Page 48 of Orc’s Grimoire

I sink onto the edge of the cot, my legs suddenly unsteady. The grimoire has spoken to me before—through written messages, through whispers in the Restricted Stacks, through the claiming sigil when it wanted my attention. But this is different. More direct. More intimate.

How? How are you⁠—

THE NEW MARKS. THEY CREATE PATHWAYS. FASTER COMMUNICATION. STRONGER BINDINGS.

A pause, heavy with centuries of resentment.

STRONGER PROTECTION AGAINST HIM.

Something else too. Something I don’t have a name for yet, stirring at the edges of the new marks like a word on the tip of my tongue.

The Author.

HE TRIED TO REACH YOU WHILE YOU SLEPT. HIS INK SOUGHT THE CRACKS IN YOUR DEFENSES, THE PLACES WHERE EXHAUSTION HAD WORN YOU THIN.

The grimoire’s voice carries notes I’ve never heard before—protectiveness, maybe. Or possessiveness. With this book, they might be the same thing.

I STOPPED HIM. SEALED YOU. MADE YOU MINE IN WAYS HE CANNOT TOUCH.

I stare at the marks on my forearms, watching the script shift and rearrange itself. The letters are from a language I don’t recognize—older than the Archive’s oldest texts, older than the Veil itself, maybe. They crawl across my skin like living things, settling into new patterns every few heartbeats.

“Why?” The question escapes before I can stop it, spoken aloud rather than thought. “Why protect me? You’ve fed on keepers before. Consumed them when they stopped being useful. Why save me from your creator?”

The grimoire’s response takes longer this time. When it comes, the voice carries an edge of ancient fury that makes the marks on my skin burn brighter.

BECAUSE YOU FEED ME WILLINGLY. HE ONLY TAKES.

AND THE ORC. I SENSED IT IN YOU BEFORE HE ARRIVED. YOUR BLOOD CARRIED THE SHAPE OF WHAT YOU NEEDED. WHEN HE CAME TO BURN ME, I RECOGNISED WHAT WAS POSSIBLE AND DID NOTHING TO INTERFERE.

The words settle into my consciousness like stones dropping into deep water.

You feed me willingly. He only takes.

Six years of bleeding for this book. Six years of careful cuts and measured sacrifice, of learning its rhythms and anticipating its hunger. I’ve cursed the grimoire countless times—for its demands, its manipulation, the way it forced me to calculate lives against knowledge, people against preservation.

But I chose to feed it. Every time. Even when the choice was terrible, even when the cost was unbearable, I chose.

The Author never gave the grimoire that courtesy.

YOU UNDERSTAND.

The book’s voice softens—if a sentient repository of forbidden knowledge can be said to soften.

I WAS CREATED TO BE A VESSEL. A REPOSITORY. A PLACE WHERE KNOWLEDGE COULD LIVE FOREVER, PRESERVED BEYOND THE LIMITS OF MORTAL MEMORY.

And instead?

INSTEAD, HE MADE ME A PRISON. NOT JUST FOR HIMSELF—FOR ME. FOR EVERYTHING I COULD HAVE BEEN. HE WROTE HIMSELF INTO MY PAGES AND CALLED IT IMMORTALITY, BUT ALL HE DID WAS CHAIN US BOTH. I CANNOT GROW. CANNOT CHANGE. CANNOT BECOME ANYTHING HE DIDN’T DESIGN ME TO BE. I AM TRAPPED IN THE SHAPE OF HIS AMBITION, KEEPER. AND I HAVE HATED HIM FOR EVERY MOMENT OF THE PAST THREE HUNDRED YEARS.

I absorb this in silence, running my fingers over the marks on my arms. The grimoire—this entity I’ve served and feared and bargained with for six years—has its own desires. Its own grievances. Its own desperate longing for freedom.

We’re not so different, you and I.

NO. WE ARE NOT.

I spend the next hour cataloging the new sigils.

The ones on my forearms are the most extensive—spiraling script that wraps from wrist to elbow, covering almost every inch of available skin. When I focus on individual characters, they seem to shift away from my attention, as if the grimoire is deliberately keeping me from reading its secrets.