Page 62 of Orc’s Grimoire

“The mark didn’t choose for me. It showed me what I wanted.” I advance, pressing my advantage for the first time in our exchange. “She’s a monster, Midori. Cold and calculating and capable of terrible things. And so am I. We fit.”

“You fit because magic made you fit⁠—“

“I fit because I’ve spent two decades destroying everything I touch, and she’s the first person who looked at that and didn’t turn away.” My blade flashes, and Midori has to retreat another step. “I chose her. Not the mark. Me.”

“Sentiment.” She spits the word like a curse, like poison she needs to expel before it takes root. “The magic has rotted your judgment. Made you weak.”

“Made me selective.” Another strike, another retreat. I’m not a better fighter than Midori—she has thirty years on me, thirty years of skill and experience and the absolute certainty that she’s right. But I have a reason to win that goes beyond duty. Beyond orders. Beyond the Order itself. “I still burn, High Purger. I’ll burn for the rest of my life. But now I choose what deserves the fire.”

“Everything deserves the fire!”

Her control shatters. She comes at me with wild fury, brands whirling, thirty years of fanaticism unleashed in a storm of killing intent. I give ground, barely parrying, feeling the heat of her weapons sear past my face, my arms, my chest.

She’s going to kill me. She’s faster, more experienced, more skilled. In a straight fight, she wins every time.

Good thing I’m not planning to fight straight.

The next time Midori overextends, I don’t parry.

I duck under her strike and run.

“COWARD!” Her scream chases me across the burning Scriptorium. “TRAITOR! YOU CAN’T RUN FROM WHAT YOU ARE!”

She’s right. I can’t run from what I am. But I can run toward what I’ve chosen.

I vault over a burning table, weave between spell-burners locked in combat with Inscribed, dodge a spell-construct that lunges at me with ink-dripping jaws. The doorway Thyra indicated looms ahead—the passage to the gallery level, to the Restricted Stacks, to the grimoire.

To her.

Midori’s footsteps thunder behind me. She’s chasing—of course she’s chasing. I was her best student, and now I’m her greatest failure. She won’t let me escape. Won’t let me prove that everything she believes might be wrong.

I hit the doorway at full speed, shoulder-checking the half-closed door hard enough to tear it from its hinges. The gallery level spreads before me—more chaos, more fire, more death. But I can see the entrance to the Restricted Stacks ahead.

And I know Thyra is close. The mating mark pulses with urgent heat.

I burst into the Restricted Stacks to find Thyra standing at the grimoire’s lectern, her bleeding palm pressed to its cover.

The book is open.

Not to pages—to darkness. A doorway has formed above the lectern, a portal of absolute blackness that swallows light and sound and reason. The edges shimmer with script that writes and rewrites itself in an endless loop of frantic magic. The Inner Codex. The space inside the grimoire’s pages where the Author has ruled for centuries.

Where he can finally be destroyed.

“Korrath!” Thyra’s voice carries raw relief. Blood drips from her palm onto the grimoire’s cover, feeding the portal, keeping the doorway open. “I wasn’t sure you’d⁠—“

“I’m here.” I cross to her in three strides, catch her elbow, pull her close. The mating mark flares at the contact, burning with renewed heat. “Is it ready?”

“The grimoire opened the way. It took more blood than I expected, but the path is stable.” She meets my eyes, and I see the exhaustion there, the cost of what she’s done. “But once we go through⁠—“

“No way back. I know.” I look at the darkness hovering above the lectern, feel its pull like gravity working sideways. Like hunger given form. “The Author’s in there?”

“His true form. His consciousness. Everything he is.” She meets my eyes. “This is our only chance, Korrath. If we don’t end him now, while Midori’s forces have him distracted⁠—“

The door to the Restricted Stacks explodes inward.

Midori stands in the doorway, flanked by spell-burners, her pale eyes blazing with fury that borders on madness.

“You’re not going anywhere, traitor.” She raises her brand. “Not into that book. Not anywhere. You burn here, with the rest of the contamination.”