19. Thyra
NINETEEN
THYRA
We’ve been walking for what feels like hours.
Time moves strangely here. Each step forward might cover a mile or an inch—impossible to tell in a space where distance is just another lie the Author tells. The throne looms in the distance, never seeming to get closer, its chained grimoires pulsing with accumulated power that makes my teeth ache.
Korrath walks at my side, blade drawn, every line of his body radiating controlled violence. He hasn’t spoken since we entered. Neither have I. There’s nothing to say that the Author isn’t already listening to.
The mating mark burns steady against my skin—not warning, just presence. He’s here. He’s real. In this place where reality rewrites itself between heartbeats, that certainty is the only anchor I have.
Then the grimoire speaks.
The voice enters my mind without warning—not words exactly, but concepts pressed directly into my consciousness.
THE THRONE IS AT THE CENTER.
I flinch. Korrath’s hand finds my elbow, steadying me.
“What is it?”
“The grimoire. It’s… talking to me.” I press my palm against my temple, trying to organize the flood of information. “Showing me things.”
More concepts pour in. Images. Directions that don’t correspond to any physical space. The grimoire is trying to guide us, but its mind doesn’t work the way mortal minds work. It thinks in pages and chapters and cross-references, not in left and right and forward.
DESTROY HIM AT THE THRONE, AND HE DIES PERMANENTLY.
The grimoire’s voice resonates with urgent intensity.
BUT HE WILL MAKE YOU WALK THROUGH EVERYTHING HE KNOWS TO REACH IT.
Everything he knows.
Centuries of accumulated forbidden knowledge. Every spell the grimoire has consumed. Every secret it has stolen. Every mind the Author has edited and absorbed. All of it, given form, given teeth, waiting for us in the space between here and the throne.
“The Author’s throne is at the center of the Codex.” I relay the information to Korrath, translating the grimoire’s alien thoughts into words he can understand. “We have to reach it to destroy him permanently. But he’s going to throw everything he has at us to stop us.”
“Everything he has.” Korrath’s grip tightens on his blade. “Meaning?”
“Centuries of stolen knowledge. Living spells. Nightmares made flesh.” I meet his eyes. “And apparently, our own memories.”
“Memories?”
“He’ll try to break us. Use what we know against us.” The grimoire showed me that too—the Author’s favorite tactic. He doesn’t just fight with magic. He fights with truth. “We need to keep moving. Don’t let him slow us down.”
Korrath nods once. Forward, then.
We walk into the nightmare.
The parchment-flesh walls part before us, revealing a doorway that wasn’t there a moment ago.
We step through into fire.
Not metaphorical fire—real flames, roaring and hungry, consuming everything they touch. I throw up my arm to shield my face, feel the heat sear my skin, smell the thick smoke of burning wood and burning flesh.
A village burns around us.
Thatched roofs collapse in showers of sparks.
Screams echo from buildings already consumed by flame.
Figures run through the chaos—villagers, farmers, children—their clothes catching fire as they flee, their bodies crumpling as the flames take them.
A woman clutches an infant to her chest, trying to outrun the fire; both of them disappear into a wall of flame.
An old man stands in the village square, too stunned to move, and burns where he stands.
I know this place. I’ve heard him say the name in his sleep.
“Thornhaven.” My voice comes out hoarse, and I stop myself before I say the rest. Not a century ago. Not someone else’s failure. “Korrath—“ But he’s already turning away from me, his jaw locked tight.
“This isn’t real.” Korrath’s blade sweeps through a burning timber that falls toward us, shattering it into harmless fragments. “The Author is showing us memories. Trying to shake us.”
He’s right. The fire doesn’t actually burn—I can feel its heat, but when the flames touch my robes, they pass through without damage.
The screaming villagers don’t see us, don’t react to our presence.
We’re ghosts walking through a memory that the grimoire preserved, observers to a tragedy that happened before either of us was born.
But the horror is real. The guilt is real.
Because this village burned because someone failed. A keeper, a century ago, who didn’t feed the grimoire enough blood. Who let a contained spell slip free during a moment of weakness. Who watched from a safe distance as innocent people paid the price for their negligence.
That could have been me. That could be any keeper who makes a mistake. One moment of carelessness, and hundreds die.
“Move.” Korrath grabs my arm, pulls me forward. “Don’t look. Don’t think. Just move.”
We push through the burning village, stepping over bodies that dissolve into ink when we get too close.
The heat presses against us from every direction.
Smoke fills my lungs—it’s not real, I know it’s not real, but my body doesn’t care.
I cough and choke and stumble, and Korrath’s arm around my waist is the only thing keeping me upright.
The doorway at the far end beckons—another gap in reality, another passage deeper into the Codex.
We step through.
And I watch Korrath’s face go pale.
The room is made of fire and death and execution brands.
No—not a room. A gallery. A museum of horrors, with Korrath as both artist and subject.
The walls are lined with scenes playing out in living ink. Each scene is a memory—his memory—rendered in perfect detail. I can see the texture of the cloth, the glint of steel, the expressions on faces frozen in the moment of ending.
In the first scene, a young orc presses an execution brand to the chest of a bound witch. The witch screams, smoke rising from the contact point, and the orc’s face shows… relief. Peace. The satisfaction of a job well done.
In the second scene, a village burns. Not Thornhaven—somewhere else. Somewhere the Order determined was contaminated, that needed to be purged. Spell-burners move through the flames, methodically ensuring that nothing survives.
In the third scene, a family huddles in a cellar while boots thunder overhead. The door splinters. An execution brand glows in the darkness. Children scream.
Thornhaven. He doesn’t look away.
“Korrath.” I reach for his arm, but he flinches away.
“I know what this is.” His voice is flat. Dead. “The Author’s trying to break me. Using my past against me.”
“Then don’t look. Don’t—“
“I’ve already looked.” He turns, and his ember eyes are haunted in a way I’ve never seen. “Every day, Thyra. Every day for twenty years. I know what I am. I know what I’ve done. He can’t show me anything I haven’t already seen in my own nightmares.”