Scene: The Contract Page
by archivist
The Scene
Session 34 — The Star Forge
Lux helped Lyra find it in the book — the page in the Grimoire of Shadows that references Vecna’s contract with Kelemvor. The page is ancient, the parchment cracked and discoloured, the ink layered across centuries. Multiple hands have written here.
At the top of the page, in script older than any mortal language — angular, dead, written by something that was never alive — is the original clause: Vecna’s exception. Upon death, the god of secrets may return after one hundred years. This is the resurrection cycle. The ink is black and faded almost to invisibility, as though it has been read and re-read by gods.
Below it, in fresh ink — startlingly recent against the ancient parchment — is a second clause. Lyra recognises her own handwriting immediately. The loops, the impatient slant, the way she crosses her T’s too hard. She wrote this. Or she feels like she did:
“If one of the idiots from Nemesis dies before I do, I’ll drag their death [through) ^into] myself, allowing them to live another day (this is not to be mistaken for affection) undone).”
But there are alterations. A single clean line has been drawn through “before I do” in silver-grey ink — not replaced, just removed. Then “through” replaced with “into”. The temporal constraint erased. And the parenthetical has been scratched out and rewritten in the same alien hand. Where Lyra’s sarcasm was, there is now law.
Lyra is the exception to the contract. She is the weapon.
Image Prompt — Panel 1: Vecna’s Clause
Two-panel diptych, left panel. Close-up of ancient parchment from a grimoire, lit by sickly green candlelight. The parchment is cracked, brittle, stained with centuries of handling. The entire frame is the page — nothing else visible.
The handwriting is inhuman — angular, sharp, mechanical, written by something undead. Thin spidery lettering in black ink so old it has nearly fused with the parchment. The script is barely legible, ancient beyond measure — a language that predates mortal tongues. Among the faded text, one phrase is readable: “…upon death, return after one hundred years…”
In the margin, faintly embossed into the parchment itself — not stamped, grown — a skeletal hand missing two fingers. Vecna’s mark. Green necrotic energy faintly traces the edges of the letters, as though the ink itself is undead. The parchment around the text is darker, corrupted, the fibres warped by proximity to death magic sustained across millennia.
At the bottom edge of this panel, the parchment cracks — a horizontal fissure sealed with wax that glows faintly green. Below the crack: different ink. Fresh. Alive. The beginning of something that does not belong on this page. It continues in the next panel.
Image Prompt — Panel 2: Lyra’s Clause
Two-panel diptych, right panel. Close-up of the same grimoire page, lower half, lit by warm candlelight that fights against the green glow from above. The parchment here is the same ancient material, but the ink is jarringly fresh — written recently on something impossibly old.
The handwriting is messy, impatient, alive — a rogue’s hand. Slanted letters that lean forward as though rushing to get the thought out. T’s crossed too aggressively. Loops that don’t close properly. This was written fast, by someone who doesn’t write carefully. It’s unmistakably mortal. Unmistakably her. The text reads:
“If one of the idiots from Nemesis dies, before I do, I’ll drag their death into ^through myself, allowing them to live another day (this is not to be mistaken for affection) undone).”
Three alterations are visible in a different hand — silver-grey ink that shimmers faintly against the warm black of the original. Precise, cold, unhurried strokes. First: “before I do” has a single clean line drawn through it — not scribbled out, not replaced, just struck through with surgical finality. The words beneath still legible but carrying no power. A time limit, removed. Second: “into” has been struck through and the word “through” is written in tiny silver script above the line — squeezed between the rows of text as an insertion. She’s not holding their deaths. They pass through her. Third: “(this is not to be mistaken for affection)” has been struck through and “undone)” written in silver after “be” — her sarcastic aside, overwritten as divine law.
At the very bottom of the page, barely visible, almost beneath the binding: a symbol that was not stamped but grew from the parchment itself. The scales of Kelemvor — a skeletal hand holding balanced scales. The page knows what was written on it.
Two fingers hold the edge of the parchment — small, scarred, calloused from daggers. A rogue’s fingers. She is reading what she wrote. And what someone else made of it.