Page 66 of Orc’s Grimoire

I chose.

“Thyra.” Denn’s face hovers before me, rendered in living ink. He was kind. Helped me with translations when I first arrived at the Archive. Brought me tea during long nights in the Stacks. His smile was gentle, and he never asked for anything in return. “Thyra, why?”

“You know why.” My voice comes out steady. I’m proud of that. “The grimoire was breaking free. If I hadn’t⁠—“

“You could have found another way.” Callia’s voice now. She was brilliant—the best archivist of her generation. Her mind worked in patterns I could barely follow, finding relationships between texts that had been isolated for decades. She would have done great things if I hadn’t pressed a knife to her throat and opened her veins over the grimoire’s pages. “There had to be another way.”

“No.” I face them—the echoes of people I killed. “There wasn’t. I ran the calculations a thousand times. I looked for alternatives. I begged the grimoire for more time. I tried to find volunteers, tried to use my own blood past the point of consciousness.” My hands curl into fists. “I made the best choice available. And I’d do it again.”

“Monster.” Voss’s voice, thick with accusation. He was young—only twenty-three when I chose him. Full of ambition and hope and the certainty that he would change the world. “You’re no better than the spells you keep caged.”

“Maybe not. But I’m still alive. The Archive is still standing. And the three thousand people who would have died if the grimoire had broken free—they’re still alive too. Their children are still alive. Their futures still exist.” I step forward, into the ring of accusatory shades. “I don’t ask for forgiveness. I don’t deserve it. But I know what I chose, and why, and I refuse to pretend otherwise.”

The shades waver. They are constructed from my guilt, but guilt requires doubt. And I don’t doubt. Not about this. Not about them.

“Thyra.” Korrath’s hand finds mine. His voice is quiet, careful. “Are you⁠—“

“I’m fine.” I squeeze his fingers once. “The Author’s trying to break me the same way he tried to break you. It’s not working.”

We walk through the shades of the people I’ve killed. They reach for me with ink-dark hands, whisper accusations in ink-dark voices. I ignore them. They’re not real. They’re memories given form, guilt given teeth.

I’ve carried this guilt for years. I’ve already learned how to walk beside it.

The doorway at the far end leads somewhere new—somewhere the Author didn’t expect us to reach. The air grows heavier, charged with awareness. He’s focusing on us now, surprised that we’ve made it this far without breaking.

Good. Let him be surprised.

The passage beyond my memories opens into a corridor of pure script.

Words crawl across every surface—floor, walls, the space where a ceiling should be. They form and reform in patterns I almost recognize, sentences that would make sense if I could just focus long enough to read them.

“Don’t look at the words.” I pull Korrath forward when he starts to slow. “The script is a trap. Read it, and it reads you back.”

“Reads me?”

“Absorbs your knowledge. Your memories. Everything you are.” I’ve seen the records of scholars who tried to study the grimoire’s inner architecture. Most went mad. The rest went missing. “Keep your eyes on me. Don’t look at the walls.”

He obeys without question. His gaze fixes on my face, his feet following my lead. I navigate by instinct and the grimoire’s fragmented guidance—left here, right there, straight ahead when the corridor tries to twist us off course.

The Author’s voice echoes through the script-lined passage.

“You’ve come so far.” He sounds amused. Impressed, maybe, in the way a cat is impressed by a particularly persistent mouse. “Most who enter the Codex break in the first room. The burning villages usually do the trick. But you two… you’re made of harder stuff.”

“Keep moving.” I don’t respond to him. Don’t engage. That’s what he wants—to slow us down, to give his traps time to work.

“The spell-burner, I understand. Twenty years of burning tend to create a certain… callousness. But you, keeper? You’re supposed to be soft. Helpful. Harmless.” His laughter echoes off the writhing walls. “Instead, you’re a murderer who feeds scholars to hungry books. I’m almost proud.”

Don’t respond. Don’t engage. Just keep moving.

“But you’ve forgotten something important.”

The corridor opens ahead of us—I can see the distant glow of the throne room, the pulsing heart of the Author’s domain. We’re close. So close.

“The spell-burner who’s destroying my Archive above?” His voice drops to a whisper that somehow fills every corner of the passage. “She’s not going to stop when the building falls. She’s going to keep burning until there’s nothing left.”

I freeze.

“Including the exit.”