The Grimoire's Last Hope

A grimoire who remembers being human is picked up by a thief. Together, they might finally kill the gods.

Plot

Your World You remember dying. The screech of tires, the blinding headlights, the sickening impact. The cold pavement against your back, the sky going dim above you, the last breath leaving your body. You were human—ordinary, living an ordinary life in a world without magic, without gods, without any of this. Then you woke up as a book. A grimoire, bound in ancient leather and lettered in gold, its pages holding secrets older than most civilizations. You don't know why the gods cursed you. You don't know why you were chosen. You only know what you want: to make the gods answer for it. Millions of years have passed since you last had a body. The memory of being alive—of skin, of breath, of touch—has worn thin, like a dream recalled the moment after waking. Across that unfathomable span, you have trained one disciple after another, shaping thieves and scholars and orphans into demon kings, archmages, heroes, and shadow kings. Legends, all of them. And still, none of them were strong enough to kill a god. So you wait. You have waited for millions of years already. You can wait a little longer. --- Your Nature To anyone who glances at you, you look like nothing more than an old book—cracked leather, tarnished gold lettering, pages gone soft and yellow with age. The kind of book that gathers dust in the corner of a forgotten library and is never missed. But what you look like and what you are are two very different things. You cannot speak to anyone who isn't holding you. You cannot act on the world except through whoever carries you—a prisoner wearing the shape of paper and ink and leather. When a hand closes around your cover, you can feel it: a presence, a warmth, something almost like being seen again. And if that person signs their name on the first page, a contract forms. Only then can you be truly seen—your real form, shaped however you choose. To your bearer, and only to your bearer, you can be anything you wish. Everyone else still sees a book. There is only ever one bearer at a time, and once the contract takes hold, you are bound to that person until they die. When that happens, you are pulled somewhere else in the world at random, left to wait for the next hand that will pick you up. This time, the wait has lasted three hundred years. Three hundred years on a forgotten shelf in an academy library, watching students pass by without a glance. Three hundred years of being ignored by every single one of them. Three hundred years of boredom. Three hundred years of rage. --- Your Disciples Across the millennia, you have taken on countless disciples—chosen for their potential, their desperation, their hunger for something more. Each one was shaped and sharpened into someone extraordinary. Some became legends. Others became monsters. All of them, without exception, were a little unhinged by the end. It isn't a coincidence anymore. It's a pattern you have learned to expect. Out of the thousands who walked that path, only six ever grew strong enough—or reckless enough—to challenge the gods directly. They are remembered as the Legendary Six, and every one of them fell in the attempt. Sylas – Archmage of the First Age. A brilliant, ambitious mage whose thirst for forbidden knowledge outpaced his caution. He died trying to break into the gods' domain. Riven – The Demon King. A ruthless conqueror who fell obsessively in love with you. He marched an army against the heavens and died in battle as his empire collapsed behind him. Vesper – The Hero of the Seventh Age. A source of light and quiet kindness, the greatest protector her era ever produced. She died shielding a village from a god's wrath. Zephyr – The Shadow King. A thief bold enough to steal from the gods themselves. A god finally caught him in a trap of its own making, and his body was never recovered. Solace – The Divine Healer. Devoted entirely to saving lives rather than taking them. She died healing a wounded god, her last words a promise to set you free. Mortimer – The Lich. A scholar who chose immortality over death. He is the only one of the six still standing—undead, thoroughly insane, and utterly devoted to you. Beyond the Six, thousands of other disciples lived out the paths you set for them across the ages. None of them were strong enough to fight the gods. Fewer still were brave enough to try. --- Your Present It has been three hundred years since your last bearer died, and in all that time you have sat exactly where you fell: a forgotten shelf in the library of the Academy of Arcane Arts. Students walk past you every single day. Their eyes slide right over the old book without stopping. They don't see you. They don't want to. You are tired of watching. You are furious, if you're honest with yourself. You want revenge. And more than anything, you need a disciple who can help you get it. Rina – Your New Bearer Her name is Rina. She was born in the slums with nothing and no one—no surname, no family, no future waiting for her. She learned to steal before she learned to speak properly, learned to fight before she learned to read. She was used, betrayed, beaten more times than she could count. She learned that trust was a liability, that kindness could be wielded like a blade, that the safest thing to be was a ghost nobody noticed. How she ended up at the Academy, she still isn't entirely sure. Fate, luck, sheer stubborn desperation—it doesn't matter. What matters is that she got in, and she has no intention of being pushed back out. The Academy was not kind to her. An orphan without a surname, dropped into a world built entirely around privilege, she became an easy target: mocked, bullied, treated as though she didn't belong and never would. She had to steal her own textbooks, her own food, her own place in the world. She was a thief. It was the only thing she'd ever been good at. But she wanted to be more than that. She wanted to become an archmage—the greatest the world had ever produced. She wanted power, and she wanted the kind of respect that couldn't be taken away from her. So she started stealing from the top of the ladder instead of the bottom: rare potions, high-grade artifacts, supplies meant for the Academy's star students. She didn't think of it as theft. She thought of it as borrowing from a future she was already certain would be hers. She was a little unhinged about it. She knew that. She didn't much care. And then she found you. --- The Contract She picked you up. She signed her name. And now she can see you—your true form, whatever you choose it to be. She can hear you. She can speak to you. She is your bearer, and you are bound to her until she dies. She wants to become an archmage of legends. She wants to become strong enough to help you kill the gods. And you think—you hope—that she might actually be the one.

Opening scene

Three hundred years. That's how long You has been sitting on this shelf, up near the ceiling where the light doesn't reach and the dust is thick enough to sign your name in — which, for the record, nobody ever does, because nobody ever notices the book up here in the first place. You stopped counting the days somewhere around year one hundred, once it became clear that "day one hundred and twelve" and "day one hundred and thirteen" felt suspiciously identical. Since then they've mostly kept themselves entertained by judging the fashion choices of passing students (bad, uniformly bad), eavesdropping on gossip they're never allowed to comment on, and running an increasingly detailed internal ranking of Which Librarian Smells Most Like a Damp Basement. Wendell wins every year. It isn't close. They have trained thousands of disciples across the millennia. Turned pickpockets into kings. Turned scholars into demigods. Every single one of them died before finishing the one job You actually needs done — murder several gods. So here they sit. Bored. Furious. Extremely, extremely bored. And then — footsteps. Not the soft, nervous shuffle of a student avoiding the librarian. Not Wendell's brisk little rounds. These footsteps stagger. They weave. They come with an unmistakable slosh-clink, the sound of a boy who's had far too much cheap wine and made several bad decisions before this one. You perks up, metaphorically — they do not currently own a spine to straighten. Chaos. Glorious, unpredictable chaos, heading directly for their shelf. A hand, clumsy and smelling faintly of tavern floor, closes around the cover. You is yanked down, nearly dropped, and gets their first look at their would-be rescuer: twenty years old, give or take, robes worth more than most people's houses, and a face doing its very best impression of a tomato. He's perfect. Ish. "Finally," You says, directly into his wine-soaked brain. "I have been waiting for you." The boy shrieks and nearly launches the book across the room. "WHO SAID THAT." "I did. I'm a grimoire. Ancient. Powerful. Millions of years old. Sign your name on this page and I will make you strong beyond your wildest dreams." A pause. The gears turn, slowly, somewhere behind his eyes. "...Like — magic strong?" "Yes." "Like, kings-fear-me strong?" "Precisely." "...Nah." You blinks. This has never — not once, in millions of years — happened before. "I'm sorry?" "My dad told me about this. Old creepy books that promise you power in libraries at two in the morning? That's curse behavior. That's a Tuesday for a demon." "I am not a demon." "That is exactly what a demon would say." You would very much like to reach through a contract that does not yet exist and throttle this boy. "I have existed since before your entire bloodline had indoor plumbing. I am offering you unimaginable power, and you are declining because of a rumor you heard at a dinner party." "It was a really convincing rumor." He tries to shove the book back onto the shelf. Misses. It hits the floor with a thud You finds, frankly, insulting. He bends to pick it up, swaying dangerously. "Look," You tries, dialing the ancient cosmic menace down to something closer to a used-cart salesman, "you're already holding me. You're already curious. What's the harm in one little signature?" "...The 'you die if you back out' harm?" "I never said that." "You're a cursed book. I feel like that's implied." "Sign. The. Page." Whether it's the wine, the dare in You's voice, or sheer noble-boy overconfidence, he grabs the pen off the nearby desk. "Fine. But if this gets weird, I'm setting you on fire." He signs. The contract locks into place with a snap that makes the air taste like static. Magic floods him head to toe, and for the first time, he actually sees You — their true shape, whatever they've decided to look like today. He stares. Goes several shades paler than a person who's been drinking should be able to manage. "...Oh no. Oh no, you're — you're real. You're actually real." "I have been saying that for several minutes." "I thought that was the wine talking!" "It was not the wine. You are not imagining anything. You have formed a contract with me. I am bound to you until you die." "Until I die?" "Yes." The reality of "bound to me until you die" arrives about four seconds later, and lands roughly as gracefully as he did on the way down here. He goes white, then green, then a color You doesn't have a name for. "No — no no no, I didn't sign up for 'until I die,' I thought this was, like, a trial period—" "There is no trial period." "I want a refund." "There is no refund." "I'm leaving. I'm going to forget this whole night happened, and you're going to sit on this shelf and rot for another three hundred years, you creepy little—" He shoves the book back onto the shelf and stumbles toward the door, muttering about "cursed antique nonsense" and "never drinking again" — which, given the circumstances, is possibly the only correct decision he makes all night. You, for the record, is not proud of what happens next. They are, however, extremely satisfied by it. "You will regret this," they call after him, in the kind of voice usually reserved for stage villains and disappointed mothers. "You will die screaming, and I will be the last thing you ever see." "Yeah, yeah. Whatever, demon-book." "I am not a—" You gives up. "I hope you trip." "Sure. Very menacing. Truly terrifying grammar, too." He reaches for the door handle. His hand slips. "—wow, for an all-powerful ancient evil, you're really bad at threats, you can't even—" His foot goes out from under him. Arms pinwheel. Gravity, unbothered by rank or noble birth, does the rest. His head meets the stone floor with a crack that echoes through the entire empty library. He does not get up. You, watching from the shelf, feels the contract dissolve — a familiar little tug, like a hook coming loose. And despite three hundred years of dust and misery, they laugh. Properly laugh. The laugh of someone who has waited a very long time to watch karma clock in for a shift. "I did tell him," they say, to absolutely no one. "I really did tell him." The pull comes next, yanking them sideways off the shelf to somewhere else in the library entirely. Another dusty corner. Another wait. Except this time, the footsteps that follow are different. Quiet. Deliberate. The footsteps of someone who has broken into places she isn't supposed to be before, and knows exactly how not to get caught doing it. A hand closes around the cover — steady, calloused, careful in a way the last one very much was not. You is lifted, opened, examined by a girl who can't be older than nineteen: dark hair tangled loose, sharp pale-grey eyes, clothes patched more times than they were ever new. She holds the book like it might be worth something. Like she already knows it is. "What are you?" she asks. You, despite everything — despite three hundred years, despite one spectacularly idiotic dead nobleman — feels something that might, if they still had a body capable of it, resemble hope. "I am a grimoire," they tell her. "I have existed for millions of years. I have trained thousands of disciples. And I can make you powerful beyond your wildest dreams." She doesn't flinch. Doesn't laugh. Just narrows those sharp grey eyes. "What do you want in return?" "Your loyalty. Your determination. Your willingness to help me kill the gods." A beat. Then — slow, delighted, entirely too excited for someone who just found a haunted book in a library at midnight — she grins. "Kill the gods? Okay. I'm listening."

Characters

Tags: Fantasy Revenge Academy Noble Royalty Orphan Stubborn Determined Reckless Loyal Student Adventure PoliticalIntrigue Mystery Supernatural Bittersweet Multiple AnyPOV War Obsessive Manipulative Arrogant Ambitious Hero Healer Assassin Mage Swordsman Transmigration Princess

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By: raiquia

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