Chapter 16 #2
“The first High King was powerful, but he wasn’t foolish. He understood that all magic has a cost. So he built in a safeguard—a way to end the Curse if it ever became necessary.”
“Why would he do that?”
“Because he believed his descendants would be wise enough to use it properly. To release the orcs if circumstances changed.” Vorlag’s expression grew bitter. “He couldn’t have imagined someone like Lasseran. Someone who would twist his creation into something even more monstrous.”
“So you’re saying the answer to breaking the Curse is in these texts.”
“I believe so, yes. Hidden beneath the surface meaning. Deliberately obscured so that only someone with the right knowledge could find it.”
“Knowledge you’re hoping I have.”
“You’ve already proven you can read the ancient script faster than anyone I’ve ever seen. You see patterns where others see chaos. If anyone can find the hidden truth, it’s you.”
She stared at the scrolls scattered across the table as her mind raced.
“Lasseran doesn’t know. About reversing the curse.”
“I don’t believe so, no. He thinks these texts will help him perfect his control ritual. Make it stronger. More permanent.”
“But if I find the answer first…”
“We might have a chance to stop him. To free the orcs rather than enslave them further.”
She closed her eyes, thinking hard. Three days to find a counter-curse hidden in an ancient text written in a language she’d only started learning a week ago.
The academic part of her brain said it was impossible.
But the part of her that had already done impossible things—survived being pulled through a portal, learned a new language with shocking speed, and stood up to a High King—said it might not be.
“I need to understand the Veilborn’s role,” she said, opening her eyes. “If they created the curse, they must have left clues. Instructions. Something.”
“We did.” Vorlag pulled another scroll toward them. “But those clues have been lost or destroyed over the centuries. All that remains are fragments. Pieces of a larger puzzle.”
“Then we put the puzzle together.”
“It’s not that simple—”
“It never is.” She squared her shoulders. “But I’m very good at puzzles, Vorlag. Show me what you have.”
For the next several hours, they worked.
Vorlag brought out texts she hadn’t seen before.
Ancient scrolls that had been carefully preserved in the deepest parts of the library.
Some were so fragile they could barely be touched.
But all of them contained pieces of the truth—references to binding rituals, mentions of blood magic and sacrifice, oblique discussions of balance and natural order.
And underneath it all, a thread of something else.
Guilt.
The original Veilborn priests had known what they were creating was wrong. They had understood the moral weight of cursing an entire people, even if their original intentions had been good. They’d hidden their objections in careful language and buried their protests in footnotes and marginal notes.
But it was there.
“They regretted it,” she said, running her finger along a particularly dense passage. “The priests who helped create the Curse. They knew it was wrong even as they did it.”
“Yes, but they served the throne and the throne commanded.”
“Just following orders,” she said bitterly. “Where have I heard that before?”
Vorlag winced. “It was also a dangerous time. The Five Kingdoms needed the power of the Beast Curse. They didn’t know it would go so wrong. And believe me, I’ve spent years grappling with my own complicity. My own silence in the face of atrocity.”
“What changed?”
“I did. Or rather, I finally admitted what I’d always known—that obedience to evil is itself evil. That institutions built on injustice deserve to fall.”
“Even if it costs you everything?”
“Especially then.” He met her eyes. “Because what good is safety if it requires betraying everything you claim to value?”
She thought of Khorrek, and of the terrible choice he faced between loyalty to the High King and loyalty to his own conscience, between what he’d been taught and what he felt.
“Khorrek is going to have to choose,” she said quietly. “Eventually Lasseran will force him to choose between obedience and what’s right. And I don’t know which way he’ll go.”
“He’s already choosing,” Vorlag said. “Every time he shows you kindness or questions an order. Every small act of rebellion is a choice.”
“But will it be enough? When it really matters?”
“I don’t know. But I believe he has the strength to break free. If he has a reason.”
“A reason?”
“You, Dr. Monroe.” Vorlag smiled gently. “You’re his reason. His hope for something beyond survival and obedience. He just has to realize it.”
Her throat tightened.
She wanted to believe that. She wanted to think she could be enough to help Khorrek overcome forty years of conditioning. But she was also a realist. Some damage ran too deep, and some scars never fully healed.
All she could do was offer him the choice—the possibility of something different. Whether he took it was up to him.
“Let’s focus on what we can control,” she said, pushing her emotions aside. “Breaking the curse. Finding the counter-ritual. That’s something concrete. Something I can actually do.”
“Agreed.”
They bent over the texts again. Her back protested the hours of sitting hunched over scrolls, but she barely noticed. This was a puzzle she had to solve.
“Here.” She pointed to a symbol that kept recurring. “This appears in every major section. Always in the same relative position. What is it?”
Vorlag leaned closer. “It’s… balance. Or equilibrium. The natural order.”
“Why would that be important in a text about creating a Curse?”
“Because all magic requires balance. For every action, there must be an equal and opposite reaction. You can’t create something without destroying something else. Can’t bind without offering freedom elsewhere.”
“So when they created the Beast Curse, they had to create the counter-curse simultaneously?”
“Theoretically, yes. The mechanism for breaking it would have been built into the curse itself. Like a key hidden inside a lock.”
“Which means if we can understand how the Curse works—truly understand it, not just the surface mechanism—we’ll understand how to break it.”
“Yes. But that understanding has been deliberately hidden behind layers of misdirection and false trails.”
“Because they didn’t want future High Kings to find it.”
“Precisely. They wanted the option available, but only to those who had the wisdom to use it properly.” Vorlag’s expression grew troubled. “Lasseran is many things, but wise is not one of them.”
“So we have to find it first.”
“We have to find it, period. Lasseran doesn’t even know he’s looking for a counter-curse. He thinks these texts will help him strengthen his control.”
“What happens when he realizes we’re looking for a way to undo everything?”
“I imagine he’ll be quite upset.”
The dry understatement made her laugh despite herself. “That’s one way to put it.”
“Dr. Monroe, I need you to understand something.” Vorlag’s tone grew serious.
“If we succeed in this—if we find the counter-curse and break the Beast Curse entirely—it will change everything. The orcs of Norhaven will be free for the first time in hundreds of years. Lasseran’s plans will be ruined.
And he will do everything in his power to punish those responsible. ”
“I know.”
“You could die. We all could. Khorrek included.”
“I know that too.”
“And you’re willing to accept that risk?”
She thought about Khorrek’s face as he’d told her about his childhood, and the emptiness in his voice as he’d described the training halls. She thought about an entire people cursed for hundreds of years. She thought about Lasseran’s empty eyes and silken threats.
“Yes,” she said firmly. “I’m willing to accept that risk. Because the alternative is worse.”
Vorlag studied her for a long moment. Then he nodded.
“Then we’d better get back to work. We have two days left, and a millennium of lies to unravel.”
They bent over the scrolls once more.
Outside the windows, the sun tracked across the sky. Morning became afternoon. Afternoon faded toward evening. She filled pages with notes, drew diagrams, and mapped connections between passages in different texts.
A pattern was slowly emerging. Subtle, but definitely there.
The original Veilborn priests had been clever. They’d woven the counter-curse into the very fabric of the creation myth and hidden it in plain sight among the instructions for binding. Natural balance destroyed in favor of artificial order.
“It’s elegant,” she murmured. “Terrible, but elegant.”
“All the worst atrocities are,” Vorlag said. “They’re committed by intelligent people with sophisticated rationales. That’s what makes them so dangerous.”
“How do we fight that?”
“With truth. And the courage to speak it, no matter the cost.”
She looked up from her notes and smiled at him. “Have you always been this philosophical?”
“I’m old, Dr. Monroe. Philosophy is what you have left when you’ve made enough mistakes to know better.” He smiled sadly. “I spent decades supporting a system I knew was corrupt. Telling myself that order mattered more than justice. That stability justified any price.”
“What changed your mind?”
“I saw what that stability cost. I saw the people who were sacrificed to maintain it, and I realized that a world built on such foundations deserves to fall, no matter how beautiful the architecture.”
“That’s a dangerous opinion for someone in your position.”
“I’m aware. But at my age, safety seems less important than integrity.” He gestured to the scrolls around them. “This is my penance, Dr. Monroe. Helping you undo what my predecessors created. Trying to make amends for centuries of complicity.”
“You can’t atone for things you didn’t do.”
“No. But I can refuse to perpetuate them.” he said fiercely. “I can choose to be better than those who came before me. To break the cycle instead of continuing it.”
“That’s what we’re all trying to do,” she said quietly. “Break the cycle and refuse to be what we’re told we should be. To choose something better.”
“Indeed. Though it’s easier said than done.”
“Most worthwhile things are.”
She was close, so close to understanding the pattern. She couldn’t stop now.