Page 22 of Orc’s Grimoire

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.