Page 69 of Orc’s Grimoire

“No. You came here to destroy me.” The Author’s smile doesn’t waver. “And yet here we are, talking. Do you know why?”

The room shakes. Dust—no, ash—rains from the ceiling. Another section of the Codex has crumbled. The fire is getting closer.

“Because you’re stalling.” The realization hits me with cold clarity. “You don’t need to beat us. You just need to delay us until the fire reaches this room.”

“Clever spell-burner.” The Author’s approval feels like an insult. “The grimoire is dying. Each burning page brings my prison closer to ruin. And when it finally falls—when Midori’s brands consume the last shred of parchment—I’ll be released. Free to find a new vessel, a new prison, a new set of fools to torment.”

“And us?”

“You’ll burn with the book.” He spreads his hands in mock sympathy. “I’m sorry. Truly. You would have made excellent additions to my collection. That guilt you carry, spell-burner—so rich, so complex. And my keeper’s cold equations, the way she weighs lives against lives without flinching. Delicious. But some knowledge is more valuable than preservation.”

I feel Thyra’s hand find mine. Her fingers are cold, slick with blood, but her grip is steady.

“Then we’ll kill you before the fire reaches us.” My voice comes out flat. Certain. “Problem solved.”

“Kill me?” The Author rises from his throne at last, and I see the full scope of what he’s become. The script covering his robes isn’t decoration—it’s him. Living words crawling across fabric and flesh, spelling out the boundaries of his existence. He doesn’t wear the text. He IS the text. “I’m not flesh anymore, spell-burner. I’m information. Ideas don’t die. They just… spread.”

“Ideas burn.” I raise my blade. “Everything burns.”

I attack.

Years of training drive my blade toward his throat—a killing strike, efficient, designed to end threats permanently. The execution brand at my belt burns with readiness, eager to press against this living magic and turn it to ash.

The Author doesn’t move.

My blade passes through him like cutting smoke.

“You still don’t understand.” His voice comes from everywhere now—from the walls, from the floor, from the floating script that circles us like predatory birds. “In here, I am the rules. The architecture. The very air you breathe. I decide what’s solid and what’s not. I decide what lives and what dies.”

The floor ripples beneath my feet. I stumble, catch myself, feel the solid ground becoming treacherous beneath my boots.

“I decide whether your blade can touch me.” The Author circles us, his form flickering, text tracing across surfaces that shouldn’t exist. “I decide whether your precious keeper’s blood magic has power. I decide everything. Because this isn’t a place, spell-burner. It’s a text. And I am its author.”

Thyra raises her bleeding arm. Blood drips onto the page-paved floor, and I see her trying to shape it into a weapon—the technique that destroyed the ink-wolves.

Nothing happens.

“No.” The Author’s smile widens. “Not here. Not in my throne room. Your tricks work in the margins of my domain, keeper. But at the center? Everything answers to me.”

He gestures, and the floating script coalesces around us—a cage of luminous words, closing in, tightening.

“Did you think I spent centuries trapped in these pages learning nothing?” The Author walks toward us through the cage’s narrowing walls. “I’ve had time to study. To experiment. To perfect my control over this realm. Every spell that ever touched this grimoire—I consumed it. Every mind that ever read these pages—I tasted it. I am the sum of all forbidden knowledge, spell-burner. What are you?”

The script-cage presses closer. I can feel the words against my skin now, hot and hungry, trying to sink into my flesh. Trying to rewrite me.

“I’m the fire that ends things.” I slash at the cage, but my blade passes through the letters without effect. They’re not solid. They’re just… ideas. And my steel can’t cut ideas.

“You’re nothing.” The Author’s voice drops to a whisper, intimate and terrible. “A weapon that’s lost its purpose. A destroyer who found a thing he doesn’t want to destroy. Do you know how long I’ve watched you, Korrath Blackbrand? How many of your executions I’ve catalogued? You’ve been feeding me for twenty years—every spell you burned, every relic you destroyed. I know the taste of your guilt better than you do.”

The words press into my skin. I feel them trying to take root, trying to edit my thoughts the way the Author has edited so many others.

And then—worse. Not rewriting. Amplifying.

The relief floods in. That familiar, searing joy that comes when living magic dies—the thing I’ve chased for twenty years, the addiction that’s built my entire identity. It roars through my veins, louder than it’s ever been. I want to burn. I want to destroy everything around me—the cage, the throne room, Thyra’s blood on my hands, the heat of her at my side.

My grip on her wrist loosens.

Let go. Burn it all. This is what you are. This is what you were made for.