Page 1 of Orc’s Grimoire

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.