Page 21 of Orc’s Grimoire

KORRATH

The door holds for exactly three seconds.

Then the wards shatter.

Light explodes through the seams—red-gold and searing, carrying the smell of burning sigils and ancient magic tearing itself apart. Thyra stumbles back, her hands still raised, blood still dripping from her palms where she’s been feeding power into protections that were never going to be enough.

I grab her arm and haul her behind me as the door blows inward.

Ink pours through the opening.

Not a trickle. Not a stream. A tide—black and glistening and alive, surging across the floor of the outer Archive with the deliberate malice of floodwaters seeking the lowest ground. It moves against gravity, against reason, pooling and rising and taking shape.

The grimoire. It’s not just awake. It’s hunting.

“Move!” I shove Thyra toward the far corridor, drawing my blade with one hand and my brand with the other. The metal blazes hot in my grip, responding to the living magic flooding the chamber. “Get to the upper levels!”

“I can’t leave⁠—“

“You can die here or die useful. Choose.”

She hesitates for a heartbeat. Then she runs.

Good. One less thing to protect.

The tide reaches the center of the chamber and begins to rise.

Shapes emerge from the darkness.

Wolves first—massive things made of liquid black, their bodies flowing and reforming as they prowl. Eyes of gleaming script stare from faces that shouldn’t exist. Jaws open to reveal teeth of solidified ink, sharp as obsidian and twice as cruel.

Behind them, birds. Creatures with wings of dripping shadow and beaks of cramped handwriting, circling near the ceiling, waiting for an opening.

And behind those, worse things. Shapes that don’t have names. Limbs that bend wrong. Mouths that open in places mouths shouldn’t be. They move in patterns that hurt to watch, geometry that slides against the inside of my skull.

The grimoire isn’t just attacking. It’s showing off.

I don’t give it time to finish.

The first wolf lunges, and I meet it with my brand. The metal sears through ink-flesh with a hiss of dying magic, and the construct screams—a sound of rending parchment and dissolving thought. It bursts apart, splattering the floor with liquid darkness that immediately begins crawling back toward the main tide.

They reform. Of course they reform.

Two more wolves circle left. A bird dives from above. I pivot, blade slashing through one wolf while my brand catches the bird mid-descent. Ash and ink rain down around me. The heat of destruction floods through my veins.

Good. This is good. This is what I was built for.

The addiction sings in my blood. Every kill feeds it. Every screaming spell, every dissolving construct, every burst of dying magic—relief pours through me, sharp and sweet and terrible.

I know I should be worried about that.

I don’t care.

The Archive burns around me.

Alchemical lanterns shatter as the ink-creatures swarm, spilling pale blue fire across shelves of forbidden texts. Books shriek as they die—some in human voices, some in languages that have no sound. The air fills with smoke and ash and the copper-tang of blood magic unleashed.

I carve through the chaos like fire through dry paper.