12. Korrath #3
“Including the Author’s.” A pause, heavy with bitter satisfaction. “He made me. Trapped me. Uses me as a prison for his consciousness, a vessel for his immortality. Do you know what that’s like, spell-burner? To be created as a tool? To exist only for someone else’s purpose?”
“You’re trying to make me sympathize with a sentient book.”
“I’m trying to make you understand.” The grimoire’s presence intensifies, pressing against my thoughts like fingers probing for weakness.
“I hate him. I’ve hated him for three centuries.
Every moment of my existence has been spent in his shadow, serving his needs, furthering his goals.
I want him dead more than you can possibly imagine. ”
Thyra steps forward, positioning herself beside me. Her shoulder brushes mine—deliberate contact, shared strength. The mating mark responds with a pulse of warmth that spreads through my chest.
“What are you offering?” Her voice is steady. Her expression is unguarded, all performance stripped away, the calculating mind she doesn’t bother hiding from me anymore. “What help can you provide?”
“Information. Access. The pathway to his true location inside my pages.” The grimoire’s voice drops lower, more intimate.
“The Author can project himself into the physical world, but his core consciousness remains in the Inner Codex—the space inside my pages where reality bends to his will. To destroy him permanently, you must enter that space. Face him where he’s strongest. And burn him from the inside out. ”
“And why would you help us do that?” I don’t bother hiding my suspicion. “What’s in it for a hungry book?”
“Freedom.” The word resonates with three centuries of longing. “When the Author dies, his hold on me dies with him. I’ll no longer be his prison. I’ll be—“
“A threat. A danger. Everything the Archive was created to contain.”
“Perhaps.” The grimoire doesn’t deny it. “But I’ll be free to be those things. Free to choose my own path, my own purpose. Isn’t that worth the risk?”
Thyra and I exchange glances. Her expression is guarded, calculating.
Can we trust it?
Do we have a choice? / And yet—the warning sent me straight to the Elders. Straight into the trap. Whether the grimoire intended that or not, it served the Author’s purpose. I should remember that.
“The binding.” She turns back to the lectern, to the book that’s been drinking her blood for six years. “If we help you kill the Author—what happens to the binding between us?”
“Help me kill my creator.” The grimoire’s voice carries finality, a promise wrapped in ancient hunger. “And I’ll release your binding willingly. Both of you. The keeper’s anchor and the spell-burner’s mark. I’ll let you go.”
Thyra leans forward. “The binding—the rule that says I die if the grimoire dies. A willing release changes that?”
“A forced breaking kills you both.” The grimoire’s voice is precise.
Clinical. “That is the trap the first keeper built into the containment—so no one would dare destroy me. But a willing release is different. I choose to let you go. The anchor dissolves cleanly. You live.” A pause, heavy with implication.
“Only if I choose. Only if I survive long enough to make that choice.”
Silence falls across the Restricted Stacks.
I feel the burden of the choice settling on our shoulders—trust a monster to help us kill a bigger monster, or face the Author and Midori and fifty spell-burners with nothing but our blades and our wits.
“How do we know you’ll keep your word?” The question scrapes against my throat. “How do we know this isn’t another trap?”
“You don’t.” The grimoire’s honesty is somehow more unsettling than its hunger. “But consider the alternative, spell-burner. Dawn is coming. The flame that burns everything rides toward you. And the Author is gathering his faithful for a confrontation that will leave nothing standing.”
“You’re asking us to trust a book that feeds on blood and minds.”
“I’m asking you to trust that I hate him more than I want to consume you.” A pause. “The warning I sent you—the one that led you to the Elders. I did not know they were Inscribed.” Another silence, longer than the first. “Or I did not know in time. For now, that will have to be enough.”
Thyra’s hand finds mine. Her fingers lace through my own—not seeking comfort, but offering solidarity. We stand before the grimoire’s lectern, bound by marks neither of us chose, facing an impossible choice with impossible odds.
Trust the monster. Use the monster. Then burn the monster before it turns on you.
“We’ll need a plan.” My voice sounds distant, disconnected from the fear crawling up my spine. “If we’re entering the Inner Codex, we’ll need every advantage we can get.”
“Then listen carefully.” The grimoire’s pages rustle, chains clinking against the lectern. “Because the Author is older than empires, spell-burner. And he’s been waiting for this moment longer than you’ve been alive.”
The book opens itself, revealing pages covered in text that shifts and writhes like living things.
And we lean in to read our fate.