Page 74 of Orc’s Grimoire

Not a metaphor—an actual scream, torn from the throat of reality itself. The parchment-flesh walls writhe, their embedded faces twisting in expressions that shift from worship to rage. The floating script stops its lazy spiral and begins orbiting frantically, words colliding, sentences shattering into fragments of meaning.

I pour more blood into the architecture. Not feeding the grimoire this time—flooding it. Overwhelming the systems that have kept this space stable for centuries. I’m the anchor that holds the grimoire to reality; now I’m using that anchor to tear its prison apart.

“You’ll kill us all!” The Author stumbles backward, his intangible form flickering, becoming less solid with every passing moment. The text crawling across his robes rearranges itself into patterns of panic. “Yourself included!”

“I’ve been dying for six years.” My voice resonates through the collapsing space. “Every drop I’ve given this book has been borrowed from my future. What’s a little more?”

The floor buckles. Cracks spread through the page-paved surface, revealing darkness beneath—but not the hungry darkness of the ink-abyss. Different darkness. Deeper. The void that exists between the pages, the space where the grimoire stores its most dangerous secrets.

And from that darkness, I hear a sound that makes my heart stutter.

A gasp.

A cough.

A familiar voice, rough with fury, shouting my name.

The ink-abyss ruptures.

It tears open like a wound, spewing liquid darkness across the dissolving throne room. And from its depths, clawing his way back to the surface with nothing but raw determination, comes Korrath.

He looks like death given form. Ink stains his skin, his clothes, his hair. His eyes blaze with ember fire that refuses to be extinguished. His blade is gone—lost to the abyss—but his hands are weapons enough, massive and scarred and reaching for me with desperate intensity.

“Thyra!”

He sees the blood. Sees the cuts on my arms, my chest, my throat. Sees the rivers of crimson streaming from wounds that should have killed me already.

His face goes white beneath the ink stains.

“What did you do?”

“What I had to.” I don’t stop the bleeding. Can’t stop it now—the ritual has begun, and interrupting it would be worse than finishing it. “The grimoire needed power to fight him. I had power to give.”

“You’re dying.” He crosses the distance between us in three massive strides, his hands finding my face, my shoulders, the pulse point at my throat. Checking for damage. Calculating how much time I have left. “You’re bleeding out⁠—“

“I know.” I lean into his touch. Just for a moment. Just long enough to feel his warmth against my blood-chilled skin, his strength supporting my weakening body. “But I got you back. That’s what matters.”

“No.” His voice breaks on the word. The mask slips—the controlled, disciplined spell-burner replaced by a man watching the woman he claimed dying in his arms. “No, this is not what matters. You are what matters. You⁠—“

“Korrath.” I press my bloody palm against his chest, feel the mating mark beneath his shirt pulse with answering heat. “I’m not finished yet.”

TWENTY-THREE

THYRA

The throne room continues to collapse around us. Sections of ceiling crash down, revealing fire—the flames from Midori’s brands, finally reaching the Codex’s heart. The walls melt like candles in a furnace, parchment-flesh running liquid, the embedded faces screaming as they dissolve.

The Author hovers at the edge of the destruction, his form more transparent than ever. The destabilization is affecting him too—without a stable Codex, he’s losing his grip on physical manifestation. Soon he’ll dissolve into pure information, scatter across whatever remains of the grimoire’s pages, wait for another chance to rebuild.

I can’t let that happen.

KEEPER.

The grimoire’s voice thunders through my blood-soaked consciousness.

I CAN HELP YOU END THIS.

How?