Page 18 of Orc’s Grimoire

“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.