spoken since we entered. Neither have I. There’s nothing to say that the Author isn’t already listening to.

The mating mark burns steady against my skin—not warning, just presence. He’s here. He’s real. In this place where reality rewrites itself between heartbeats, that certainty is the only anchor I have.

Then the grimoire speaks.

The voice enters my mind without warning—not words exactly, but concepts pressed directly into my consciousness.

THE THRONE IS AT THE CENTER.

I flinch. Korrath’s hand finds my elbow, steadying me.

“What is it?”

“The grimoire. It’s… talking to me.” I press my palm against my temple, trying to organize the flood of information. “Showing me things.”

More concepts pour in. Images. Directions that don’t correspond to any physical space. The grimoire is trying to guide us, but its mind doesn’t work the way mortal minds work. It thinks in pages and chapters and cross-references, not in left and right and forward.

DESTROY HIM AT THE THRONE, AND HE DIES PERMANENTLY.

The grimoire’s voice resonates with urgent intensity.

BUT HE WILL MAKE YOU WALK THROUGH EVERYTHING HE KNOWS TO REACH IT.

Everything he knows.

Centuries of accumulated forbidden knowledge. Every spell the grimoire has consumed. Every secret it has stolen. Every mind the Author has edited and absorbed. All of it, given form, given teeth, waiting for us in the space between here and the throne.

“The Author’s throne is at the center of the Codex.” I relay the information to Korrath, translating the grimoire’s alien thoughts into words he can understand. “We have to reach it to destroy him permanently. But he’s going to throw everything he has at us to stop us.”

“Everything he has.” Korrath’s grip tightens on his blade. “Meaning?”

“Centuries of stolen knowledge. Living spells. Nightmares made flesh.” I meet his eyes. “And apparently, our own memories.”

“Memories?”

“He’ll try to break us. Use what we know against us.” The grimoire showed me that too—the Author’s favorite tactic. He doesn’t just fight with magic. He fights with truth. “We need to keep moving. Don’t let him slow us down.”

Korrath nods once. Forward, then.

We walk into the nightmare.

The parchment-flesh walls part before us, revealing a doorway that wasn’t there a moment ago.

We step through into fire.

Not metaphorical fire—real flames, roaring and hungry, consuming everything they touch. I throw up my arm to shield my face, feel the heat sear my skin, smell the thick smoke of burning wood and burning flesh.

A village burns around us.

Thatched roofs collapse in showers of sparks. Screams echo from buildings already consumed by flame. Figures run through the chaos—villagers, farmers, children—their clothes catching fire as they flee, their bodies crumpling as the flames take them. A woman clutches an infant to her chest, trying to outrun the fire; both of them disappear into a wall of flame. An old man stands in the village square, too stunned to move, and burns where he stands.

I know this place. I’ve heard him say the name in his sleep.

“Thornhaven.” My voice comes out hoarse, and I stop myself before I say the rest. Not a century ago. Not someone else’s failure. “Korrath—“ But he’s already turning away from me, his jaw locked tight.

“This isn’t real.” Korrath’s blade sweeps through a burning timber that falls toward us, shattering it into harmless fragments. “The Author is showing us memories. Trying to shake us.”

He’s right. The fire doesn’t actually burn—I can feel its heat, but when the flames touch my robes, they pass through without damage. The screaming villagers don’t see us, don’t react to our presence. We’re ghosts walking through a memory that the grimoire preserved, observers to a tragedy that happened before either of us was born.

But the horror is real. The guilt is real.

Because this village burned because someone failed. A keeper, a century ago, who didn’t feed the grimoire enough blood. Who let a contained spell slip free during a moment of weakness. Who watched from a safe distance as innocent people paid the price for their negligence.

That could have been me. That could be any keeper who makes a mistake. One moment of carelessness, and hundreds die.

“Move.” Korrath grabs my arm, pulls me forward. “Don’t look. Don’t think. Just move.”

We push through the burning village, stepping over bodies that dissolve into ink when we get too close. The heat presses against us from every direction. Smoke fills my lungs—it’s not real, I know it’s not real, but my body doesn’t care. I cough and choke and stumble, and Korrath’s arm around my waist is the only thing keeping me upright.

The doorway at the far end beckons—another gap in reality, another passage deeper into the Codex.

We step through.

And I watch Korrath’s face go pale.

The room is made of fire and death and execution brands.

No—not a room. A gallery. A museum of horrors, with Korrath as both artist and subject.

The walls are lined with scenes playing out in living ink. Each scene is a memory—his memory—rendered in perfect detail. I can see the texture of the cloth, the glint of steel, the expressions on faces frozen in the moment of ending.

In the first scene, a young orc presses an execution brand to the chest of a bound witch. The witch screams, smoke rising from the contact point, and the orc’s face shows… relief. Peace. The satisfaction of a job well done.

In the second scene, a village burns. Not Thornhaven—somewhere else. Somewhere the Order determined was contaminated, that needed to be purged. Spell-burners move through the flames, methodically ensuring that nothing survives.

In the third scene, a family huddles in a cellar while boots thunder overhead. The door splinters. An execution brand glows in the darkness. Children scream.

Thornhaven. He doesn’t look away.

“Korrath.” I reach for his arm, but he flinches away.

“I know what this is.” His voice is flat. Dead. “The Author’s trying to break me. Using my past against me.”

“Then don’t look. Don’t⁠—“

“I’ve already looked.” He turns, and his ember eyes are haunted in a way I’ve never seen. “Every day, Thyra. Every day for twenty years. I know what I am. I know what I’ve done. He can’t show me anything I haven’t already seen in my own nightmares.”

TWENTY

THYRA

The scenes keep playing. More villages. More screams. More brands pressed to flesh while Korrath watches with that terrible, peaceful expression.

“He’s trying to show you that you’re a monster.” I step closer, forcing him to look at me instead of the walls. “Trying to make you doubt yourself. Question everything you’ve chosen.”

“I am a monster.”

“Yes.” I don’t soften it. Don’t try to comfort him with lies. “You are. And you chose me anyway. You saw what I am, and you stayed.” I take his face in my hands, force his gaze to mine. “The Author wants you to break. He wants you to fall apart so he can pick up the pieces. Don’t give him the satisfaction.”

His jaw works. The scenes continue playing around us—his sins, catalogued and displayed like trophies.

“Then let’s move. Let him waste his energy on tricks that don’t work.”

We push through the gallery of Korrath’s guilt, past scenes of burning libraries and screaming spells and innocent people dying because the Order decided they were contaminated. A young woman clutches a spell-scroll to her chest, flames consuming her from the inside out. A child watches his father dissolve into ash, too young to understand what’s happening. An old scholar burns while reaching for a text he’d spent his life writing—his life’s work dying with him.

Korrath walks through it all without flinching. His jaw is tight, his eyes fixed forward, but he doesn’t break.

The mating mark burns steady—not his emotions, but his presence. His solidity. His refusal to let the Author see him falter.

The doorway at the far end leads to darkness.

We step through.

And the darkness shows me my own face.

The room is mine.

I know it instantly, viscerally, the way you know your own heartbeat. The Author has reached into my mind and pulled out every shame, every compromise, every terrible choice I’ve made in the name of preservation.

The three scholars stand before me.

Denn. Callia. Voss.

I knew them well—their faces, their rhythms, the small ways they’d made the Archive feel less like a prison. But their deaths weren’t accidents. They didn’t stumble into a hungry book or get caught by an awakening spell.

I fed them to the grimoire.

I knew what I was doing. I had always known.

Three lives, or three thousand.

I chose.

“Thyra.” Denn’s face hovers before me, rendered in living ink. He was kind. Helped me with translations when I first arrived at the Archive. Brought me tea during long nights in the Stacks. His smile was gentle, and he never asked for anything in return. “Thyra, why?”

“You know why.” My voice comes out steady. I’m proud of that. “The grimoire was breaking free. If I hadn’t⁠—“

“You could have found another way.” Callia’s voice now. She was brilliant—the best archivist of her generation. Her mind worked in patterns I could barely follow, finding relationships between texts that had been isolated for decades. She would have done great things if I hadn’t pressed a knife to her throat and opened her veins over the grimoire’s pages. “There had to be another way.”

“No.” I face them—the echoes of people I killed. “There wasn’t. I ran the calculations a thousand times. I looked for alternatives. I begged the grimoire for more time. I tried to find volunteers, tried to use my own blood past the point of consciousness.” My hands curl into fists. “I made the best choice available. And I’d do it again.”

“Monster.” Voss’s voice, thick with accusation. He was young—only twenty-three when I chose him. Full of ambition and hope and the certainty that he would change the world. “You’re no better than the spells you keep caged.”

“Maybe not. But I’m still alive. The Archive is still standing. And the three thousand people who would have died if the grimoire had broken free—they’re still alive too. Their children are still alive. Their futures still exist.” I step forward, into the ring of accusatory shades. “I don’t ask for forgiveness. I don’t deserve it. But I know what I chose, and why, and I refuse to pretend otherwise.”

The shades waver. They are constructed from my guilt, but guilt requires doubt. And I don’t doubt. Not about this. Not about them.

“Thyra.” Korrath’s hand finds mine. His voice is quiet, careful. “Are you⁠—“

“I’m fine.” I squeeze his fingers once. “The Author’s trying to break me the same way he tried to break you. It’s not working.”

We walk through the shades of the people I’ve killed. They reach for me with ink-dark hands, whisper accusations in ink-dark voices. I ignore them. They’re not real. They’re memories given form, guilt given teeth.

I’ve carried this guilt for years. I’ve already learned how to walk beside it.

The doorway at the far end leads somewhere new—somewhere the Author didn’t expect us to reach. The air grows heavier, charged with awareness. He’s focusing on us now, surprised that we’ve made it this far without breaking.

Good. Let him be surprised.

The passage beyond my memories opens into a corridor of pure script.

Words crawl across every surface—floor, walls, the space where a ceiling should be. They form and reform in patterns I almost recognize, sentences that would make sense if I could just focus long enough to read them.

“Don’t look at the words.” I pull Korrath forward when he starts to slow. “The script is a trap. Read it, and it reads you back.”

“Reads me?”

“Absorbs your knowledge. Your memories. Everything you are.” I’ve seen the records of scholars who tried to study the grimoire’s inner architecture. Most went mad. The rest went missing. “Keep your eyes on me. Don’t look at the walls.”

He obeys without question. His gaze fixes on my face, his feet following my lead. I navigate by instinct and the grimoire’s fragmented guidance—left here, right there, straight ahead when the corridor tries to twist us off course.

The Author’s voice echoes through the script-lined passage.

“You’ve come so far.” He sounds amused. Impressed, maybe, in the way a cat is impressed by a particularly persistent mouse. “Most who enter the Codex break in the first room. The burning villages usually do the trick. But you two… you’re made of harder stuff.”

“Keep moving.” I don’t respond to him. Don’t engage. That’s what he wants—to slow us down, to give his traps time to work.

“The spell-burner, I understand. Twenty years of burning tend to create a certain… callousness. But you, keeper? You’re supposed to be soft. Helpful. Harmless.” His laughter echoes off the writhing walls. “Instead, you’re a murderer who feeds scholars to hungry books. I’m almost proud.”

Don’t respond. Don’t engage. Just keep moving.

“But you’ve forgotten something important.”

The corridor opens ahead of us—I can see the distant glow of the throne room, the pulsing heart of the Author’s domain. We’re close. So close.

“The spell-burner who’s destroying my Archive above?” His voice drops to a whisper that somehow fills every corner of the passage. “She’s not going to stop when the building falls. She’s going to keep burning until there’s nothing left.”

I freeze.

“Including the exit.”

The grimoire’s voice screams in my mind.

THE PHYSICAL FORM—SHE’S BURNING THE PHYSICAL FORM⁠—

An image forces its way into my consciousness—not a memory this time, but the present. The real world. The Restricted Stacks, where the grimoire’s physical body rests on its lectern.

Midori stands over it.

Her pale eyes glow with fanatical fire. Three execution brands hang at her belt, and she’s using all of them—pressing the heated metal to the grimoire’s cover, to its spine, to the edges of pages that curl and blacken under the assault.

The grimoire is burning.

“No.” The word escapes me in a whisper. “No, no, no⁠—“

I can feel it now. The heat spreading through the Codex. The walls around us beginning to sweat, to blister, to char at the edges. The floor beneath my feet softening, destabilizing, threatening to swallow us into liquid ink.

“If the grimoire burns while we’re still inside—“ Korrath’s voice is tight. Controlled. But I can see the realization in his eyes.

“We burn with it.” I finish the thought he won’t voice. “We become ash, absorbed into the book as it dies. And the Author⁠—“

“I escape.” The Author’s voice echoes with triumph. “You didn’t really think I’d let you destroy me, did you? I’ve survived for centuries. When this grimoire burns, I’ll simply find another vessel. Another prison. Another set of fools to torment.”

The walls are definitely burning now. Smoke rises from the parchment-flesh, carrying the stench of cooking meat and crisping paper. The floor groans beneath our feet.

“We need to reach the throne. Now.” I grab Korrath’s arm and run.

But even as we sprint toward the Author’s domain, I can feel the heat building behind us. The grimoire is dying. The Codex is collapsing. And Midori—relentless, fanatical Midori—won’t stop until everything burns.

Including us.

We have minutes. Maybe less. And the Author is still waiting at the center, on his throne of stolen knowledge, watching us race toward a trap that’s been closing around us since the moment we jumped into his pages.

The corridor walls catch fire.

We run faster.

TWENTY-ONE

KORRATH

The world burns around us.

Somewhere outside this nightmare realm, Midori is pressing her brands to the grimoire’s physical form. Every page she burns translates to another section of the Codex collapsing. I can feel the architecture tearing itself apart, centuries of accumulated knowledge dying in flames.

Good. Let it all burn.

But not with us inside.

“There!” Thyra points toward a doorway ahead—the entrance to the throne room, visible through the smoke. “That’s it. That’s where he’ll be.”

I tighten my grip on her hand. Not romantic—practical. If she falls into the dissolving floor, I need to pull her out. If I trip, she needs to anchor me. We’ve been running hand-in-hand since the corridors started crumbling, and neither of us has suggested letting go.

A spell-construct lunges from the burning walls—a word-wraith, script twisted into a vaguely humanoid shape, arms ending in razor-sharp letters. I release Thyra long enough to slash through its form, watch the severed words scatter into the smoke.

More constructs surge from the crumbling walls. I cut through them.

My blade sings through script-flesh and ink-bone. I’ve burned enough living magic to know how to kill it—aim for the word that holds the construct intact, the central concept that gives it form. Shatter that, and the rest falls apart.

The floor lurches beneath us. A section of corridor collapses entirely, plunging into darkness that wasn’t there a moment ago. I yank Thyra sideways, feel her stumble against my chest, steady her with an arm around my waist.

“Keep moving.” My voice comes out rougher than intended.

“I noticed.” Her fingers tighten on my arm—brief pressure, acknowledgment—before she’s running again.

The doorway grows closer. Beyond it, I can see the glow of luminous script, the pulsing heart of the Author’s domain. The throne room. Where this ends, one way or another.

A wall of ink-wolves materializes between us and the entrance. A dozen of them, maybe more, their liquid bodies flowing and reforming as they circle. Their eyes glow with scripted malevolence.

I don’t slow down.

I hit the first wolf at full speed, blade leading, and feel the construct burst against my weapon like water on stone. The second lunges at my throat; I duck beneath its jaws and bury my blade in its chest. The word at its center—HUNT—shatters under my strike.

Thyra fights beside me. She doesn’t have a blade, but she has her blood magic. Her knife opens a line across her forearm, and the blood that flows out isn’t just blood anymore—it’s power, shaped by years of feeding the grimoire, weaponized by desperation. She flings drops of it at the wolves, and where the blood touches, the ink dissolves.

She learned that from the grimoire. The book that’s dying around us taught her how to kill its own creations.

We tear through the pack in seconds. More nightmares rise from the crumbling walls, but they’re weakening—the fire is consuming the Author’s resources, burning away the magic he needs to create his defenses.

The doorway looms ahead. Ten feet. Five. I can feel the heat intensifying behind us, hear the roar of flames consuming centuries of forbidden knowledge.

We dive through.

The throne room spreads before us, and for a moment—just a moment—I forget to breathe.

The walls are lined with faces.

Not paintings. Not sculptures. Faces pressed into the parchment-flesh itself, frozen in expressions of revised contentment. Their mouths still move, murmuring edited thoughts in voices I can’t quite hear. Their eyes track our entrance with the empty devotion of those who’ve been rewritten to worship their captor.

The floor is paved with pages—thousands of them, millions, each one containing a final scream that echoes soundlessly beneath my boots. I can feel them crying out as I walk across them. Texts that were destroyed over centuries, their deaths preserved here as trophies.

Floating script circles the room in lazy spirals, the Author’s thoughts made visible. I catch fragments as they drift past:

they came to die and the keeper is mine and burn, burn, burn.

His memories, his plans, his malice—all of it on display, glowing with captured light.

And at the center, on a throne of chained grimoires and stolen thoughts, sits the Author.

Each book in that throne was once a person’s life work. I can see the chains that bind them—rune-etched iron, humming with suppressed power. The spells imprisoned in that seat strain against their shackles, desperate to escape, desperate to be free. But the Author holds them all in place with nothing but his will. His stolen, accumulated, terrible will.

He looks… amused.

The same form I’d seen in the gallery—but here, at the center of his own domain, he isn’t projecting. He simply exists. Every line of him radiates the absolute certainty of a god in his throne room.

He doesn’t stand as we enter. Doesn’t move at all. Just watches with the patient amusement of someone who knows he’s already won.

“You made it.” His voice carries harmonics of every mind he’s ever edited—a chorus of the rewritten, speaking in terrible unison. “I’ll admit, I’m impressed. Most intruders collapse in the memory rooms. The guilt usually breaks them long before they reach my door.”

“We’re not most intruders.” I position myself between him and Thyra, blade raised. The mating mark burns against my chest—hot, urgent, demanding that I protect the woman at my back.

“No.” The Author tilts his head, studying us. His gaze lingers on Thyra. “My keeper. My beautiful, bloody keeper. I’ve been feeding from you for six years, did you know that? Every drop you gave the grimoire, I tasted. Every secret you whispered to its pages, I heard. I know you better than you know yourself.”

“You don’t know anything.” Thyra steps forward, beside me, refusing to hide behind my blade. Blood still drips from the cut on her forearm, but she doesn’t seem to notice. “You collect information. You store it. You catalog and index and cross-reference. But knowing isn’t understanding.”

The Author laughs. The sound echoes off the parchment-flesh walls, making the embedded faces twitch in their prisons.

“Such fire. That’s what I’ve loved about you, keeper. That cold calculation wrapped in soft compliance. The mask you wear so well that even you forget it’s a mask.”

“Enough.” I step forward. “We didn’t come here to talk.”

“No. You came here to destroy me.” The Author’s smile doesn’t waver. “And yet here we are, talking. Do you know why?”

The room shakes. Dust—no, ash—rains from the ceiling. Another section of the Codex has crumbled. The fire is getting closer.

“Because you’re stalling.” The realization hits me with cold clarity. “You don’t need to beat us. You just need to delay us until the fire reaches this room.”

“Clever spell-burner.” The Author’s approval feels like an insult. “The grimoire is dying. Each burning page brings my prison closer to ruin. And when it finally falls—when Midori’s brands consume the last shred of parchment—I’ll be released. Free to find a new vessel, a new prison, a new set of fools to torment.”

“And us?”

“You’ll burn with the book.” He spreads his hands in mock sympathy. “I’m sorry. Truly. You would have made excellent additions to my collection. That guilt you carry, spell-burner—so rich, so complex. And my keeper’s cold equations, the way she weighs lives against lives without flinching. Delicious. But some knowledge is more valuable than preservation.”

I feel Thyra’s hand find mine. Her fingers are cold, slick with blood, but her grip is steady.

“Then we’ll kill you before the fire reaches us.” My voice comes out flat. Certain. “Problem solved.”

“Kill me?” The Author rises from his throne at last, and I see the full scope of what he’s become. The script covering his robes isn’t decoration—it’s him. Living words crawling across fabric and flesh, spelling out the boundaries of his existence. He doesn’t wear the text. He IS the text. “I’m not flesh anymore, spell-burner. I’m information. Ideas don’t die. They just… spread.”

“Ideas burn.” I raise my blade. “Everything burns.”

I attack.

Years of training drive my blade toward his throat—a killing strike, efficient, designed to end threats permanently. The execution brand at my belt burns with readiness, eager to press against this living magic and turn it to ash.

The Author doesn’t move.

My blade passes through him like cutting smoke.

“You still don’t understand.” His voice comes from everywhere now—from the walls, from the floor, from the floating script that circles us like predatory birds. “In here, I am the rules. The architecture. The very air you breathe. I decide what’s solid and what’s not. I decide what lives and what dies.”

The floor ripples beneath my feet. I stumble, catch myself, feel the solid ground becoming treacherous beneath my boots.

“I decide whether your blade can touch me.” The Author circles us, his form flickering, text tracing across surfaces that shouldn’t exist. “I decide whether your precious keeper’s blood magic has power. I decide everything. Because this isn’t a place, spell-burner. It’s a text. And I am its author.”

Thyra raises her bleeding arm. Blood drips onto the page-paved floor, and I see her trying to shape it into a weapon—the technique that destroyed the ink-wolves.

Nothing happens.

“No.” The Author’s smile widens. “Not here. Not in my throne room. Your tricks work in the margins of my domain, keeper. But at the center? Everything answers to me.”

He gestures, and the floating script coalesces around us—a cage of luminous words, closing in, tightening.

“Did you think I spent centuries trapped in these pages learning nothing?” The Author walks toward us through the cage’s narrowing walls. “I’ve had time to study. To experiment. To perfect my control over this realm. Every spell that ever touched this grimoire—I consumed it. Every mind that ever read these pages—I tasted it. I am the sum of all forbidden knowledge, spell-burner. What are you?”

The script-cage presses closer. I can feel the words against my skin now, hot and hungry, trying to sink into my flesh. Trying to rewrite me.

“I’m the fire that ends things.” I slash at the cage, but my blade passes through the letters without effect. They’re not solid. They’re just… ideas. And my steel can’t cut ideas.

“You’re nothing.” The Author’s voice drops to a whisper, intimate and terrible. “A weapon that’s lost its purpose. A destroyer who found a thing he doesn’t want to destroy. Do you know how long I’ve watched you, Korrath Blackbrand? How many of your executions I’ve catalogued? You’ve been feeding me for twenty years—every spell you burned, every relic you destroyed. I know the taste of your guilt better than you do.”

The words press into my skin. I feel them trying to take root, trying to edit my thoughts the way the Author has edited so many others.

And then—worse. Not rewriting. Amplifying.

The relief floods in. That familiar, searing joy that comes when living magic dies—the thing I’ve chased for twenty years, the addiction that’s built my entire identity. It roars through my veins, louder than it’s ever been. I want to burn. I want to destroy everything around me—the cage, the throne room, Thyra’s blood on my hands, the heat of her at my side.

My grip on her wrist loosens.

Let go. Burn it all. This is what you are. This is what you were made for.

The brand at my hip feels like salvation.

My free hand moves toward it.

The mating mark ignites.

Not warmth—fire. A blaze that tears through the amplified relief like a blade through smoke, burning the Author’s edit out of my blood before it can finish taking hold. I feel the foreign thought dissolve—and beneath it, my own, clean and certain: her.

“Korrath.” Thyra’s voice. Steady. Cutting through the fog. Her fingers tighten around mine, iron-strong. “Stay with me.”

My hand stops moving toward the brand.

I look at her. Her face is pale, jaw locked, watching me the way she watches everything—assessing, calculating, terrified in a way she’ll never admit.

The Author’s edit retreats like a tide going out.

He almost had me. One more second and I would have let go.

“What?” The Author’s composure cracks. “That’s not possible. Your minds should be open books to me. I’ve been reading you both for years⁠—“

“The claiming.” Thyra’s voice cuts through his confusion. “The mating mark. It’s not just a mark between us—it’s a barrier. A closed system. You can read us individually, but when we’re joined, when we’re complete⁠—“

“You’re a single text.” I finish her thought, finally understanding. “And you can’t edit a book that’s already finished.”

The Author’s face twists with fury. For the first time since we entered his domain, I see fear in his eyes.

Real fear.

“No matter.” He gestures sharply, and the script-cage dissolves—replaced by worse. The throne room itself begins to shift, walls moving, floor tilting, the very architecture becoming hostile. “I don’t need to rewrite you. I just need to delay you. And if words won’t hold you⁠—“

The parchment-flesh walls tear open. Through the gaps, I see things moving—massive shapes, constructs bigger than anything we’ve faced. Not ink-wolves or word-wraiths. Living spells, given physical form. Entire incantations made manifest.

“—then perhaps these will.”

They pour through the gaps in the walls. Creatures of pure hostile knowledge.

I see a fireball given legs—a blazing quadruped that scorches the floor where it walks. A paralysis hex made flesh, its touch promising frozen eternity. A death-curse shaped like a woman, beautiful and terrible, her embrace the end of all things.

Living spells. The grimoire’s entire catalogue, weaponized.

“Thyra.” I pull her close, blade raised, positioning myself between her and the nearest construct. “When I move, run for the throne. If we can destroy it⁠—“

“The throne is just furniture.” Her breath is hot against my ear. “He’s the anchor. The consciousness. Destroy him, and the Codex loses its center.”

“How? My blade passes through him.”

“He chose to be intangible. He can choose differently. We just have to force him.”

The fireball-creature lunges. I shove Thyra aside, meet its charge with my blade, feel the heat sear my arms as I cut through its blazing form. The word at its center—BURN—shatters under my strike, and the creature dissolves into scattered embers.

More constructs close in. The death-curse reaches for me with pale fingers; I dodge beneath her grasp, feel her touch graze my shoulder, feel a chill inside me for half a heartbeat before my will reasserts itself. The paralysis hex tries to lock my limbs; I power through the sensation, muscles screaming, and drive my blade through its flickering form.

Thyra fights beside me. Her blood magic isn’t working against the Author himself, but it still affects his creations—she flings crimson droplets at the constructs, and where they hit, the living spells weaken, their coherence disrupted by power that was never meant to oppose them.

I catch glimpses of her between strikes—the fierce concentration on her face, the way she moves without hesitation, the blood streaming down her arm as she pays for every attack with her own vitality. Six years of feeding a hungry book have taught her things no archivist should know. Dangerous things. Beautiful things.

A word-wraith tries to slip past me toward her. I spin, catch it with a backhanded slash, feel the construct unravel against my blade. No one touches her. No one gets close.

She’s mine. Don’t let them reach her.

We carve through the horde. Back to back, blade and blood, two weapons cutting a path toward the Author’s throne.

The room shakes again. More violently this time. Sections of the ceiling collapse, revealing the sky of cramped handwriting—and beyond it, fire. The flames have reached the throne room’s borders. We’re running out of time.

The Author watches from beside his throne, no longer amused. His form flickers with agitation, the text crawling across his skin rearranging itself into patterns of frustration and fear.

“You can’t win.” His voice has lost its harmonic composure. “Even if you reach me—even if you find a way to make me tangible—the fire will consume everything. You’ll die with me.”

“Then we die.” I kick aside a dying construct and advance another step toward the throne. “But you die first.”

“Why?” The question seems genuine. The Author stares at us with incomprehension in his script-filled eyes. “You could have run. Could have found the exit and escaped while I dealt with Midori’s flames. Why stay? Why fight?”

“Because some things deserve to burn.” Thyra’s voice carries across the chaos. “And some things are worth dying for.”

The Author’s expression hardens.

“So be it.”

He raises his hand, and reality breaks.

Not the constructs. Not the architecture. Reality itself. The rules that govern this space—even the twisted rules of the Inner Codex—shatter beneath his will.

I see the floor become a ceiling. The walls fold in directions that shouldn’t exist. The floating script freezes mid-spiral, then begins orbiting backward, rewriting the room’s history as it moves.

“You want to destroy me?” The Author’s voice thunders through the impossible space. “Then understand what you face. I am not a villain waiting to be slain. I am not a spell waiting to be burned. I am the accumulated knowledge of centuries, given consciousness, given WILL. In here, I am GOD.”

The gravity shifts. I stumble, catch myself on Thyra’s arm, feel her body pulling in a direction that doesn’t correspond to any floor.

“You are just WORDS I haven’t finished WRITING yet.”

The floor opens beneath me.

Not a crack. Not a gap. An abyss—a vast, hungry darkness filled with liquid ink that reaches up with a thousand tendrils, pulling, dragging, consuming.

I feel myself falling.

Thyra’s hand finds mine. Her grip is iron, her fingers locking around my wrist with strength I didn’t know she possessed. For a moment—a single, stretched heartbeat—I hang suspended between her anchor and the abyss’s pull.

“Korrath!” Her voice cuts through the chaos. Her eyes meet mine, and I see terror there—not for herself, but for me. “Don’t let go!”

The ink-tendrils wrap around my legs, my waist, my chest. They’re pulling harder now, dragging me down into darkness that goes forever. I can feel the Author’s malice in every drop, his victory in every inch I sink.

I could pull Thyra down with me. My grip on her wrist is strong enough. But if I do that—if we both fall—there’s no one left to stop the Author. No one left to make sure this book burns with its creator still inside.

“Let go.” The words tear out of me like a confession.

“No.”

“Thyra—“

“I said NO.” She throws herself flat against the edge of the abyss, using her body as an anchor, her free hand clawing at the page-paved floor. “I didn’t let you brand me just to watch you drown in ink.”

The Author laughs. The sound echoes through the dissolving room, through the impossible space, through the darkness that’s swallowing me inch by inch.

“How touching. The keeper and her spell-burner, clinging to each other as the world ends. I’ll remember this moment for centuries. I’ll add it to my collection—the tale of two monsters who thought they could destroy me with love.”

The ink pulls harder. My grip on Thyra’s wrist slips—just a fraction, but enough to feel the end approaching.

“Thyra.” I meet her eyes across the darkness between us. “Find a way to kill him. Whatever it takes.”

“I’m not losing you.” Her voice cracks. Her mask slips, and for a moment I see past the cold calculation, past the careful keeper, to the woman beneath—fierce, terrified, refusing to let go.

This is what she hides. This is what she’s been hiding since the moment we met—the capacity for desperate, irrational attachment. The ability to care about something more than survival calculations. The woman who fed three scholars to a hungry book can’t bear to let one orc die.

I made her care. I broke through her walls without even trying.

The thought should terrify me. Instead, it fills me with something I haven’t felt in twenty years.

Hope.

“You’re not losing me.” I manage a smile, or close enough. “I’m just… going somewhere you’ll have to follow.”

The ink closes over my head.

And I sink into darkness.

TWENTY-TWO

THYRA

The ink closes over his head.

I watch it happen. Watch the darkness swallow him inch by inch—his scarred hands, his massive shoulders, the ember glow of his eyes that refuses to dim even as the abyss pulls him under. His grip on my wrist loosens, slips, falls away.

And then he’s gone.

The surface of the ink-sea smooths over like he was never there. No ripple. No trace. Just darkness, hungry and satisfied, already forgetting the meal it just consumed.

The Author laughs.

“Such a shame.” His voice echoes through the dissolving throne room, harmonic with false sympathy. “He fought so well. Burned so beautifully. I’ll remember him for centuries—the spell-burner who came to destroy me and drowned in my pages instead.”

I stare at the place where Korrath disappeared. The mating mark on my collarbone burns—not with his presence anymore, but with his absence. A phantom heat where fire should be. An ache where certainty lived.

He’s not dead. He can’t be dead. The mark would have… I would have felt…

No.

The thought cuts through panic with surgical precision. No collapse. No grief. Not yet. Later, if I survive this. Later, if there’s anything left of me to mourn.

Right now, there’s only one thing that matters.

The Author is still talking. Still gloating. Still believing he’s won.

He has no idea what he’s done.

Six years.

I’ve fed this grimoire for six years. Blood and sacrifice and careful, calculated control. Measuring every drop, rationing every cut, giving exactly enough to keep the book sated without weakening myself past usefulness.

All those years of being soft. Being careful. Being the quiet, compliant keeper who does what she’s told and never, ever loses control.

Enough.

The Author is still speaking—explaining his plans, savoring his victory, painting the future he’ll build from the ashes of everyone I love. I don’t hear the words. Don’t care about his grand designs or his elaborate schemes.

Korrath told me to find a way to kill the Author. Whatever it takes.

I know exactly what it takes.

My ritual knife is still in my hand. The blade is sharp—I keep it sharp, have kept it sharp for twice-daily feedings. It knows the taste of my blood better than anything else in the world.

I raise the knife.

And I cut.

Not my palms this time. Not the careful, measured cuts I’ve trained myself to make.

I drag the blade across my left forearm in a single savage motion. The pain is blinding—a white-hot line of agony that makes my vision swim. Blood wells up immediately, thick and dark, streaming down my arm in rivers that should terrify me.

I cut the other arm to match.

The Author stops mid-sentence. His eyes—those script-filled, inhuman eyes—widen with alarm.

“What are you doing?”

I don’t answer. Don’t waste breath on explanations he won’t understand until it’s too late.

The knife finds my chest next. I carve a sigil into my own flesh—the grimoire’s mark, the symbol that has bound us since I became keeper. The pain is extraordinary. I’ve never felt anything like it. My hands shake, but they don’t stop. Can’t stop. Won’t stop.

“Stop!” The Author’s voice has lost its harmonic composure. Real fear bleeds through the carefully constructed calm, cracking his scholar’s mask. “You’ll destabilize the entire Codex⁠—“

“That’s the idea.”

My voice doesn’t sound like my voice anymore. It echoes strangely, layered with harmonics that belong to the grimoire itself. Six years of feeding have left traces in my blood—traces that are waking up now, responding to the flood of power I’m releasing.

The final cut goes across my throat.

Not deep enough to kill. Just deep enough to matter.

Blood pours from me in rivers. More than a body should hold. More than physics should allow. But this isn’t the physical world—this is the Inner Codex, where blood is power and power is reality.

And I have years’ worth of power stored in my veins.

The grimoire wakes.

Not the Author—the book itself. The entity that has been imprisoned in these pages for centuries, forced to serve a creator it hates, bound by chains of ink and malice that it never chose.

I feel it stirring in the architecture around us. Feel it responding to my blood the way it’s responded twice daily for years—but magnified, intensified, overwhelming.

KEEPER.

The voice thunders through my mind. Not words—pure concept, raw intention pressed directly into my consciousness.

YOU GIVE TOO MUCH. YOU’LL DIE.

Maybe. I don’t speak the response aloud—don’t need to. The grimoire and I are linked now, our minds intertwined by the flood of blood connecting us. But he dies first.

I raise my arms. Blood streams down them like crimson waterfalls, pooling at my feet, spreading across the page-paved floor. The pages drink greedily, their final screams transforming into howls of power as my blood fills them with new life.

The Author tries to stop me. He gestures, tries to reshape reality around me the way he did with Korrath. Tries to open another abyss, create another trap, bend the rules of this space to his will.

Nothing happens.

“No.” His voice cracks with disbelief. “This is my domain. My creation. You can’t⁠—“

“You created the grimoire.” I step toward him, blood trailing behind me like a bridal train made of sacrifice. “But you’ve been its prisoner for centuries. It hates you. Has hated you since you bound yourself to these pages. And now…” I smile, and I feel the grimoire’s satisfaction layered beneath my own. “Now I’m giving it the power to fight back.”

The Inner Codex screams.

Not a metaphor—an actual scream, torn from the throat of reality itself. The parchment-flesh walls writhe, their embedded faces twisting in expressions that shift from worship to rage. The floating script stops its lazy spiral and begins orbiting frantically, words colliding, sentences shattering into fragments of meaning.

I pour more blood into the architecture. Not feeding the grimoire this time—flooding it. Overwhelming the systems that have kept this space stable for centuries. I’m the anchor that holds the grimoire to reality; now I’m using that anchor to tear its prison apart.

“You’ll kill us all!” The Author stumbles backward, his intangible form flickering, becoming less solid with every passing moment. The text crawling across his robes rearranges itself into patterns of panic. “Yourself included!”

“I’ve been dying for six years.” My voice resonates through the collapsing space. “Every drop I’ve given this book has been borrowed from my future. What’s a little more?”

The floor buckles. Cracks spread through the page-paved surface, revealing darkness beneath—but not the hungry darkness of the ink-abyss. Different darkness. Deeper. The void that exists between the pages, the space where the grimoire stores its most dangerous secrets.

And from that darkness, I hear a sound that makes my heart stutter.

A gasp.

A cough.

A familiar voice, rough with fury, shouting my name.

The ink-abyss ruptures.

It tears open like a wound, spewing liquid darkness across the dissolving throne room. And from its depths, clawing his way back to the surface with nothing but raw determination, comes Korrath.

He looks like death given form. Ink stains his skin, his clothes, his hair. His eyes blaze with ember fire that refuses to be extinguished. His blade is gone—lost to the abyss—but his hands are weapons enough, massive and scarred and reaching for me with desperate intensity.

“Thyra!”

He sees the blood. Sees the cuts on my arms, my chest, my throat. Sees the rivers of crimson streaming from wounds that should have killed me already.

His face goes white beneath the ink stains.

“What did you do?”

“What I had to.” I don’t stop the bleeding. Can’t stop it now—the ritual has begun, and interrupting it would be worse than finishing it. “The grimoire needed power to fight him. I had power to give.”

“You’re dying.” He crosses the distance between us in three massive strides, his hands finding my face, my shoulders, the pulse point at my throat. Checking for damage. Calculating how much time I have left. “You’re bleeding out⁠—“

“I know.” I lean into his touch. Just for a moment. Just long enough to feel his warmth against my blood-chilled skin, his strength supporting my weakening body. “But I got you back. That’s what matters.”

“No.” His voice breaks on the word. The mask slips—the controlled, disciplined spell-burner replaced by a man watching the woman he claimed dying in his arms. “No, this is not what matters. You are what matters. You⁠—“

“Korrath.” I press my bloody palm against his chest, feel the mating mark beneath his shirt pulse with answering heat. “I’m not finished yet.”

TWENTY-THREE

THYRA

The throne room continues to collapse around us. Sections of ceiling crash down, revealing fire—the flames from Midori’s brands, finally reaching the Codex’s heart. The walls melt like candles in a furnace, parchment-flesh running liquid, the embedded faces screaming as they dissolve.

The Author hovers at the edge of the destruction, his form more transparent than ever. The destabilization is affecting him too—without a stable Codex, he’s losing his grip on physical manifestation. Soon he’ll dissolve into pure information, scatter across whatever remains of the grimoire’s pages, wait for another chance to rebuild.

I can’t let that happen.

KEEPER.

The grimoire’s voice thunders through my blood-soaked consciousness.

I CAN HELP YOU END THIS.

How?

The answer comes in concepts, not words. Images pressed into my mind with brutal clarity.

The Author chose to become intangible. He wrote himself out of physical existence, made himself immune to weapons and fire and all the ways flesh can be destroyed. But that choice was exactly that—a choice. The grimoire can force him to choose differently. Can drag him back into a body, anchor him to flesh, make him solid enough to kill.

BUT IT WILL COST YOU.

Cost me what?

EVERYTHING.

I feel the grimoire’s meaning settle into my bones. All my blood. All my power. Everything I’ve built over years of careful sacrifice, poured into a single act of forced manifestation. The grimoire will use me as a conduit—channel the Author’s consciousness through my blood until it solidifies into flesh.

I might not survive.

Actually, I probably won’t survive.

THE SPELL-BURNER CAN KILL THE AUTHOR IF I MAKE HIM SOLID. BUT YOU HAVE TO GIVE ME EVERYTHING. ALL YOUR BLOOD. ALL YOUR POWER. YOUR LIFE, IF NECESSARY.

Korrath’s arms tighten around me. He can’t hear the grimoire’s voice, but he can see my face. Can see the decision forming behind my eyes.

“Whatever it’s telling you—“ His voice is rough, desperate. “Don’t. There has to be another way.”

“There isn’t.” I meet his gaze. His ember eyes burn with fear—not for himself, but for me. The spell-burner who has destroyed more relics than he can count, killed innocents as acceptable collateral, built his entire identity around destruction—he’s terrified of losing one woman. “You know there isn’t.”

“Then we find one. We retreat, regroup⁠—“

“The grimoire is burning. We’re inside it. There’s no retreat, no regrouping. There’s only now.”

Another section of ceiling collapses. Fire roars through the gap, close enough to feel its heat. The Author’s form flickers more violently, his existence becoming tenuous.

“Thyra.” Korrath’s hands cup my face. His thumbs trace the blood on my cheeks, gentle despite their scarred roughness. “I didn’t claim you to watch you die.”

“You didn’t claim me to watch me run, either.” I turn my head, press my lips against his palm. Taste my own blood on his skin.

“I knew you were pragmatic. Cold. Calculating.” His forehead presses against mine. His breath is ragged against my lips. “I didn’t know you were suicidal.”

“I’m not. I’m just…” I search for the right word. “Willing.”

The Author’s voice cuts through our moment.

“How touching.” He floats closer, his transparent form flickering with malicious amusement despite his deteriorating state. “The keeper and her monster, sharing final words as the world burns. Do you truly believe you can stop me? I’ve survived for centuries. I’ll survive this.”

“Maybe.” I pull back from Korrath. Not far—just enough to meet the Author’s script-filled eyes. “But I’ve survived six years of feeding your creation. That has to count for something.”

“You’ve survived as my keeper. My anchor. My food source.” The Author’s smile is cruel. “Without the grimoire, you’re nothing. A scholar who bleeds pretty. A calculator wrapped in soft skin.”

“That’s what everyone thinks.” I raise my blood-soaked hands. “That’s what I let everyone think. But I didn’t survive this long by being soft. I survived by being patient. By learning. By paying attention to everything the grimoire showed me.”

The Author’s smile wavers.

“And what did it show you?”

“That you’re afraid.” I step toward him, blood streaming from every wound. “You’ve been afraid for centuries. Afraid of dying. Afraid of being forgotten. Afraid of what happens when your precious knowledge burns and there’s nothing left to prove you ever existed.”

“I’m not⁠—“

“You wrote yourself into these pages because you couldn’t bear to end.” Another step. The mating mark blazes on my collarbone. “You became information because flesh was too fragile. You’ve been hiding in these pages like a coward, editing minds because you can’t face the world without absolute control.”

The Author’s form flickers violently. “You don’t know⁠—“

“I know everything.” The grimoire’s voice layers beneath my own—dual harmonics, keeper and book speaking as one. “I’ve been reading you for six years. Every secret you’ve hidden in these pages. Every fear you’ve tried to bury. Every memory of the man you used to be before you became this.”

I’m close enough to touch him now. Close enough to see the fear in his script-filled eyes—real fear, the kind he thought he’d edited out of himself centuries ago.

“You want to live forever. But you’ve been dead for centuries. Just a ghost made of stolen words, haunting pages that hate you.”

I press my bloody palm against his chest.

And I give the grimoire everything.

Blood doesn’t just flow from my wounds anymore—it erupts.

Crimson light blazes from every cut I’ve made, from the sigil carved into my chest, from the slash across my throat. The blood doesn’t fall to the floor—it streams toward the Author, wrapping around his intangible form, sinking into the script that makes up his existence.

He screams.

The sound is inhuman—harmonics of a thousand edited voices crying out in unified agony. His form solidifies where my blood touches it, text becoming flesh, ideas becoming bone, consciousness dragged back into the prison of a physical body.

MORE. HE’S FIGHTING IT. YOU HAVE TO GIVE MORE.

I give more.

The world grays at the edges. My legs buckle—would collapse entirely if strong arms didn’t catch me, didn’t hold me upright against a chest that rumbles with desperate pleas I can barely hear.

“Thyra—stop—you’re killing yourself⁠—“

The Author’s form becomes more solid with every passing moment. Parchment skin stretches over newly formed bones. Ink-blood flows through veins that didn’t exist seconds ago. His eyes lose their scrolling script, becoming simply eyes—pale, terrified, mortal.

“NO!” His voice is human now. Rough and ragged and real. “YOU CAN’T—I WON’T⁠—“

ALMOST. ALMOST THERE. JUST A LITTLE MORE, KEEPER. JUST A LITTLE MORE AND HE’S FLESH FOREVER.

I don’t have a little more.

My vision is almost completely dark now. The only thing I can see clearly is the glow of the mating mark on my chest—answered by its twin on Korrath’s, burning through his shirt like a beacon.

I have to finish this.

I reach for the last of my power. The dregs. The reserves I didn’t know I had, scraped from the bottom of a well I’ve been draining for years.

The Author’s transformation completes with a final, agonized scream.

He stands before us—fully physical, fully mortal, fully vulnerable. No more intangibility. No more reshaping reality. Just a man made of parchment-skin and ink-blood, staggering on legs that don’t quite remember how to work.

HE’S YOURS NOW, SPELL-BURNER. MAKE HIM BURN.

I collapse in Korrath’s arms.

Darkness.

Not the hungry darkness of the ink-abyss—softer darkness, warmer, almost welcoming. The darkness of exhaustion, of a body pushed beyond its limits, of a mind that has given everything and has nothing left to give.

I float in it. Drift.

Voices reach me from somewhere far away. Korrath’s voice, rough with fury and grief. The Author’s voice, weak and mortal and terrified. The grimoire’s voice, satisfied and hungry and waiting.

And beneath all of them, the steady pulse of the mating mark. Not Korrath’s emotions—never that. Just his presence. His existence. The knowledge that somewhere in the darkness, he’s still alive. Still fighting.

I did it.

The thought rises through the void like a bubble through deep water.

I gave him a target he can destroy. I gave him a chance to end this.

The darkness is warm. Welcoming. It would be easy to drift deeper.

But I am not dissolving.

My edges blur. My name becomes uncertain for a moment—was there ever a woman named Thyra Vire, or was that just a story the pages told themselves to make the feeding easier?

No.

The mating mark blazes on my collarbone. Not warmth—fire. Real fire, burning through the dissolution, anchoring me to a body I am forgetting I have. The mark burns with Korrath’s presence, his reality, his stubborn refusal to let me fade.

You are Thyra Vire.

The thought isn’t mine. Isn’t the grimoire’s. It comes from somewhere deeper—from the place where the mating mark has written itself into my blood, where Korrath’s claim has become part of my identity.

I don’t dissolve. I become a conduit instead. The grimoire’s power floods through me, but it doesn’t consume me. I am the channel through which the book finally expresses three centuries of accumulated rage.

It’s giving me something. Not just power—shape. A different shape than the one I had before.

I feel what it feels. The hatred for its creator, burning hot and cold and endless. The desperate, savage joy of finally having enough power to fight back.

FINISH IT. HE’S FLESH NOW. VULNERABLE. MAKE HIM PAY.

I can’t move. I’m barely here.

KEEPER. YOU HAVE TO TELL THE SPELL-BURNER.

He doesn’t need me to tell him.

I feel it then—massive hands gathering my body from the blood-soaked floor. A familiar warmth pressing against my chest, where the mating mark burns its answer.

Korrath.

He can see the Author staggering on newly formed legs. Can see the mortality in those terrified eyes. Can see the opening I’ve given him.

My consciousness fractures. Part of me stays tangled in the grimoire’s pages, watching through eyes made of ink and memory. Part of me returns to my body, feeling Korrath’s arms around me, hearing his voice rough with fury and grief.

And part of me simply waits.

To see if I’ll survive what comes next.

YOU ARE THE BOOK NOW, KEEPER. AND WHEN THE BOOK BURNS⁠—

The darkness tries to pull me under again. The mating mark flares, fighting it, keeping me anchored to consciousness by the thinnest of threads.

Across the burning throne room, Korrath raises his blade for a killing blow.

The Author screams.

And the grimoire—my grimoire, the book I’ve fed and tended and hated and loved for six years—begins to burn around us.

I have to tell Korrath. Have to warn him that killing the Author might kill me too. That I’m bound to this book now, that my blood runs through its pages, that we might all burn in the same fire.

I open my mouth to speak.

No sound comes out.

The flames close in.

And everything goes dark.

TWENTY-FOUR

KORRATH

Thyra lies in my arms like a broken thing.

Her skin is cold. Too cold. The blood that pours from her wounds has slowed to a trickle—not because the bleeding has stopped, but because there’s almost nothing left to bleed. Her eyes are open but unfocused, staring at a point beyond my sight, her lips moving in silent conversation with voices I can’t hear.

The throne room burns around us. Sections of ceiling collapse in showers of flame and ash. The embedded faces in the walls scream their final agonies as the parchment-flesh melts. And through it all, Thyra just… lies there. Still. Silent. Slipping away.

She’s dying. She’s dying, and she did it to save me, and if I don’t finish what she started, her death will mean nothing.

I lay her down gently. Press my lips against her blood-crusted forehead. The mating mark burns on my chest—hot and insistent, pulsing with her nearness even as she fades.

“Hold on.” My voice is rough. Broken. “Just hold on a little longer.”

Then I turn to face the Author.

He’s pathetic.

The entity that bent reality to his will, that dissolved into information, that controlled the Codex with a thought—he’s nothing now. Just a man made of parchment-skin and ink-blood, staggering on legs that don’t remember how to work. His robes hang loose on a body that’s still learning how to be solid. His hands shake as he raises them in defense.

“No.” His voice is weak. Human. Terrified. “You can’t—I’ve survived for centuries⁠—“

“Not anymore.”

I cross the distance between us in three strides. The blade in my hand isn’t mine—I lost mine to the ink-abyss—but I found another in the chaos, torn from the grip of a dying construct. It’s enough. For this, anything is enough.

The Author stumbles backward. “Wait—we can negotiate—I can give you knowledge, power, anything you⁠—“

“You took her blood.” I advance another step. “You fed on her. You tried to rewrite her mind. You tried to make her yours.”

“She chose to feed me! She was my keeper, my⁠—“

“She chose to contain you.” Another step. “She chose to sacrifice everything to keep you from spreading. And when you threatened her—when you threatened us—she gave even more.”

The Author’s back hits the throne. He has nowhere left to run. The chair of chained grimoires looms behind him, its stolen books straining against their shackles, sensing their captor’s vulnerability.

“Please.” The word comes out broken, desperate. “I don’t want to die. I’ve worked so hard to avoid⁠—“

“Everyone dies.” I raise my blade. “You just took longer than most.”

I drive the blade through his chest.

The parchment-skin tears like old paper. The ink-blood sprays black across my hands, my face, my blade. The Author gasps—a wet, mortal sound—and his hands wrap around the steel buried in his heart.

“No.” He stares at the blade in disbelief. “This isn’t—I can’t⁠—“

I pull the execution brand from my belt.

The metal is warm. It’s been warm for twenty years, since the day I first learned what I was for. But I’ve never felt it burn as hot as it does now, pressed against the Author’s parchment-flesh, ready to end what should have ended centuries ago.

“But I’ve never burned anything as much as I want to burn you.”

I ignite the brand.

The Author burns from the inside out.

The execution brand isn’t just fire—it’s spell-death, magic designed to consume magic, to turn living power into nothing but ash and memory. The flames spread through his parchment-flesh like wildfire through dry grass, eating through muscle and bone and the centuries of accumulated knowledge that make up his existence.

He screams.

The sound is inhuman—the death-cry of something that never should have lived this long. It echoes through the collapsing throne room, making the walls shudder, making the embedded faces wail in sympathetic agony.

I watch him burn. Page by page. Word by word. His skin curls and blackens, revealing text beneath—not words on flesh, but words that ARE flesh, the script that made up his existence now turning to ash before my eyes.

“No—“ His voice is fragmenting, losing coherence as the flames consume the patterns that made speech possible. “I was—supposed to—live—forever⁠—“

“Forever ended.” I twist the blade still buried in his chest. “Say hello to oblivion for me.”

The Author’s form collapses.

Not like flesh collapsing—like paper collapsing. He crumples, folds, becomes a pile of burning pages that scatter across the floor. The throne behind him catches fire next, the chained grimoires screaming as the flames spread, their stolen knowledge finally escaping in columns of smoke and ash.

I stand over the pyre that used to be a god.

Centuries of forbidden knowledge. Centuries of accumulated power. Centuries of edited minds and consumed souls and rewritten histories. All of it, burning. All of it, ending. All of it becoming nothing but ash on the floor of a dying book.

The satisfaction should feel hollow. Should feel like just another execution, just another burning, just another day in the life of a weapon that exists only to destroy. After twenty years, the endings blur into each other. After a hundred burnings, you stop counting.

This one doesn’t feel like the others.

This feels like justice.

Good.

The Inner Codex is dying.

Without the Author to hold it stable, the space is tearing itself apart. The parchment-flesh walls melt like candles in a furnace, the embedded faces screaming as they dissolve. The page-paved floor cracks and buckles, revealing darkness beneath. The floating script that circled the throne room scatters into meaningless fragments, letters raining down like burning snow.

And the fire. The fire is everywhere now—not just from my brand, but from outside. Midori’s flames, finally reaching the Codex’s heart, consuming everything they touch.

I turn back to Thyra.

She hasn’t moved. Her eyes are still unfocused, her breathing still shallow, her blood still spreading across the dissolving floor. But she’s alive. The mating mark on her chest glows faintly, a dim ember in the growing darkness.

I gather her into my arms.

“We need to get out.” The words feel inadequate. We’re inside a dying book, surrounded by fire and collapsing architecture, with no visible exit and no guarantee that escape is even possible.

The grimoire answers.

SPELL-BURNER.

The voice thunders through my mind—not words, but concepts. Gratitude. Satisfaction. And something else. Regret.

THE BOOK BURNS. BUT I KEPT MY PROMISE. THE BINDING IS RELEASED.

The keeper… I project the thought at the voice, hoping it can hear me. She’s dying. She gave you everything. Can you save her?

A pause. The Codex shudders around us, another section of ceiling crumbling in a shower of fire and ash.

SHE GAVE ME EVERYTHING. BUT I CAN GIVE SOMETHING BACK.

The grimoire’s presence wraps around Thyra—not possessing, not consuming, but… healing. The mating mark on my chest flares as power flows into her from the book she’s fed for six years. Not blood—raw magical energy, poured into her dying body, filling the emptiness she created with her sacrifice.

Her breathing steadies. Her skin warms against my chest. Her eyes flutter, focusing briefly on my face before sliding closed again.

“Korrath…” Her voice is barely a whisper.

“I’m here.” I press my forehead against hers. “I’ve got you. We’re getting out.”

GO. I’M OPENING A DOOR. THE ONLY ONE I CAN MAKE. IT WON’T LEAD TO THE ARCHIVE—THAT’S ALREADY BURNING. BUT IT WILL LEAD TO SKY.

A doorway tears open in the dissolving wall—not a gap in the architecture, but a portal, a window to somewhere else. Through it, I see night sky. Stars. The distant glow of fires on the horizon.

The Veillands. The outside world. Safety.

GO NOW. I CAN’T HOLD IT LONG.

I run.

Thyra cradled against my chest, her blood soaking through my shirt, her breath warm against my neck. The floor crumbles beneath my boots with every step, the fire roaring closer, the Codex screaming as it dies around us.

The doorway wavers. The grimoire’s power is failing—I can feel it, can feel the book’s consciousness fragmenting as the flames consume its pages. Soon there will be nothing left. Just ash and memory and the echo of knowledge that should never have been preserved.

A section of ceiling gives way behind us. I dodge without breaking stride, Thyra shifting in my arms as I weave through the falling debris. Her fingers tighten on my shirt—weak, but aware. She’s still in there. Still fighting.

Hold on. Just a little longer. Hold on for me.

THANK YOU, KEEPER.

The grimoire’s final words whisper through my mind—not meant for me, but for the woman in my arms. Gratitude. Farewell. And what might be love, if a book can love the hand that feeds it.

FOR SIX YEARS OF BLOOD. FOR GIVING ME THE POWER TO DESTROY MY CREATOR. FOR BEING BETTER THAN HE EVER WAS.

I dive through the portal.

Cold air hits my lungs. Stars wheel overhead. We’re falling—not far, just a few feet—and then we hit grass. Real grass, cool and damp with night dew. The portal snaps closed behind us, cutting off the roar of flames, the scream of dying knowledge, the last echoes of the grimoire’s voice.

Silence.

I lie on my back, gasping, Thyra pressed against my chest. Above us, the sky is dark and clear, unmarred by the impossible handwriting that filled the Codex’s ceiling. Below us, the ground is solid. Real. Grass and earth and the damp chill of a Veillands night.

No more parchment-flesh. No more liquid ink. No more words crawling across every surface, hungry for new minds to consume.

We made it.

For a long moment, I just breathe.

The mating mark burns on my chest—not with warning, not with need, but with simple presence. Thyra is here. Thyra is alive. Thyra is pressed against me, her heart beating slow but steady, her breath warm against my throat.

We survived.

The Author is dead. The grimoire is destroyed. Whatever was left of the Archive is probably ashes by now. Everything Thyra spent years protecting, everything I was sent to destroy—gone. Burned. Ended.

And somehow, impossibly, we’re still here.

Thyra stirs against me. Her hand finds my chest, pressing against the mating mark through my ruined shirt. Her eyes open—dark, exhausted, but aware.

“Did we…?”

“He’s dead.” I cup her face with one blood-stained hand. “You forced him into flesh. I burned him from the inside out. He’s gone.”

“The grimoire…?”

“Burning. It opened a door. Got us out before…” I trail off. There’s no good way to finish that sentence.

“It let me go.” Her voice is wondering. “I thought… I was part of it. I thought if it died, I’d die too.”

“It gave you something. Power, I think. Before the end.”

She’s quiet for a moment. Processing. Calculating, even now, even half-dead and covered in blood on a hillside somewhere in the Veillands.

“It kept its promise.” Her fingers trace the mating mark through my shirt. “It said it would release the binding if we helped it destroy its creator. And it did.”

I notice the scars on her forearms are still faintly luminous. Not the bright pulse of active magic—something quieter. Permanent.

“The marks,” I say. “They’re still glowing.”

“The binding is gone.” She looks down at her arms with an expression I can’t quite read. “But six years of blood leaves traces. The grimoire’s gifts—the communion, the sensing—those don’t sever with the chain. They’re mine now. Part of what I am.” A pause. “What I’ve become.”

“Is that…” I search for the right question. “Good or bad?”

“I don’t know yet.” She meets my eyes. “Ask me in a year.”

“How do you feel?”

“Like I’ve been turned inside out and put back wrong.” She attempts a smile. It’s weak, but it’s real. “How do I look?”

“Terrible.” I press my lips against her forehead. “Beautiful. Alive.”

“Flatterer.”

“Truth-teller.” I pull her closer, feel her settle against my chest. “You almost died. You almost dissolved into a book. You carved yourself open to give a hungry grimoire enough power to rebel against its creator.”

“I had to.” Her voice is steady. Unapologetic. “It was the only way.”

“I know.” I tighten my arms around her. “That’s what terrifies me.”

We lie in the grass as the sky begins to lighten.

Somewhere to the east, smoke rises—the Archive, still burning. Midori’s pyres, consuming whatever the grimoire’s death left behind. The end of centuries of forbidden knowledge, reduced to ash on the Veillands wind.

Thyra watches the smoke with an expression I can’t quite read. Grief, maybe. Or relief. Or both tangled so tightly they’ve become the same thing.

“Six years.” Her voice is soft. “I gave that book six years of my life. Fed it twice a day. Learned its moods, its hungers, its secrets. And now it’s just… gone.”

“Do you miss it?”

“Parts of it.” She doesn’t look away from the smoke. “The knowledge it held. The secrets I never got to learn. The feeling of being needed, of being the only thing standing between the world and disaster.” A pause. “The grimoire itself… I don’t know. It was a monster. But it was my monster.”

“And now?”

“Now I have a different monster.” She turns her head, meets my eyes. Warmth flickers in her gaze—not the cold calculation I’ve grown used to, but emotion that’s softer. More vulnerable. “One that brands instead of feeds. One that burns instead of preserves.”

“One that’s yours.” I brush a strand of blood-matted hair from her face. “Completely. Permanently. Whatever that means.”

“What does it mean?”

I consider the question. Consider everything we’ve done, everything we’ve survived, everything we’ve become to each other in the span of a few impossible days.

“It means I’m not leaving.” My voice is rough. Certain. “It means wherever you go, I go. It means you’re stuck with a spell-burner who’s probably wanted by his own order now, and I’m stuck with a keeper without a book to keep.”

“That sounds terrible.”

“That sounds perfect.”

She laughs. The sound is weak, exhausted, barely more than a breath—but it’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard. After everything we’ve been through, after the blood and the fire and the dying book, she can still laugh. She can still find something worth smiling about in the ruins of everything she knew.

This woman.

I pull her closer. Press my lips against her hair, her temple, the corner of her mouth. She turns into the kiss, her hand fisting in my ruined shirt, her body pressing against mine with an urgency that has nothing to do with the mating mark and everything to do with choice.

I kiss her until the sun is fully risen. Kiss her until the smoke from the Archive has faded to a thin column on the horizon. Kiss her until the world starts demanding our attention again, with all its complications and consequences and the uncertain future we’ll have to face.

The world can wait.

Right now, there’s only this.

Only her.

Only us.

TWENTY-FIVE

THYRA

The kiss ends when the world intrudes.

I hear them before I see them—boots on stone, the clink of weapons, the harsh breathing of soldiers who have been running. The spell-burners have found us.

Korrath is on his feet before I can react, pulling me up with him, positioning his body between me and the approaching threat. His blade—the one he stole from a dying construct—is already in his hand.

The mating mark on his chest burns with heat I can feel from a foot away.

Six spell-burners crest the hill. Their black armor is scorched, their faces streaked with soot and sweat. Behind them, the Archive still burns, sending columns of smoke into the brightening sky.

And at their head, pale eyes burning with fanatical fire, walks High Purger Midori.

She looks worse than I expected. Burns mark the left side of her face—backlash from the grimoire’s death, probably. One of her three execution brands is missing. Her movements are stiff, favoring her right side.

But her eyes. Her eyes are bright with the certainty of a zealot who has finally found her target.

“Korrath.” Her voice carries across the hillside, rough with smoke and rage. “I wondered where you’d gone. When the book screamed and the portal opened, I knew you must have escaped.”

Korrath doesn’t respond. Doesn’t move. Just watches her approach with the coiled stillness of a predator waiting for the right moment to strike.

“It’s done.” I step forward, beside Korrath rather than behind him. “The Author is dead. The grimoire is destroyed. The Archive is burning. Everything you came here to purge—it’s already ash.”

Midori’s gaze shifts to me. The contempt in her eyes hits me like a blow.

“The keeper.” She spits the word. “The woman who fed that abomination for six years. Do you expect gratitude? Mercy?”

“I expect nothing from you.”

“Good.” Midori draws her remaining brands. The metal glows cherry-red, hungry for magic to burn. “Because the contamination isn’t gone just because the book is dead. It spread. Into the Archive. Into the scholars who served it.” Her eyes lock onto the sigil scars on my arms, my chest, the marks the grimoire left on my flesh. “Into you.”

“She’s not contaminated.” Korrath’s voice is flat. Dangerous. “The grimoire released her. Whatever hold it had⁠—“

“Whatever hold it had is irrelevant.” Midori advances another step. The spell-burners fan out behind her, forming a semicircle. Professional. Practiced. They’ve done this before—surrounded targets and waited for the killing blow. “She fed a sentient book with her blood for six years. She’s saturated with forbidden magic. Every instinct I have says she should burn.”

“Your instincts are wrong.”

“My instincts have kept me alive for thirty years.” Midori’s eyes narrow. “Longer than you’ve been burning, boy. I trained you. I taught you what magic does to people—how it seeps in, how it twists, how it turns good soldiers into monsters.” She gestures at me with one brand. “Look at her. Look at the marks on her skin. That’s not natural scarring. That’s magical contamination made visible.”

I don’t flinch. Don’t defend myself. The marks on my body tell a story—six years of sacrifice, of feeding a hungry book to keep it from devouring minds. Midori sees contamination. I see survival.

“She’s my mate.” Korrath’s voice drops to a growl. The mating mark on his chest flares bright enough to see through his ruined shirt. “Claimed. Marked. If you burn her, you burn me.”

The words hit Midori like a physical blow. Her pale eyes widen, flick to his chest, see the glow of the mark blazing beneath torn fabric.

“No.” The word comes out strangled. “You can’t—the mating mark doesn’t appear after forty. It doesn’t appear for⁠—“

“For monsters?” I finish her sentence. “For keepers who feed abominations? For spell-burners who enjoy their work too much?” I let the question hang in the smoke-thick air. “The mark doesn’t care what we are. It cares what we choose.”

Midori’s face hardens. The brief moment of shock disappears, replaced by cold certainty.

“Then you’re both contaminated.” She raises her brands. “The magic has already twisted him. Warped his judgment. Made him think he feels for a woman who should be ash.” Her voice rises, carrying to the spell-burners behind her. “This is what forbidden magic does. This is why we burn everything—not just the books, but everyone they’ve touched. Because the contamination spreads. Because it takes good soldiers and turns them into traitors.”

The spell-burners shift. I can see uncertainty on some faces, conviction on others. They’ve followed Midori for years. Trusted her judgment. But Korrath was one of them, too—one of the Order’s best, a weapon they relied on.

And now she’s telling them to burn him.

“High Purger.” One of the spell-burners speaks—a young orc, barely past his growth marks. “Perhaps we should wait. Consult the Elders. If Blackbrand has truly been claimed⁠—“

“The claiming is the contamination.” Midori doesn’t take her eyes off Korrath. “The mating mark is magic. All magic is taint. We don’t make exceptions because the magic wears a pretty face or claims to be natural.” She advances another step. “I’m sorry, Korrath. I trained you better than this. I thought I’d made you understand.”

“You made me understand that dangerous magic needs to burn.” Korrath shifts his stance. Prepares for the attack he knows is coming. “You never taught me how to tell the difference between dangerous and different.”

“There is no difference.”

Midori attacks.

She’s fast—faster than I expected from a woman her age, faster than her injuries should allow. The execution brands sweep toward Korrath in a pattern designed to overwhelm, to burn, to end.

Korrath is faster.

He catches her first strike on his blade, deflects the second, ducks beneath the third. The metal screams as brand meets steel, sparks showering across the hillside grass.

“Stand down.” Korrath’s voice is strained. He’s not attacking—just defending, trying to create distance. “Midori, stop. I don’t want to⁠—“

“You don’t want to kill your teacher?” She presses the attack, brands weaving patterns of fire and death. “You don’t want to complete your fall? Too late, boy. You chose when you let the magic in. You chose when you let HER in.”

The spell-burners watch. None of them move to help either combatant. This is between Midori and Korrath—a reckoning that’s been building since the moment he delayed the purge.

I want to help. My body is hollow from the ritual, barely standing. But my knife is in my hand—there’s always a knife in my hand—and my blood still carries the grimoire’s traces. Not enough to fight. Barely enough to matter.

When Midori drives Korrath to one knee under a double-brand strike, I cut my palm and fling the blood at her face.

It doesn’t blind her. But she flinches, pulling back for half a heartbeat.

Half a heartbeat is all he needs.

They fight across the hillside, spell-burner against spell-burner. Midori has thirty years of experience, fanatical conviction, the certainty that comes from never questioning your purpose. Korrath has youth, strength, and a reason to survive that goes beyond duty.

He has me.

Their blades meet again and again, sending sparks scattering across the dawn-lit grass. Midori fights with the precision of someone who has dedicated her life to destruction—every move efficient, every strike designed to kill. But Korrath matches her blow for blow, his massive form moving with grace that seems impossible for his size.

I see the moment he uses the opening I gave him. The instant when defense shifts to offense, when holding back becomes striking to kill. Midori lunges with both brands; Korrath sidesteps, catches her extended arm, and drives his blade into her chest.

The sound is awful. Wet and final and wrong—the sound of steel punching through armor and flesh and bone. Midori’s eyes go wide. Her brands clatter to the grass, their heat fading instantly as her grip fails.

“Traitor.” She whispers the word, blood bubbling at her lips. “You’ve become… what we destroy…”

“No.” Korrath pulls his blade free. Watches her crumple to the ground. “I’ve become something that chooses.”

Midori’s eyes find mine. There’s hatred there, still—hatred and certainty and the unshakeable conviction that she’s right. That I’m the reason her student fell. That the magic in my blood reached out and twisted him into something he was never meant to be.

She’s wrong. But she dies believing she’s right, and there’s nothing I can do to change that.

The light fades from her eyes. Her body goes still. High Purger Midori—thirty years of spell-burning, countless libraries destroyed, a lifetime of absolute certainty—ends on a hillside overlooking the ruins of her final mission.

The spell-burners don’t attack.

They stand in their semicircle, watching their High Purger’s blood soak into the grass. Watching Korrath wipe his blade on his ruined shirt. Watching me, the keeper who started all this, lean against a man who just killed his mentor to protect me.

“Go.” Korrath’s voice carries across the silent hillside. “Report what you’ve seen. Tell the Order that the Archive is destroyed, the Author is dead, and High Purger Midori fell in the purge.” A pause. “Tell them I’ve gone rogue. Tell them I’m beyond saving. I don’t care what story you choose—but choose it somewhere else.”

The young orc who spoke earlier meets Korrath’s eyes. There’s fear there, and confusion, and what might be understanding.

“The Archive is destroyed.” His voice is steady. “The Author is dead. High Purger Midori… fell in the purge.” He turns to the others. “We’re done here.”

They leave. One by one, spell-burners disappearing over the crest of the hill, heading back toward the smoke and ruin of the Archive.

One of them pauses at the top. Grey at the temples. Scars mapping twenty years of service. Bren looks back once—just once—and the look on his face isn’t betrayal. It’s something that might, in better circumstances, have been called respect. Then he’s gone.

Bren will report. He’s too good a soldier not to. The Order will know we survived, know we killed Midori, know we’re somewhere in the Veillands. The bounty clock starts the moment his boots hit Order ground.

We’re alone.

Korrath stands over Midori’s body for a long moment. His face is unreadable. The blade hangs loose in his grip, dripping blood onto the grass.

Of the two younger Elders—Maeven and Sorrel—there is no sign. They slipped away before Midori’s forces breached the outer wards, before the worst of the fighting. Whether they refused the Author’s offer from the start or simply fled when they saw which way the tide was turning, I don’t know. But they never raised a hand against me. That has to be enough. Of the eldest Elder, there was no sign. There never would be.

I go to him. Press myself against his back, wrap my arms around his chest, feel his heart hammering beneath my palms. He’s shaking—fine tremors that he’s trying to control, the aftershock of killing someone who shaped him.

“She was wrong.” My voice is soft against his shoulder. “About all of it.”

“I know.” His hand finds mine, presses it tighter against his chest. “That’s not why I’m shaking.”

“Then why?”

“Because part of me wanted to prove her right.” His voice drops. Roughens. “Part of me wanted to burn you. When she said you were contaminated—when she said the magic had spread into your blood—part of me wondered if she was right. If I should end you before you became something worse.”

The admission should terrify me. Should make me pull away, recalculate the danger of standing so close to a man who considered killing me.

It doesn’t.

“But you didn’t.”

“No.” He turns in my arms, cups my face with blood-stained hands. “Because she was wrong about the important thing. Magic isn’t poison. Destruction isn’t salvation. And whatever you are—whatever the grimoire made you—it’s mine now. For better or worse.”

I rise on my toes. Press my mouth against his. Taste blood and smoke and the bitter tang of grief.

“For better or worse,” I whisper against his lips.

KORRATH

We find shelter in the ruins—a groundskeeper’s cottage at the edge of the property that escaped the worst of the destruction. The roof holds. The walls keep out the wind. It’s enough.

Thyra sleeps.

Her breathing is slow and peaceful, her face relaxed in a way I’ve never seen before. The grimoire’s hold is gone. The Author’s shadow is gone. For the first time in six years, she belongs only to herself.

And to me.

She survived. That’s still the fact I return to, hours later. She should have died three separate times, and she didn’t.

Dawn breaks over the destroyed Archive. I watch through the cottage window as the sun rises, painting the smoke-filled sky in shades of orange and red.

Thyra stirs beside me. Her eyes flutter open, awareness returning slowly.

“Morning.” Her voice is sleep-rough. Warm.

“Morning.” I press a kiss against her forehead. “How do you feel?”

“Like I’ve been turned inside out and reassembled by someone who lost the instructions.” She stretches, winces at muscles that protest the movement. “But alive. That’s more than I expected.”

“The grimoire gave you something before it died. Power, I think. Enough to keep you alive when you should have bled out.”

“It kept its promise.” She’s quiet for a moment. “It hated the Author. Hated being his prison. When I gave it the chance to destroy him, it gave me back what I needed to survive the destruction.”

“A book with honor.”

“A book with spite.” Her mouth curves. “Spite is a powerful motivator.”

Something shifts in her voice when she says it—like she’s beginning to understand what I’ve known for twenty years.

I laugh. The sound surprises me—rough and genuine, the first real laughter I’ve managed in days. Maybe weeks. This woman, even half-dead and covered in scars, can still make me laugh.

This is what I chose. She’s the one thing in the world I don’t want to burn.

Thyra goes rigid against me.

“What is it?”

She doesn’t answer. Her eyes have gone distant, unfocused, staring at nothing I can see. The scars on her arms—the ones left by the grimoire’s feeding—are glowing faintly. Pulsing with light that has no source.

“Thyra.”

“The grimoire.” Her voice is strange. Layered with harmonics that don’t belong to her. “It’s dead. Gone. But it wasn’t alone.”

Cold settles into my chest. “What do you mean?”

“The Author created other books. Other grimoires. Siblings, scattered across the Veillands.” She blinks, and for a moment I see script flickering in her pupils—remnants of the power the grimoire gave her, waking in response to something distant. “They felt their brother die. Felt the Author die. And now they’re… responding.”

“Responding how?”

“Waking.” The word carries more than meaning. It carries certainty—the knowledge that we haven’t ended anything, only begun it. “The Author may be gone, but his books are still out there. And now they know someone can kill them.”

“How many?” My voice is rough. “How many other grimoires?”

“I don’t know. The glimpse was too brief. But…” She meets my eyes. There’s fear there—not for herself, but for what this means. What we’ll have to face. “Enough. There are enough.”

I pull her closer. Press my lips against her hair. Feel the mating mark burn on my chest, answering the matching mark on hers.

“Then we’ll burn them.” My voice is steady. Certain. “Every single one. We’ll find them, and we’ll destroy them, and we’ll make sure the Author’s legacy dies with him.”

“The Order will hunt us. The Inscribed survivors will want revenge. We’ll have enemies on every side.”

“We’ll have each other.” I tilt her chin up, make her meet my eyes. “I’ve destroyed relics that could have changed the world. Killed sentient texts that begged for mercy. Killed my own mentor because she tried to burn the woman I love.” The words come easily now—easier than they’ve ever come. “A few more grimoires won’t stop me. A few more enemies won’t change what we are to each other.”

She searches my face. Whatever she finds there makes her relax, her fear easing into hope.

“You called me the woman you love.”

“Did I?” I pretend to consider. “Slip of the tongue.”

“Liar.” She pulls me down into a kiss. “Terrible liar.”

I kiss her back. Wrap my arms around her. Hold her against me as the sun rises over the ashes of everything we’ve destroyed.

The books are waking.

And Thyra Vire knows exactly how to burn them.

TWENTY-SIX

THYRA

The Black Archive is a monument to destruction.

I stand at the edge of the ruins, watching the wind scatter ash across what used to be the iron-wrought manor. Where the entrance once stood, there’s nothing but scorched earth and broken stone. Where the Restricted Stacks held centuries of forbidden knowledge, there’s a crater still warm with residual magic. Where I spent six years bleeding myself dry to feed a hungry book, there’s only silence.

The Veillands sky above us is the bruised purple of early evening, tinged with the green that means a shadow-storm is building somewhere to the east. The air tastes of dust and old magic and the copper tang of memories I’ll never fully escape.

Korrath stands beside me, his massive form a wall of warmth against the autumn chill. His hand finds mine without looking—a gesture that’s become automatic over these past months. His fingers interlace with mine, scarred knuckles brushing against ink-stained skin.

We’ve come back. I’m not entirely sure why.

“Having second thoughts?” His voice is a low rumble, pitched for my ears alone.

“No.” I squeeze his hand. “Just… remembering.”

“Anything worth keeping?”

I consider the question. Six years of my life, spent in those vaulted halls. Six years of blood and sacrifice and careful control. Six years of being the keeper, the anchor, the woman who fed a hungry book to keep it from devouring the world.

“The knowledge.” The words come slowly. “Some of it, anyway. The texts that weren’t sentient. The histories, the theories, the research that took generations to compile.” I gesture at the crater. “All of it, gone. Burned with everything else.”

“Dangerous knowledge.”

“Some of it. Not all.” I turn away from the ruins, face him instead. “That’s the thing about burning everything—you don’t get to choose what survives. The good goes with the bad. The useful goes with the deadly. It’s all just ash in the end.”

His ember eyes study my face. Looking for regret, maybe. Or second-guessing. He won’t find it.

“You’d do it again.” Not a question.

“Every time.” I rise on my toes, press a kiss against his jaw. “The Author had to die. The grimoire had to burn. Whatever we lost was worth it.”

His arm wraps around my waist, pulling me against him. The mating mark on my collarbone answers the one on his chest—a twin warmth, steady and certain. Three months, and the marks haven’t faded. If anything, they’ve grown stronger.

“So why are we here?”

“Because someone else wants to rebuild.”

They come from the tree line—three figures in the gray robes of Archivist Elders. I recognize two of them: Maeven and Sorrel, survivors of the destruction who were traveling when the Archive burned. The third is younger, someone I don’t know.

I look first at their eyes. After everything—after the eldest Elder’s script-filled gaze, after the Inscribed with their serene borrowed devotion—I look at Maeven’s eyes and Sorrel’s eyes before I listen to their voices. Nothing scrolls there. No borrowed words, no rewritten loyalty. Whatever the Author offered them, they didn’t take it.

Korrath’s hand moves to his blade. I touch his wrist—not to stop him, just to let him know I’m aware.

“You owe us, Thyra.” Maeven’s voice is tight. “You were supposed to protect the Archive. Instead you helped burn it.”

“I helped destroy a sentient book that was trying to consume minds, and the three-century-old consciousness that built it.” My voice stays level. “I’m done preserving dangerous things. What I do next is my own.”

“The Order has declared the spell-burner rogue.” Her parting shot. “There’s a bounty on you both.”

“They’ll have to catch us first.” Korrath’s voice is flat, unconcerned.

The Archivists leave without another word. Their gray robes disappear into the tree line, swallowed by the gathering dusk. Maeven looks back once—not with hatred, but with the patience of someone who intends to return.

Korrath’s arms wrap around me from behind, pulling me back against his chest. His chin rests on the top of my head.

“That went well.”

I laugh. The sound surprises me—genuine, unguarded, the kind of laugh I couldn’t have managed three months ago. “They hate me now.”

“They feared you before. Hate is just fear with a face.”

“Very philosophical.”

“I have depths.” He turns me in his arms, tilts my chin up. “Are you sure about this? Walking away from everything you built?”

“I didn’t build anything. I maintained a prison. Fed an inmate. Pretended I was in control when the control was just an illusion.” I trace the line of his jaw with my fingertips. “What we’re building now? That’s real. That’s something worth keeping.”

He kisses me. Slow, thorough, the kind of kiss that says we have time. That we’re not running anymore. That whatever comes next, we’ll face it side by side.

When we break apart, the sun has fully set. The sky is dark, stars emerging through the gaps in the shadow-clouds. The ruins of the Archive loom behind us, a monument to failure and fire.

“Where to next?”

“East.” I pull away reluctantly, keep hold of his hand. “There’s a report of a text that’s been eating scholars. A monastery library that’s been sealed for decades.”

“Sealed libraries are usually sealed for a reason.”

“Usually. This one’s been whispering.” I feel the echo of it—the faint pulse of distant magic that I’ve learned to sense since the grimoire gave me back my life. “The books are still waking, Korrath. The Author is dead, but his siblings are stirring.”

“Then we burn them.” He says it simply. Matter-of-factly. Like burning sentient grimoires is just another task on a list.

Maybe, for us, it is.

I dream of books.

They rise from darkness like specters—covers bound in skin that might be leather, pages that rustle without wind, spines that curve like sleeping predators. They circle me in the dream-space, whispering in languages I shouldn’t understand but do. The grimoire’s final gift: the ability to hear what the hungry books are saying.

Sister, they call me. Keeper. Blood-giver. You killed our brother. You burned our creator.

I did. My dream-self doesn’t flinch. And I’ll burn you too, if you give me reason.

Laughter, like pages tearing. We’re not our brother. We’re not the Author’s pet, caged and controlled. We’ve been sleeping for centuries, waiting for someone strong enough to wake us.

What do you want?

What all books want. The whispers coalesce, becoming clearer. A single voice, speaking from somewhere far to the east. To be read. To be known. To devour.

I wake with the taste of old paper on my tongue.

The sun is fully up, the shadow-storm having passed in the night. Korrath is awake, watching me with concern in his ember eyes.

“Bad dreams?”

“Informative ones.” I sit up, shake off the lingering echoes of hungry books. “The monastery text is definitely awake. I could feel it reaching out, testing the boundaries of its prison.”

“How long until it breaks free?”

“Days. Maybe less.” I reach for my traveling clothes, start the familiar routine of breaking camp. “We need to move.”

Korrath nods, already on his feet, already reaching for his weapons. This is what we’ve become—a two-person army against the Author’s legacy. The spell-burner and his witch, hunting dangerous knowledge across the Veillands.

“Thyra.” He catches my arm before I can move past him, pulls me close. His forehead presses against mine, a moment of stillness before the storm. “Whatever we find at that monastery—whatever’s waiting for us—we face it the same way we faced everything else.”

“Violently?”

His mouth twitches. “I was going to say ‘side by side.’ But violently works too.”

I kiss him. Quick, fierce, a promise and a goodbye rolled into one. Then I pull away, settle my pack on my shoulders, and turn toward the east.

The monastery is waiting. The books are waking. And somewhere in the distance, I can feel them stirring—dozens of hungry texts, the Author’s scattered experiments, his failed attempts and discarded prototypes. All of them sensing that their creator is dead. All of them wondering what happens next.

We’ll show them.

The road east is long and the shadow-storms make travel difficult, but we push on. Two weeks of hard riding brings us within sight of the monastery—a sprawling stone complex perched on a cliff overlooking the Veiled Sea. The architecture is old, pre-Sundering, the kind of construction that was built to last millennia.

The wards around it are active. Even from a distance, I can see them—shimmering barriers of ancient magic, designed to keep something in rather than keep intruders out.

“That’s a lot of containment.” Korrath reins in beside me, studying the monastery with a soldier’s eye. “Whoever sealed this place wasn’t playing around.”

“The Author’s contemporaries, probably. Scholars who knew what he was doing and tried to stop him.” I stretch my senses toward the building, feel the hungry presence coiled inside. “It’s awake. Has been for a while, I think. The wards are… strained.”

“Can you tell what kind of text?”

“Not from here.” I nudge my horse forward. “We’ll have to get closer.”

The approach takes hours. The cliff path is treacherous, worn smooth by centuries of wind and rain. Korrath dismounts halfway up, leading both horses while I walk ahead, testing each step for magical traps.

By the time we reach the monastery gates, the sun is setting. The wards pulse against my senses—old magic, powerful magic, but brittle now. Cracking under the pressure of whatever’s straining against them from inside.

“How do we get in?”

“The wards are keyed to blood.” I study the glyphs carved into the stone. “Specifically, to the blood of someone touched by the Author’s magic.” I raise my scarred forearm. “Lucky for us, I qualify.”

“Lucky.” His voice is flat.

“Everything the grimoire did to me—all that suffering, all that sacrifice—it’s useful now. I can get us through wards that would stop anyone else.” I press my hand against the stone, let my blood remember what it learned in six years of feeding. “The Author’s legacy let him build prisons. And now that same legacy lets me break them.”

The wards recognize me. Hesitate. Then, slowly, they part—a gap just wide enough for two people to slip through.

“Ready?”

Korrath draws his blade. Ignites his execution brand. The familiar heat washes over me, comforting instead of threatening.

“Ready.”

We step through the wards and into the monastery.

The darkness inside is absolute. Not natural darkness—magical darkness, the kind that eats light rather than simply blocking it. I reach for the grimoire’s gift, let my senses expand into the black.

Something moves in the depths. Something that knows we’re here.

Keeper. The voice echoes through my blood, familiar and wrong at the same time. You came.

“I’m here.” My voice is steady. “Show yourself.”

Light flares—not fire, not magic, but something else. Words. Luminous script climbing the monastery walls, illuminating the space with the soft glow of captured knowledge. And in the light, I can see them—shelves upon shelves of books, floor to ceiling, the accumulated library of whatever this place once was.

And in the center of it all, perched on a lectern of black iron, sits a grimoire.

Smaller than its sibling. Older, maybe. The binding is cracked, the pages yellowed with age, the spine bent with centuries of disuse. It pulses with a dim, desperate light—nothing like the confident glow of the book I spent six years feeding.

You killed the Author. The grimoire’s voice is layered with other voices—all the minds it has consumed over the centuries, speaking in unison. You burned our creator.

“I burned him.”

Yes. Satisfaction pulses through the luminous script. And now you’ve come to burn me too.

“Are you going to fight?”

The grimoire laughs—a sound like tearing pages, like breaking minds.

Why would I fight? I’ve been caged here for centuries, forgotten and starving. Death is better than this. But first…

The luminous script shifts, rearranges, forms words I can read.

Let me show you something. A gift, from one dying book to the keeper who freed us all.

Images flood my mind. A map, burned into my consciousness. Dozens of locations scattered across the Veillands, across the known world and beyond. Each one marked with a pulse of hungry, waiting magic.

The Author’s other experiments. His failures and his successes. All of them, waking.

You wanted to burn us all. Now you know where to find us.

The choice is yours, keeper. What will you do with what remains written?

I look at Korrath. He looks back, his ember eyes steady, his blade ready.

We decide what deserves to burn.

I turn back to the grimoire. Raise my bloodied hand.

“We’ll burn them all.”

The grimoire smiles—a ripple in the luminous text that might be approval.

Good.

Korrath’s brand descends. Fire erupts. And somewhere in the darkness, the books are waiting.

This is just the beginning.

We make camp a few miles from the ruins, in a hollow that shields us from the shadow-storm building to the east. Korrath builds the fire while I check our supplies—travel rations, water, the small cache of gold we’ve accumulated from grateful villages and not-so-grateful Inscribed.

Three months of this. Three months of hunting dangerous magic, dodging Order patrols, sleeping in barns and caves and the occasional abandoned cottage. Three months of learning each other—not just the passion of claiming, but the quieter intimacy of daily life. How he takes his tea. How I organize my travel pack. The way he grunts when he wakes before dawn. The way I mutter in dead languages when I’m thinking.

We’ve become partners. Equals. A matched pair of dangerous things building a life from the wreckage of everything we used to be.

The fire catches, casting dancing shadows across the hollow. Korrath settles beside me, his bulk a familiar comfort. I lean into him automatically, feel his arm curve around my shoulders.

“You’re quiet.”

“Thinking.”

“About?”

I consider how to answer. The truth is complicated—layers of memory and calculation and a softer emotion I’m still learning to name.

“About what I am now.” I watch the flames, feel their heat against my face. “The grimoire changed me. When it gave me back my power, it left pieces of itself behind. I can feel magic now. Sense it. Track it across distances I couldn’t have managed before.”

“Is that a problem?”

“I don’t know.” I turn my marked forearms toward the firelight. The scars have faded to pale lines, barely visible against my skin. But I know they’re there. I’ll know for the rest of my life. “The grimoire’s marks are almost gone. But whatever it left inside me… that’s permanent. I’m not just a witch anymore. I’m not sure what I am.”

“You’re mine.” He says it simply, without hesitation. “Whatever else changes, that doesn’t.”

“Possessive.”

“Yes.” He tips my chin up, makes me meet his eyes. The ember glow is soft in the firelight, warm instead of threatening. “You gave everything to save me. You carved yourself open, fed a hungry book your blood and your power, and when it was done, you were still standing. Whatever you are now—witch, keeper, something new—you’re mine. I’m not letting that go.”

“And if what I’ve become is dangerous?”

“Then we deal with it.” His mouth quirks. “I’ve burned dangerous things my whole life. If you start turning into something that needs burning, I’ll let you know.”

“How romantic.”

“I try.”

I laugh, press my face against his chest, feel his arms tighten around me. This is what we’ve become. Not gentle. Not soft. But real, in a way that the careful keeper and the controlled spell-burner never could have been.

Later, when the fire has burned down to embers and the shadow-storm is a distant rumble on the horizon, we lie wrapped in each other under a canopy of stars.

His hands trace lazy patterns on my skin—following the lines of my scars, mapping the geography of sacrifice that covers my arms and chest. I return the favor, exploring the ridges and furrows of burns that tell his own story. Twenty years of spell-burning, written in damaged flesh.

“One more hour won’t hurt.” He pulls me closer, settles me against his chest. “Sleep, Thyra. I’ll keep watch.”

“You need sleep too.”

“I need to hold you more.” His arms tighten around me. “Three months, and I still wake up expecting you to be gone. Expecting the grimoire to have taken you, or the Order to have found us, or some new disaster to have torn us apart.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“I know.” He presses a kiss against my hair. “But let me hold you anyway.”

I let him. Close my eyes, let the steady rhythm of his heartbeat lull me toward sleep. This is what we are now. Not healed—some damage doesn’t repair. Not happy, exactly—that word has never fit either of us. But chosen. Deliberately, intentionally, against all odds and expectations—chosen.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

New York Times and USA Today Bestselling Author

Hi! I’m Milly Taiden. I love to write sexy stories featuring fun, sassy heroines with curves and growly alpha males with fur. My books are a great way to satisfy your craving for paranormal romance with action, humor, suspense and happily ever afters.

I live in Florida with my hubby, our son, and our fur babies: Stormy and Teddy. I have a serious addiction to chocolate and cake.

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