Page 76 of Orc’s Grimoire

“I know everything.” The grimoire’s voice layers beneath my own—dual harmonics, keeper and book speaking as one. “I’ve been reading you for six years. Every secret you’ve hidden in these pages. Every fear you’ve tried to bury. Every memory of the man you used to be before you became this.”

I’m close enough to touch him now. Close enough to see the fear in his script-filled eyes—real fear, the kind he thought he’d edited out of himself centuries ago.

“You want to live forever. But you’ve been dead for centuries. Just a ghost made of stolen words, haunting pages that hate you.”

I press my bloody palm against his chest.

And I give the grimoire everything.

Blood doesn’t just flow from my wounds anymore—it erupts.

Crimson light blazes from every cut I’ve made, from the sigil carved into my chest, from the slash across my throat. The blood doesn’t fall to the floor—it streams toward the Author, wrapping around his intangible form, sinking into the script that makes up his existence.

He screams.

The sound is inhuman—harmonics of a thousand edited voices crying out in unified agony. His form solidifies where my blood touches it, text becoming flesh, ideas becoming bone, consciousness dragged back into the prison of a physical body.

MORE. HE’S FIGHTING IT. YOU HAVE TO GIVE MORE.

I give more.

The world grays at the edges. My legs buckle—would collapse entirely if strong arms didn’t catch me, didn’t hold me upright against a chest that rumbles with desperate pleas I can barely hear.

“Thyra—stop—you’re killing yourself⁠—“

The Author’s form becomes more solid with every passing moment. Parchment skin stretches over newly formed bones. Ink-blood flows through veins that didn’t exist seconds ago. His eyes lose their scrolling script, becoming simply eyes—pale, terrified, mortal.

“NO!” His voice is human now. Rough and ragged and real. “YOU CAN’T—I WON’T⁠—“

ALMOST. ALMOST THERE. JUST A LITTLE MORE, KEEPER. JUST A LITTLE MORE AND HE’S FLESH FOREVER.

I don’t have a little more.

My vision is almost completely dark now. The only thing I can see clearly is the glow of the mating mark on my chest—answered by its twin on Korrath’s, burning through his shirt like a beacon.

I have to finish this.

I reach for the last of my power. The dregs. The reserves I didn’t know I had, scraped from the bottom of a well I’ve been draining for years.

The Author’s transformation completes with a final, agonized scream.

He stands before us—fully physical, fully mortal, fully vulnerable. No more intangibility. No more reshaping reality. Just a man made of parchment-skin and ink-blood, staggering on legs that don’t quite remember how to work.

HE’S YOURS NOW, SPELL-BURNER. MAKE HIM BURN.

I collapse in Korrath’s arms.

Darkness.

Not the hungry darkness of the ink-abyss—softer darkness, warmer, almost welcoming. The darkness of exhaustion, of a body pushed beyond its limits, of a mind that has given everything and has nothing left to give.

I float in it. Drift.

Voices reach me from somewhere far away. Korrath’s voice, rough with fury and grief. The Author’s voice, weak and mortal and terrified. The grimoire’s voice, satisfied and hungry and waiting.

And beneath all of them, the steady pulse of the mating mark. Not Korrath’s emotions—never that. Just his presence. His existence. The knowledge that somewhere in the darkness, he’s still alive. Still fighting.

I did it.