Page 13 of Orc’s Grimoire

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.