Orc’s Grimoire (The Veil Lands #12)

1. Thyra

ONE

THYRA

The grimoire is hungry tonight.

I feel it before I reach the Restricted Stacks—a pull in my blood, a whisper behind my ribs. The alchemical lanterns burn low in their iron sconces, their pale blue flames dimming as I pass. Living magic stirs nearby. The lanterns know. They’ve been warning me for three hours.

My bare feet are silent against the blood-channeled floors.

Cold stone. Ancient beneath my soles. Grooves worn smooth by centuries of sacrifice, of feeding, of keeping the darkness contained.

I’ve walked this path a thousand times in my years as keeper.

Tonight, each step feels heavier than the last.

The Black Archive stretches around me—endless vaulted halls of black stone, ceilings lost in shadow no light can pierce. Bone-inlaid shelves line the walls, reaching up into the dark. Some of those shelves move when I’m not watching. I’ve learned not to look directly at them.

Keep moving. Don’t stop. Don’t think about what else is awake down here.

My braids are pinned tight against my skull tonight—tighter than usual.

Loose hair can be used as an anchor point by sentient texts.

I learned that lesson the hard way three years ago, when a minor grimoire managed to catch a strand and nearly rewrote my memories before I could burn it loose.

The scar behind my left ear still aches when the barometric pressure drops.

The air tastes wrong. Dust and old ink, yes—that’s normal. The copper-sharp tang of dried blood—also normal. But underneath it, a new edge. A new craving. The temperature has dropped near the deeper stacks. A bad sign. The texts are restless.

Somewhere in the darkness, a book moans. Not a human sound—older, born before humans had words for their suffering. The moan cuts off abruptly, swallowed by the Archive’s strange acoustics. Sound behaves wrong down here. Whispers carry for miles. Screams die within feet.

I’ve never been certain which is worse—hearing the texts cry out, or the silence that follows.

I pass through the outer wards without slowing.

They taste my intentions, my blood, my purpose.

A faint sting across my skin—the magic reading me, judging me, deciding whether I deserve to pass.

Satisfied, they let me through with barely a whisper of resistance.

I’ve been doing this so long the magic recognizes me. Knows I belong here.

Or it has already claimed me.

The thought is unwelcome. I push it down, focus on placing one foot in front of the other.

The floor here is carved with seventeen different warning symbols in languages that predate human speech.

Most scholars can’t even look at them without developing nosebleeds.

I’ve memorized every curve, every angle, every bloodstain that marks where previous keepers failed to survive their tenure.

Three keepers before me. The first lasted four years before ink-madness took her—they found her trying to transcribe her own blood onto the Archive walls.

The second managed seven years, which was considered impressive until the grimoire decided to consume his mind rather than his blood.

The third… no one talks about the third.

The Elders burned her journals, salted her chambers, and pretended she never existed.

I’ve lasted six years. A middling performance. Not exceptional. Not doomed.

Yet.

The Restricted Stacks open before me. Chains hum in the darkness—rune-etched iron binding texts to lecterns, keeping them from reaching, from spreading. Some of the books pulse in the gloom. Others breathe. A few whisper my name as I pass, their voices scratching against my skull.

I ignore them. They’re not the one I’m here to feed.

The central lectern waits at the heart of the chamber. And on it, the grimoire.

Massive. Ancient. Bound in material that might have been leather once but now resembles aged skin—pale and wrong, stretched too tight over the spine. The cover is warm to the touch, perpetually warm, pulsing faintly in a rhythm I’ve come to recognize. A heartbeat. The book has a heartbeat.

I’ve studied that rhythm. Charted it. In the beginning, I thought it might help me predict the grimoire’s moods, its cravings, its dangerous periods.

All I learned was that the heartbeat doesn’t follow any pattern I can understand.

It speeds when the book is satisfied. Slows when it’s angry.

Sometimes it stops entirely for hours, and those are the worst times—the silences when I wonder if the thing has finally died, finally released me, finally stopped being my responsibility.

It never has. The heartbeat returns. It will return until one of us is ash.

Iron chains hold it to the lectern, every link etched with containment runes. The chains have never been enough. They’re not meant to stop it—just slow it down. Give the keeper time to feed it before it feeds itself.

Tonight, the chains are vibrating.

The runes glow faintly at the edges—warning sigils activating, containment spells straining. I can smell the magic working, a burnt-metal scent that coats my tongue and makes my teeth ache. The grimoire’s appetite has pushed the wards closer to failure than I’ve seen in months.

“I know,” I murmur. “I’m here.”

The grimoire’s cover twitches. Pages rustle without wind, without touch. A sound emerges from somewhere deep inside the binding—not quite a growl, not quite a sigh. Anticipation.

I draw my ritual knife from the sheath at my thigh. The blade is silver-etched, worn smooth from use. I know every nick in the handle, every imperfection in the edge. This knife has opened my flesh more times than I can count.

Twice a day. Every day. For six years.

The mathematics of sacrifice. Four thousand three hundred and eighty cuts. Enough blood to fill a small pool. Enough pain to drive most people mad. The Archivist Elders call it a calling. A sacred duty. A privilege.

I call it survival. Mine and everyone else’s.

The scars on my forearms itch beneath my sleeves. Ladder rungs of pale tissue climbing from wrist to elbow. I stopped counting the marks after the first year. No point keeping track of what’s become as routine as breathing.

I press the blade to my left palm. The cut is precise—deep enough to bleed freely, shallow enough to heal by morning.

I’ve perfected this movement through years of practice.

The angle. The pressure. The exact amount of pain required to produce the exact amount of blood.

The pain is familiar. Almost comforting.

Blood wells in my cupped hand. Dark red against pale olive skin. I hold it over the grimoire’s cover and let the first drops fall.

The book shudders.

Sigils flare across the binding—red-gold light tracing patterns I’ve memorized but never fully understood. The grimoire drinks. I feel it pulling at the wound, urging more blood to flow, greedy and desperate in a way that makes my stomach clench.

Too ravenous. It’s too ravenous tonight.

More blood falls. The cover grows warmer beneath my hovering palm. The chains’ vibration intensifies, rattling against the lectern. The book itself stirs—not the Author, not yet, but the sentient appetite that makes it more than paper and ink.

The feeding should be calming it. Instead, I feel the pressure against my consciousness increasing. Not attacking. Testing. The grimoire is tasting the edges of my thoughts the way a wolf tastes the air before it strikes.

“Easy.” My voice comes out steadier than I feel. “I’m giving you what you need.”

A page turns on its own. Then another. The rustling grows louder, more insistent. Words crawl across the exposed parchment—not the grimoire’s original text but new writing. Fresh. For me.

YOU’RE LATE.

“Thirty minutes.” I keep my tone calm. Reasonable. The grimoire responds to emotion. “I had other texts to check first.”

EXCUSES. WE’RE PAST EXCUSES, THYRA.

My name in its script. Not unusual—it’s done that before. But the familiarity in the phrasing unsettles me. All these years I’ve fed this thing, and it’s never felt quite so… personal.

The pressure on my consciousness increases. I grit my teeth and focus on the blood pooling in my palm, the steady drip onto the cover. Feed it enough, and it settles. That’s the arrangement. That’s what keeps us all alive.

My blood splashes against the binding. The grimoire drinks deeper, and I feel myself swaying.

Too much. It’s taking too much.

A shriek tears through the Restricted Stacks.

High. Thin. A sound that exists only in the space between magic and madness. A spell-scream. One of the lesser texts has awakened.

I rip my hand away from the grimoire, slapping my uncut palm against the wound to stanch the bleeding. The book lets out a sound of frustrated appetite—that half-growl, half-sigh—but I’m already moving.

Can’t let an awakened text roam free. Can’t.

The scream echoes strangely in the Stacks. I have to track the source by feel, by the wrongness in the air, by the way the temperature spikes in certain corridors.

There. Third row from the back. A grimoire no larger than my two hands side by side, bound in faded green leather that’s starting to split at the seams. The book is convulsing on its shelf, chains straining, pages fluttering in a wind that doesn’t exist.

I know this text. The Whispering Concordance. Relatively minor, as forbidden knowledge goes—a collection of communication spells that went wrong, carrying echoes of every message they ever transmitted. Sometimes those echoes want to be heard.

Last time it awakened, I spent three hours listening to a dead woman’s love letters. The messages played on repeat in my skull until I thought I’d go mad. The woman had been dead for two centuries. Her beloved for even longer. But their words remained, trapped in pages that refused to let them go.

Some knowledge is a curse. Some memories refuse to die.

Not dangerous. Not usually. But an awakened text draws attention. Feeds energy to other texts. Can trigger a cascade that turns the entire Archive into a screaming nightmare.

I’ve seen a cascade once. Just once. Survived it. Barely.

I pull chalk from the pouch at my belt and drop to my knees.

The floor here is marked with old containment circles, half-faded and useless.

I work fast, sketching new lines over old, adding sigils I’ve modified through years of practice.

My hand is steady despite the blood loss.

Despite the growing wrongness in my chest.

The Concordance’s screaming intensifies. I feel it pushing at me—not my mind, not directly, but my ears. My equilibrium. The book is trying to make me listen, to force its echoed messages into my skull.

“Shut up.” I finish the circle and slam my bleeding palm against the center.

Blood and magic flare. The containment runes activate, red-gold light racing around the circumference. The Concordance shudders, pages snapping shut, and goes still. Dormant again. The screaming stops.

My palm throbs. I’ve given too much blood tonight—first to the grimoire, now to containment. Dark spots swim at the edges of my vision.

Don’t pass out. Don’t you dare pass out down here.

I force myself upright. Steady my breathing. The dizziness recedes, slowly, reluctantly. I need to get back to the grimoire. Need to make sure it hasn’t—

Laughter.

Not the Concordance. Not any of the lesser texts.

The grimoire.

I find it exactly where I left it—chained to the central lectern, cover gleaming wetly where my blood still pools. But the pages have opened on their own, spread wide to expose parchment that glows faintly in the lantern light.

Words crawl across the surface. Not the ancient script of the original text, but new writing. Fresh. The ink is red-black and gleaming, and it moves, rearranging itself as I watch.

THYRA VIRE.

My full name. The one I’ve never spoken in the Archive. The one I left behind when I came here at twenty-one, desperate and determined and too stupid to know what I was getting into.

How does it know? I’ve been so careful. So precise. I’ve never let anything slip, never given it more than it needed, never—

YOU THINK BLOOD DOESN’T CARRY NAMES? YOU THINK I DON’T TASTE EVERYTHING YOU ARE EVERY TIME YOU FEED ME?

The words rearrange. The grimoire is writing faster now, script appearing and disappearing, thoughts forming and dissolving. I should close it. Should slam the cover shut and walk away. But I can’t move. Can’t look away.

I KNOW YOUR NAME, KEEPER. I KNOW YOUR SECRETS. I KNOW WHAT YOU’VE DONE TO KEEP ME FED.

Ice spreads through my veins. “You don’t know anything.”

More laughter. The sound vibrates through the lectern, through the floor, through my bones. A low, intimate amusement that makes my skin crawl.

DON’T I?

The script rearranges. And this time, what appears stops my heart.

Three names.

ARCHIVIST DENN. SCRIBE CALLIA. RESEARCHER VOSS.

I stop breathing.