Page 60 of Orc’s Grimoire

The Restricted Stacks vanish. The Archive, with its burning corridors and battling forces. The physical world, with its reliable rules and predictable geometries. Everything disappears, replaced by⁠—

Chaos.

Walls of parchment-flesh that breathe and bleed and whisper. Floors of liquid ink that shift beneath our feet, threatening to swallow us whole. A sky of cramped handwriting that rearranges itself when I try to focus on any particular word.

The Inner Codex. The Author’s domain. The place where knowledge and madness are the same thing.

WELCOME.

The voice comes from everywhere and nowhere. The Author’s voice, carrying harmonics of every mind he’s ever edited, every personality he’s ever revised into service.

“I’ve been waiting for you.”

Ahead of us, in the distance that might be miles or might be inches, a throne rises from the ink-sea floor. A seat made of chained grimoires and stolen thoughts, pulsing with centuries of accumulated power.

And on that throne, watching us with eyes full of scrolling script⁠—

The Author smiles.

EIGHTEEN

KORRATH

The Scriptorium burns around me, Inscribed and spell-burners tearing into each other amid overturned tables and falling shelves. I spent two decades singing the same battle-chants echoing through the smoke now. I hear them as a death sentence.

“KORRATH!”

The voice cuts through the chaos like a blade through smoke.

I know that voice. I’ve known it for two decades—since I was a young orc learning to burn, since she took me under her tutelage and showed me what spell-burners could become. Since she first pressed an execution brand into my hands and told me to feel the relief that comes with ending.

Midori.

I turn, and there she is.

She stands at the Scriptorium’s main entrance, flanked by spell-burners, her lean form silhouetted against the flames behind her—filed tusks and burned-out conviction, exactly as I remembered her.

Her gaze drops to my chest, to the place where my tunic hangs torn, and I see her expression change.

She sees the mating mark.

The claiming sigil glows against my skin—I can feel it, responding to Thyra’s proximity, broadcasting what I am to anyone with eyes to see. It might as well be a confession written in fire.

“Korrath.” Midori’s voice carries over the screams and clash of battle, steady and cold. “You’ve been compromised.”

“High Purger.” I position myself between her and Thyra, blade raised. “This isn’t what it looks like.”

“Isn’t it?” She steps forward, and her escort parts around her. Three execution brands hang at her belt—redundancy, she calls it. The Order calls it paranoia. Her survival rate calls it practical. “You were sent to destroy the grimoire. Instead, I find you running through the Archive with its keeper, wearing a mating mark that glows like a beacon.”

“The situation is more complex than the Order understood⁠—“

“The situation is simple.” Another step. “You’ve let magic into your heart. The mating mark—it’s as dangerous as any curse. More dangerous, because it feels like love.” Her pale eyes bore into mine. “I taught you this, Korrath. I taught you that all magic is contamination. All of it. Even the magic that claims to bind souls.”

“The mating mark isn’t⁠—“

“All magic is the same.” She draws one of her execution brands, the metal glowing with contained heat. “It twists. It corrupts. It takes good orcs and turns them into traitors who run with witches instead of burning them.”

“She’s not just a witch.” The words escape before I can stop them. “She’s my mate.”