The Book

The Book

⸻

The Starlight Diner — Grace POV

Dawson finally leaned back, his eyes narrowing just a fraction. “What do you even do, Grace? For work.”

She let out a breath, almost a laugh. “I’m a tech writer. Manuals, instructions, the boring glue that holds other people’s projects together.”

His brow arched.

“I could do most of it from a booth right here,” she added, tapping the sticky laminate tabletop. “All I need is a laptop, coffee, and a Wi-Fi signal. Doesn’t matter if I’m in an office or the back corner of a diner—half my job is just turning chaos into something readable.”

For a moment Dawson just stared, like he was weighing whether that made her sound useful or like dead weight. Finally, he gave a grunt that could’ve meant anything and went back to his coffee.

Roy caught her eye, something almost like a smile flickering there. But he didn’t say anything until they were back outside, the cold night air wrapping around them like a second skin.

⸻

Moonvale — Later, Inside the Cabin

The fire had burned low in the stove when Roy came in carrying a book the size of a brick. He dropped it on the table in front of her with no ceremony, dust shaking loose from the cracked leather.

“You said you can work out of a diner booth,” Roy muttered, folding his arms. “Let’s see what you make of this.”

The cover smelled faintly of smoke and iron.

Grace flipped it open.

To Roy, it was a collection of grim, sprawling symbols.

To her, it looked like the worst set of engineering notes she’d ever seen.

The first page had a diagram—if you could call it that—three looping shapes feeding into a jagged spiral. Around it were marks like punctuation gone feral.

She frowned. “You know this is full of redundancies, right?”

Roy looked at her. “It’s… magic. You don’t edit magic.”

She tapped the page. “These two symbols here—” she circled them with a pen, “—they’re doing the same job. One is flipped, but it’s still just a flow redirect. And here—” she traced the spiral—“half the energy’s bleeding off. That’s why this takes three nights to complete. Bad design.”

He blinked at her like she’d insulted his grandmother.

Grace pulled a notebook toward her and started sketching. She replaced the double symbols with a single angled glyph, closed the open loop in the spiral, and tightened the spacing on a cluster of marks so they formed a clean path instead of a wandering trail.

It was like rewriting sloppy code, only the syntax was ink and geometry.

When she was done, she sat back. “There. If I’m right, this’ll run in minutes, not days.”

Roy hesitated. “If you’re wrong?”

She shrugged. “Then nothing happens. But if I’m right…” She tapped her new design. “We’ve just upgraded your magic from candlelight to high voltage.”

Somewhere deep inside the book, the ink seemed to shift.

⸻

Field Test

The thing they hunted was fast.

Grace had seen it once already — a blur between the streetlights, eyes like wet coals.

Roy had his revolver in one hand, charm-stick in the other, muttering something sharp and fast under his breath. But even he looked winded.

“Grace—” he started.

She was already kneeling on the cracked pavement, flipping open her notebook. A thin sheet of vellum — rough to the touch, dusted with powdered silver — waited between the pages.

Her pen moved like she was drafting schematics, each line snapping into place with a certainty she didn’t feel. The symbol bloomed in her mind before it bloomed on the page, angles and arcs locking together in ways that would make no sense to anyone but her.

The air inside the alley thickened. The wind shifted — not toward them, but toward the paper.

The demon lunged.

Grace closed the circuit with the final stroke. The sound it made was not a scream, but a collapse, as if the thing’s shape was being poured into a jar that was far too small. The page went heavy in her hands.

She slid it back into the notebook, shut the cover, and pressed her palm flat on it. The weight was gone — but a faint heat pulsed under the cover like a resting heart.

Roy was still catching his breath. “It’s gone?”

Grace nodded. “Safe.”

She didn’t tell him that “safe” meant as long as this paper exists in one piece. It was only held as long as the paper held. The moment it was destroyed the trapped entity was released just as it was when it was trapped. As if no time had pasted.

She just closed the notebook, tucked it under her arm, and prayed no one would ever try to read it.

⸻

Full Moon Reckoning

The full moon hung like a pale sentinel over Moonvale, casting silver light across the town’s silent streets.

Grace stood at the edge of the woods, her notebook heavy in her hand. The air was thick with tension — the scent of pine mixed with something acrid and wrong.

A demon burst from the shadows, eyes glowing with malevolence, claws scraping stone as it charged.

Roy raised his weapon, but Grace held up a hand. “Wait.”

The creature lunged, snarling — but Grace flipped open the notebook, exposing the trapped symbol inside. Her voice was steady as she traced a finger along the lines.

The demon froze, eyes flickering. Its form shimmered, then faltered — as if the symbol’s power reached through the veil and tugged at its essence.

Grace whispered, “You belong to the paper now.”

With a sharp breath, she slammed the notebook shut. The demon vanished in a swirl of shadow and smoke, trapped again within the magical circuit etched on the page.

Roy lowered his gun, eyes wide. “How did you—?”

Grace met his gaze, the weight of the notebook pressing against her palm. “Not magic like he knows. It’s a new language. And I’m still learning.”

The wind carried a distant howl — a warning, or a promise.

Grace looked to the moon, feeling the power inside her grow — the power of symbols, of circuits, of the unseen made real.

This was only the beginning.

⸻

Moonvale — Late Evening, Inside the Cabin

Grace sat at the cluttered kitchen table, the dim lamp casting soft pools of light over the open notebook in front of her. Carefully, she slid the delicate page from the ancient book—the one Roy had handed her weeks ago—into her notebook’s protective sleeve.

Roy watched quietly from the doorway, arms crossed, the weight of the woods outside pressing in.

“I don’t get it,” Roy said finally, breaking the silence. “How does that scrap of paper hold a demon? I’ve seen binds before, chains and wards. This… this just looks like symbols on paper.”

Grace glanced up, her eyes bright with a strange kind of certainty. “That’s because it is. But it’s not a cage like you think. It’s more like… a folded pocket of space.”

Roy frowned, leaning forward. “Folded how?”

“Imagine a room with no walls. No floors or ceilings. A place where time doesn’t move — no future, no past. Just… a suspended moment. That’s where the demon is trapped.”

Roy shook his head slowly. “So, it’s like a prison with invisible bars?”

Grace smiled faintly. “No bars at all. Nothing to touch or break in the usual sense. The demon’s essence is caught in a dimension folded inside this page. It can’t act or even realize time is passing because time doesn’t exist there.”

Roy’s eyes narrowed. “So what happens if that page is destroyed?”

Grace’s smile faded. “The fold collapses. The demon snaps back into our world — right where it was before, perfectly intact, and just as dangerous.”

Roy’s voice dropped. “You mean it’s a pause button, not a lock?”

“Exactly,” Grace said, closing the notebook gently. “We have to treat it like the most fragile thing in the world. One wrong move and the trap breaks — releasing whatever’s inside.”

Roy rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “That’s a different kind of fight. More dangerous than I thought.”

Grace nodded, her fingers lingering on the paper’s surface. “It’s not strength that holds them, Roy. It’s understanding the fold, and knowing that sometimes, the smallest crack can bring everything crashing back.”

⸻

The Full Moon Clash — Forest Clearing

The night air was electric with snarls and the scent of smoke. Grace moved cautiously at the edge of the fray, heart pounding as hellspawn clawed at the elite pack. Claws ripped flesh, and the ground trembled beneath the furious charge.

A massive demon, darker than night itself, broke through the line, eyes glowing like molten gold. It lunged at Roy with a roar, its jagged claws aimed to tear him apart.

Grace’s breath caught. There was no time for a gun of steel — this was raw power, raw fury.

Her hand slipped inside her jacket, fingers closing around the thin notebook. She flipped to the carefully guarded page—the fold trap.

The demon swiped at her, a shadowed claw slicing through the air inches from her face.

Grace held the page steady, chanting quietly — not ancient words, but a pattern of symbols and strokes she’d translated into her own language, her own logic.

A shimmer flickered, like a veil lifting.

The demon’s claw brushed the shimmering fold.

Suddenly, the beast vanished — pulled inside the dimension folded on the page. The forest stilled, the echo of the roar cut abruptly short.

Roy looked at her, breath heavy. “You… trapped it?”

Grace’s hands trembled. “For now. But the page is fragile. If it tears or burns… it comes back.”

The pack rallied, pushing back the remaining hellspawn with renewed vigor.

Grace pressed the page into her notebook, fingers white with strain. Her mind raced — a mix of triumph and dread.

The battle was won — but the war was far from over.

⸻

Moonvale’s Last Line

Grace spread the carefully drawn symbols across the ground beneath the ancient chapel ruins—their lines glowing faintly under the moonlight, ink pulsing with power. The leather-bound notebook sat open beside her, pages filled with painstaking revisions and delicate folds.

Roy and the pack watched silently, their breaths visible in the cool night air.

“This isn’t just a ward,” Grace said, her voice steady but low. “It’s a seal—folded space, like the traps I make. But this one’s bigger, stronger. It holds back the breach—keeps hell from spilling into Moonvale.”

Roy’s eyes narrowed. “And it’ll hold?”

“For now. But it’s a fragile balance. The ward is a truce written in symbols and will. As long as it stays intact, the hellspawn won’t cross. Break it, and the war restarts.”

From the shadows, a distant howl answered—wild, uncertain, like the earth itself bracing for what’s to come.

Grace met Roy’s gaze. “This truce isn’t peace. It’s waiting. And when it breaks… we’ll have to be ready.”