Page 40 of Orc’s Grimoire

“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.”