Page 79 of Orc’s Grimoire

The Author burns from the inside out.

The execution brand isn’t just fire—it’s spell-death, magic designed to consume magic, to turn living power into nothing but ash and memory. The flames spread through his parchment-flesh like wildfire through dry grass, eating through muscle and bone and the centuries of accumulated knowledge that make up his existence.

He screams.

The sound is inhuman—the death-cry of something that never should have lived this long. It echoes through the collapsing throne room, making the walls shudder, making the embedded faces wail in sympathetic agony.

I watch him burn. Page by page. Word by word. His skin curls and blackens, revealing text beneath—not words on flesh, but words that ARE flesh, the script that made up his existence now turning to ash before my eyes.

“No—“ His voice is fragmenting, losing coherence as the flames consume the patterns that made speech possible. “I was—supposed to—live—forever⁠—“

“Forever ended.” I twist the blade still buried in his chest. “Say hello to oblivion for me.”

The Author’s form collapses.

Not like flesh collapsing—like paper collapsing. He crumples, folds, becomes a pile of burning pages that scatter across the floor. The throne behind him catches fire next, the chained grimoires screaming as the flames spread, their stolen knowledge finally escaping in columns of smoke and ash.

I stand over the pyre that used to be a god.

Centuries of forbidden knowledge. Centuries of accumulated power. Centuries of edited minds and consumed souls and rewritten histories. All of it, burning. All of it, ending. All of it becoming nothing but ash on the floor of a dying book.

The satisfaction should feel hollow. Should feel like just another execution, just another burning, just another day in the life of a weapon that exists only to destroy. After twenty years, the endings blur into each other. After a hundred burnings, you stop counting.

This one doesn’t feel like the others.

This feels like justice.

Good.

The Inner Codex is dying.

Without the Author to hold it stable, the space is tearing itself apart. The parchment-flesh walls melt like candles in a furnace, the embedded faces screaming as they dissolve. The page-paved floor cracks and buckles, revealing darkness beneath. The floating script that circled the throne room scatters into meaningless fragments, letters raining down like burning snow.

And the fire. The fire is everywhere now—not just from my brand, but from outside. Midori’s flames, finally reaching the Codex’s heart, consuming everything they touch.

I turn back to Thyra.

She hasn’t moved. Her eyes are still unfocused, her breathing still shallow, her blood still spreading across the dissolving floor. But she’s alive. The mating mark on her chest glows faintly, a dim ember in the growing darkness.

I gather her into my arms.

“We need to get out.” The words feel inadequate. We’re inside a dying book, surrounded by fire and collapsing architecture, with no visible exit and no guarantee that escape is even possible.

The grimoire answers.

SPELL-BURNER.

The voice thunders through my mind—not words, but concepts. Gratitude. Satisfaction. And something else. Regret.

THE BOOK BURNS. BUT I KEPT MY PROMISE. THE BINDING IS RELEASED.

The keeper… I project the thought at the voice, hoping it can hear me. She’s dying. She gave you everything. Can you save her?

A pause. The Codex shudders around us, another section of ceiling crumbling in a shower of fire and ash.

SHE GAVE ME EVERYTHING. BUT I CAN GIVE SOMETHING BACK.

The grimoire’s presence wraps around Thyra—not possessing, not consuming, but… healing. The mating mark on my chest flares as power flows into her from the book she’s fed for six years. Not blood—raw magical energy, poured into her dying body, filling the emptiness she created with her sacrifice.