Page 47 of Orc’s Grimoire

“Help me kill my creator.” The grimoire’s voice carries finality, a promise wrapped in ancient hunger. “And I’ll release your binding willingly. Both of you. The keeper’s anchor and the spell-burner’s mark. I’ll let you go.”

Thyra leans forward. “The binding—the rule that says I die if the grimoire dies. A willing release changes that?”

“A forced breaking kills you both.” The grimoire’s voice is precise. Clinical. “That is the trap the first keeper built into the containment—so no one would dare destroy me. But a willing release is different. I choose to let you go. The anchor dissolves cleanly. You live.” A pause, heavy with implication. “Only if I choose. Only if I survive long enough to make that choice.”

Silence falls across the Restricted Stacks.

I feel the burden of the choice settling on our shoulders—trust a monster to help us kill a bigger monster, or face the Author and Midori and fifty spell-burners with nothing but our blades and our wits.

“How do we know you’ll keep your word?” The question scrapes against my throat. “How do we know this isn’t another trap?”

“You don’t.” The grimoire’s honesty is somehow more unsettling than its hunger. “But consider the alternative, spell-burner. Dawn is coming. The flame that burns everything rides toward you. And the Author is gathering his faithful for a confrontation that will leave nothing standing.”

“You’re asking us to trust a book that feeds on blood and minds.”

“I’m asking you to trust that I hate him more than I want to consume you.” A pause. “The warning I sent you—the one that led you to the Elders. I did not know they were Inscribed.” Another silence, longer than the first. “Or I did not know in time. For now, that will have to be enough.”

Thyra’s hand finds mine. Her fingers lace through my own—not seeking comfort, but offering solidarity. We stand before the grimoire’s lectern, bound by marks neither of us chose, facing an impossible choice with impossible odds.

Trust the monster. Use the monster. Then burn the monster before it turns on you.

“We’ll need a plan.” My voice sounds distant, disconnected from the fear crawling up my spine. “If we’re entering the Inner Codex, we’ll need every advantage we can get.”

“Then listen carefully.” The grimoire’s pages rustle, chains clinking against the lectern. “Because the Author is older than empires, spell-burner. And he’s been waiting for this moment longer than you’ve been alive.”

The book opens itself, revealing pages covered in text that shifts and writhes like living things.

And we lean in to read our fate.

THIRTEEN

THYRA

Iwake to fire.

Not the mating mark’s familiar warmth—this is different. Sharper. Spreading across my skin like rivers of molten metal, carving paths through nerve and muscle. I jerk upright with a gasp, hands flying to my chest, my arms, my throat.

Sigils burn beneath my fingertips.

New ones. Fresh ones. Raised skin tracing patterns that weren’t there when I fell asleep—collapsed, really, exhaustion finally claiming me after hours of poring over the grimoire’s revelations with Korrath at my side.

I scramble off the narrow cot in the archivist quarters we’d claimed for the night, nearly tripping over my own feet in the rush to reach the small mirror mounted above the wash basin. The glass is old, spotted with age, but it shows me enough.

Gods.

The sigils cover me.

My forearms, wrist to elbow, are wrapped in spiraling script that glows faintly red-gold in the dim light. The same color as the claiming sigil on my collarbone—the grimoire’s mark, not the Author’s ink-dark influence. More lines trace my ribs, visible through the thin sleeping shift I’d pulled on before unconsciousness took me. And at the hollow of my throat, just above the claiming sigil’s upper edge, a new mark pulses with each beat of my heart.

The grimoire has been busy while I slept.

I press my palm against the mark at my throat, feeling its heat, its insistence. Not painful—not exactly. But present in a way the original claiming wasn’t. These sigils don’t just announce ownership. They feel like armor.

What did you do to me?

The grimoire’s voice arrives without sound, settling into my thoughts like ink into parchment.

PROTECTED YOU.