Page 71 of Orc’s Grimoire

We carve through the horde. Back to back, blade and blood, two weapons cutting a path toward the Author’s throne.

The room shakes again. More violently this time. Sections of the ceiling collapse, revealing the sky of cramped handwriting—and beyond it, fire. The flames have reached the throne room’s borders. We’re running out of time.

The Author watches from beside his throne, no longer amused. His form flickers with agitation, the text crawling across his skin rearranging itself into patterns of frustration and fear.

“You can’t win.” His voice has lost its harmonic composure. “Even if you reach me—even if you find a way to make me tangible—the fire will consume everything. You’ll die with me.”

“Then we die.” I kick aside a dying construct and advance another step toward the throne. “But you die first.”

“Why?” The question seems genuine. The Author stares at us with incomprehension in his script-filled eyes. “You could have run. Could have found the exit and escaped while I dealt with Midori’s flames. Why stay? Why fight?”

“Because some things deserve to burn.” Thyra’s voice carries across the chaos. “And some things are worth dying for.”

The Author’s expression hardens.

“So be it.”

He raises his hand, and reality breaks.

Not the constructs. Not the architecture. Reality itself. The rules that govern this space—even the twisted rules of the Inner Codex—shatter beneath his will.

I see the floor become a ceiling. The walls fold in directions that shouldn’t exist. The floating script freezes mid-spiral, then begins orbiting backward, rewriting the room’s history as it moves.

“You want to destroy me?” The Author’s voice thunders through the impossible space. “Then understand what you face. I am not a villain waiting to be slain. I am not a spell waiting to be burned. I am the accumulated knowledge of centuries, given consciousness, given WILL. In here, I am GOD.”

The gravity shifts. I stumble, catch myself on Thyra’s arm, feel her body pulling in a direction that doesn’t correspond to any floor.

“You are just WORDS I haven’t finished WRITING yet.”

The floor opens beneath me.

Not a crack. Not a gap. An abyss—a vast, hungry darkness filled with liquid ink that reaches up with a thousand tendrils, pulling, dragging, consuming.

I feel myself falling.

Thyra’s hand finds mine. Her grip is iron, her fingers locking around my wrist with strength I didn’t know she possessed. For a moment—a single, stretched heartbeat—I hang suspended between her anchor and the abyss’s pull.

“Korrath!” Her voice cuts through the chaos. Her eyes meet mine, and I see terror there—not for herself, but for me. “Don’t let go!”

The ink-tendrils wrap around my legs, my waist, my chest. They’re pulling harder now, dragging me down into darkness that goes forever. I can feel the Author’s malice in every drop, his victory in every inch I sink.

I could pull Thyra down with me. My grip on her wrist is strong enough. But if I do that—if we both fall—there’s no one left to stop the Author. No one left to make sure this book burns with its creator still inside.

“Let go.” The words tear out of me like a confession.

“No.”

“Thyra—“

“I said NO.” She throws herself flat against the edge of the abyss, using her body as an anchor, her free hand clawing at the page-paved floor. “I didn’t let you brand me just to watch you drown in ink.”

The Author laughs. The sound echoes through the dissolving room, through the impossible space, through the darkness that’s swallowing me inch by inch.

“How touching. The keeper and her spell-burner, clinging to each other as the world ends. I’ll remember this moment for centuries. I’ll add it to my collection—the tale of two monsters who thought they could destroy me with love.”

The ink pulls harder. My grip on Thyra’s wrist slips—just a fraction, but enough to feel the end approaching.

“Thyra.” I meet her eyes across the darkness between us. “Find a way to kill him. Whatever it takes.”