We found something bigger.
Then we found something bigger than that.
By sunset, I'd killed three beasts, studied two more that Mordren drove off before they could finish eating me, and inscribed four new abilities into a grimoire that accepted each one like a starving man accepting bread.
Heat Pulse. Rank 1. Copied from an Ember Fox — a Tier 1 beast the size of a large cat with fur that smoldered at the tips. It could superheat the air around its body in a short burst. Not lethal. Useful. I inscribed it after watching the fox fight a territorial dispute with another of its kind for twenty minutes while Mordren sat on a rock and drank.
Enhanced Hearing. Rank 1. From a Shadow Hare that I didn't even fight — just observed from thirty feet while it tracked prey through dense undergrowth using ears that rotated independently like satellite dishes. My grimoire reached for its ability the same way it had reached for the wolf's. Contact wasn't necessary. Just understanding.
Toxin Filter. Rank 1. Passive inscription. Copied from the liver of a dead Fang Serpent we found near a stream — killed by something larger, body still warm, Aether still fading from its remains. I pressed my hand to its scales and felt the biological inscription that let it process its own venom without self-poisoning. My grimoire translated it into a general toxin resistance.
Night Sight. Rank 1. From the Shadow Hare again. Its eyes processed darkness the way mine processed daylight. Two inscriptions from one beast, observed from a distance, without killing it.
Six total inscriptions. First Verse realm. Twelve hours ago I'd been nothing.
I sat against a fallen log at the forest's edge, cataloguing everything I'd gained, and felt something I hadn't felt in either life.
Hunger.
Not for food. For more. Every beast was a potential ability. Every fight was a potential page. The forest wasn't a threat anymore — it was a library with teeth and I was the only person alive who could read every book in it simultaneously.
Dangerous feeling. Addictive feeling. The kind of feeling that made you do stupid things at two in the morning because the next level was right there.
I recognized it because I'd felt it before. In my past life. Sitting at a computer, chasing the next chapter of a story, the next episode, the next hit of fictional progress.
Only this wasn't fictional.
This was me.
"Stop smiling," Mordren said from across the clearing. "It makes you look unhinged."
"I inscribed six abilities in one day. I'm allowed to look unhinged."
"You inscribed six Rank 1 abilities, most of which would embarrass a first-year academy student. The Ironmaw Wolf would've killed you if it hadn't smelled the grimoire and decided you were above its pay grade. You're not powerful. You're a baby who found a loaded weapon."
"A baby with Night Sight and Toxin Filter."
"Incredible. You can see in the dark and eat bad mushrooms. The continent trembles."
I laughed. Couldn't help it. The old man had a gift for deflation.
But he was right. Six Rank 1 inscriptions was nothing compared to what real hunters carried. A D-rank Scribe had dozens of refined, high-rank abilities backed by years of combat experience. I had a handful of party tricks copied from animals.
The difference was ceiling.
That D-rank Scribe had a forty-page grimoire with a single affinity. They'd hit their limit eventually. Probably already had. Every page filled, every inscription locked to one element, growth permanently capped by the book they were born with.
I had no pages. No limit. No affinity restriction. Every element. Every ability. Every beast I'd ever fight, every phenomenon I'd ever study — all of it was available to me.
The question wasn't whether I could become powerful.
The question was what it would cost.
"The first one was free," Mordren said.
We were walking back toward Greyhaven. The Aether mist had turned amber in the dying light — dense, warm, almost liquid. The forest sounds were shifting to their nighttime register. Deeper. Hungrier.
"What?"
"Iron Skin. The beast core fueled it. External Aether. Clean transaction." He didn't look at me. "The ones after that. What fueled them?"
I opened my mouth. Closed it.
He was right. The beast core had crumbled to dust when I inscribed Iron Skin — its Aether consumed as fuel. But the others — Burst Step, Heat Pulse, all of them — I hadn't used a core. I'd inscribed directly from observation.
So what was the fuel?
"Your grimoire doesn't run on Aether," Mordren said quietly. "Not like everyone else's. Normal grimoires are engines. Pour in Aether, get out inscriptions. Yours is different. It's..."
He searched for the word.
"Hungry," I offered.
"Personal." He stopped walking. Turned to face me. The amber mist made him look like a painting of something that used to be great. "It runs on you. Your memories. Your experiences. The things that make you who you are."
The forest was very quiet.
"Every inscription costs a memory," he said. "Small ones take small memories. Things you'd barely notice — the taste of a meal, the feel of rain on a specific afternoon. But bigger inscriptions, powerful ones..." He trailed off. His eyes were somewhere far away. Somewhere thirty years gone. "They take the things that matter."
I stood perfectly still.
"How do you know this?"
"Because I lost seventeen years of my childhood to a single Rank 4 inscription." His voice was flat. Matter-of-fact. Like describing weather. "I don't remember my mother's face. I don't remember learning to walk. I don't remember the name of the town I was born in. I remember that I HAD those memories. I remember the shape of the gap where they used to be. But the memories themselves are gone. Fed to a grimoire that needed fuel and took the only currency I had."
The cold thing behind my ribs pulsed. Slow. Heavy. Almost apologetic.
Almost.
"Check," Mordren said. "Right now. Think of something small from your past. Something insignificant. A meal. A smell. A moment that doesn't matter."
I reached for the first thing that came to mind — breakfast this morning. Porridge. Mom's kitchen. The taste of—
There.
No. Not there. Not exactly. The memory existed but it was... thinner. Like a photograph left in sunlight. I remembered eating breakfast. I remembered the kitchen. But the taste — that specific, mundane, irreplaceable sensory detail — was gone. Smoothed over. A gap the size of a single morning's flavor.
Five inscriptions. Five memories.
I hadn't even noticed them leaving.
"Beast cores reduce the cost," Mordren said. "External Aether supplements what your grimoire needs. The stronger the core, the more it offsets. You can also find ambient memory residue in high-Aether zones — emotional echoes left by people who died there. Your grimoire can burn those instead of yours."
"So I need to keep feeding it cores and residue."
"If you want to keep being yourself, yes." He started walking again. "The alternative is inscribing freely and watching your life disappear one memory at a time. Your choice. Always your choice."
I followed him through the amber mist, pressing my palm to my chest where six inscriptions hummed like new heartstrings.
Six abilities. At least one memory already gone. A taste I'd never get back.
This was the deal. This was the price written in fine print on the infinite page.
No limits on power. No limits on loss.
I was going to need a lot of beast cores.