18. Korrath
EIGHTEEN
KORRATH
The Scriptorium burns around me, Inscribed and spell-burners tearing into each other amid overturned tables and falling shelves. I spent two decades singing the same battle-chants echoing through the smoke now. I hear them as a death sentence.
“KORRATH!”
The voice cuts through the chaos like a blade through smoke.
I know that voice. I’ve known it for two decades—since I was a young orc learning to burn, since she took me under her tutelage and showed me what spell-burners could become. Since she first pressed an execution brand into my hands and told me to feel the relief that comes with ending.
Midori.
I turn, and there she is.
She stands at the Scriptorium’s main entrance, flanked by spell-burners, her lean form silhouetted against the flames behind her—filed tusks and burned-out conviction, exactly as I remembered her.
Her gaze drops to my chest, to the place where my tunic hangs torn, and I see her expression change.
She sees the mating mark.
The claiming sigil glows against my skin—I can feel it, responding to Thyra’s proximity, broadcasting what I am to anyone with eyes to see. It might as well be a confession written in fire.
“Korrath.” Midori’s voice carries over the screams and clash of battle, steady and cold. “You’ve been compromised.”
“High Purger.” I position myself between her and Thyra, blade raised. “This isn’t what it looks like.”
“Isn’t it?” She steps forward, and her escort parts around her.
Three execution brands hang at her belt—redundancy, she calls it.
The Order calls it paranoia. Her survival rate calls it practical.
“You were sent to destroy the grimoire. Instead, I find you running through the Archive with its keeper, wearing a mating mark that glows like a beacon.”
“The situation is more complex than the Order understood—“
“The situation is simple.” Another step.
“You’ve let magic into your heart. The mating mark—it’s as dangerous as any curse.
More dangerous, because it feels like love.
” Her pale eyes bore into mine. “I taught you this, Korrath. I taught you that all magic is contamination. All of it. Even the magic that claims to bind souls.”
“The mating mark isn’t—“
“All magic is the same.” She draws one of her execution brands, the metal glowing with contained heat. “It twists. It corrupts. It takes good orcs and turns them into traitors who run with witches instead of burning them.”
“She’s not just a witch.” The words escape before I can stop them. “She’s my mate.”
“Then you both die.”
She attacks.
Midori moves like lightning wrapped in scarred flesh.
Her execution brand sweeps toward my head in a strike that would cave in my skull if it landed. I parry with my blade, feel the impact jar through my arms, and barely get my feet moving before her follow-up thrust nearly takes me in the ribs.
She’s fast. Faster than she should be at her age, faster than any spell-burner I’ve faced. Thirty years of burning have honed her into a weapon of pure purpose, and that purpose is currently aimed at my throat.
Around us, the Scriptorium continues to burn. Inscribed and spell-burners die in droves, neither side paying any attention to our duel. We’re just two more combatants in a room full of violence, two more killers adding to the body count.
“Run!” I shout at Thyra without taking my eyes off Midori. “Get to the grimoire!”
“I’m not leaving you—“
“I’ll follow! Go!”
I hear Thyra’s footsteps retreating—not fleeing, just repositioning.
Smart. She knows she can’t help me in a fight like this.
Her knife against Midori’s brands would last approximately two seconds.
The best thing she can do is reach the grimoire, open the way to the Inner Codex, and trust me to catch up.
If I survive.
Midori presses her advantage, driving me back across the burning Scriptorium with a flurry of strikes that I barely manage to deflect.
Each impact sends shock waves through my arms. Each near-miss comes closer than the last. She’s not toying with me—she’s testing my defenses, learning my patterns, preparing for the killing blow.
“You were my best student.” Her voice doesn’t waver despite the exertion. “The most promising burner I’d trained in decades. And you threw it all away for a woman who feeds monsters.”
“I chose—“
“You let magic choose for you.” She feints left, strikes right, and her brand grazes my forearm hard enough to sear the skin.
I hiss in pain but keep my blade up. “The mating mark appeared, and you stopped thinking. Stopped questioning. Just surrendered to the magic like every other fool who’s ever worn one. ”
“That’s not what happened.”
“Isn’t it?” Another strike, another parry that leaves my arms aching. “Tell me, Korrath—did you choose her? Really choose her? Or did the mark make the choice and you convinced yourself it was your own decision?”
The question cuts deeper than her blade ever could.
Because for a moment—one dangerous moment—I don’t know.
The mark or the woman. The magic or the choice. I can’t tell the difference, and that terrifies me more than Midori’s blade ever has.
Midori sees it. Her pale eyes gleam with satisfaction.
“You see it now. The doubt. That’s what magic does, Korrath—it takes your certainty and replaces it with questions you can never answer.” She raises her brand for another strike. “The kindest thing I can do is end it. End you. Before the magic twists you into a creature you’d hate.”
I should be afraid. Should be frantic, scrambling for an advantage, fighting for my life with everything I have.
Instead, I think about Thyra.
About the way she looked at me when I laid her sins bare. The calculation in her eyes, the cold pragmatism that lets her weigh lives like coins. The fact that she didn’t flinch. Didn’t turn away. Just looked back at me and said, “I’d do it again.”
That wasn’t the mark. That was her.
And my response—“That’s why I chose you”—wasn’t compulsion. Wasn’t magic making decisions for me. It was recognition. Two people seeing each other clearly and deciding to stand side by side anyway.
The mating mark didn’t create that. It just gave it a name.
“You’re wrong.”
I catch Midori’s descending brand on my blade, muscles screaming with the effort, and push. She staggers back a step—just a step, but it’s enough.
“The mark didn’t choose for me. It showed me what I wanted.” I advance, pressing my advantage for the first time in our exchange. “She’s a monster, Midori. Cold and calculating and capable of terrible things. And so am I. We fit.”
“You fit because magic made you fit—“
“I fit because I’ve spent two decades destroying everything I touch, and she’s the first person who looked at that and didn’t turn away.” My blade flashes, and Midori has to retreat another step. “I chose her. Not the mark. Me.”
“Sentiment.” She spits the word like a curse, like poison she needs to expel before it takes root. “The magic has rotted your judgment. Made you weak.”
“Made me selective.” Another strike, another retreat.
I’m not a better fighter than Midori—she has thirty years on me, thirty years of skill and experience and the absolute certainty that she’s right.
But I have a reason to win that goes beyond duty.
Beyond orders. Beyond the Order itself. “I still burn, High Purger. I’ll burn for the rest of my life.
But now I choose what deserves the fire. ”
“Everything deserves the fire!”
Her control shatters. She comes at me with wild fury, brands whirling, thirty years of fanaticism unleashed in a storm of killing intent. I give ground, barely parrying, feeling the heat of her weapons sear past my face, my arms, my chest.
She’s going to kill me. She’s faster, more experienced, more skilled. In a straight fight, she wins every time.
Good thing I’m not planning to fight straight.
The next time Midori overextends, I don’t parry.
I duck under her strike and run.
“COWARD!” Her scream chases me across the burning Scriptorium. “TRAITOR! YOU CAN’T RUN FROM WHAT YOU ARE!”
She’s right. I can’t run from what I am. But I can run toward what I’ve chosen.
I vault over a burning table, weave between spell-burners locked in combat with Inscribed, dodge a spell-construct that lunges at me with ink-dripping jaws. The doorway Thyra indicated looms ahead—the passage to the gallery level, to the Restricted Stacks, to the grimoire.
To her.
Midori’s footsteps thunder behind me. She’s chasing—of course she’s chasing. I was her best student, and now I’m her greatest failure. She won’t let me escape. Won’t let me prove that everything she believes might be wrong.
I hit the doorway at full speed, shoulder-checking the half-closed door hard enough to tear it from its hinges. The gallery level spreads before me—more chaos, more fire, more death. But I can see the entrance to the Restricted Stacks ahead.
And I know Thyra is close. The mating mark pulses with urgent heat.
I burst into the Restricted Stacks to find Thyra standing at the grimoire’s lectern, her bleeding palm pressed to its cover.
The book is open.
Not to pages—to darkness. A doorway has formed above the lectern, a portal of absolute blackness that swallows light and sound and reason.
The edges shimmer with script that writes and rewrites itself in an endless loop of frantic magic.
The Inner Codex. The space inside the grimoire’s pages where the Author has ruled for centuries.
Where he can finally be destroyed.
“Korrath!” Thyra’s voice carries raw relief. Blood drips from her palm onto the grimoire’s cover, feeding the portal, keeping the doorway open. “I wasn’t sure you’d—“
“I’m here.” I cross to her in three strides, catch her elbow, pull her close. The mating mark flares at the contact, burning with renewed heat. “Is it ready?”
“The grimoire opened the way. It took more blood than I expected, but the path is stable.” She meets my eyes, and I see the exhaustion there, the cost of what she’s done. “But once we go through—“
“No way back. I know.” I look at the darkness hovering above the lectern, feel its pull like gravity working sideways. Like hunger given form. “The Author’s in there?”
“His true form. His consciousness. Everything he is.” She meets my eyes. “This is our only chance, Korrath. If we don’t end him now, while Midori’s forces have him distracted—“
The door to the Restricted Stacks explodes inward.
Midori stands in the doorway, flanked by spell-burners, her pale eyes blazing with fury that borders on madness.
“You’re not going anywhere, traitor.” She raises her brand. “Not into that book. Not anywhere. You burn here, with the rest of the contamination.”
“Midori—“
“I trained you.” Her voice cracks, and for just a moment, I see beneath the fanaticism. Pain. Betrayal. The grief of a teacher watching her student choose a different path. “I made you what you are. And this is how you repay me?”
“You made me a weapon.” I position myself between her and Thyra, between her and the doorway to the Inner Codex. “But weapons can choose their targets. I’m choosing mine.”
“Then choose death.”
She lunges.
I don’t fight her.
Instead, I grab Thyra’s hand and throw us both backward into the darkness.
The grimoire swallows us.
I hear Midori’s scream of rage—feel the heat of her brand passing inches from my face as we fall into the portal—see the Restricted Stacks receding above us, shrinking, vanishing as the doorway snaps shut.
And then there’s nothing.
Nothing but darkness and falling and the grip of Thyra’s fingers in mine, the only solid thing in a universe that’s suddenly lost all meaning.
We fall for seconds or hours or years.
When we land, we land hard.
The ground beneath me isn’t ground. I push myself up on hands and knees, feel the liquid darkness try to drag me down, and haul myself to my feet through sheer force of will.
Thyra is beside me. Alive. Whole. Her hand still grips mine, her fingers white-knuckled with fierce determination.