It sat, alone and still, in the midst of chaos. Abandoned amongst the clinking armor and thomping boots of hundreds of passing adventurers.

I don’t know when it was left there. I don’t know if I was the first to see it. But I found myself drawn as if by a lodestone the moment I finally laid my eyes on it.

A book, ancient and dusty and smelling of leather and steel. It was thick enough to reach my shin with the cover closed and massive enough to serve as my bed. Just lifting the cover proved a task nearly impossible for muscles that swing a 5-foot blade of solid titan steel as easily as a ribbon. It fell open with a crash so loud that every adventurer in the room scrambled for blade or spell before they realized the Keep was not under attack.

Inside, I found… scribbles. Ciphers. Words in a dozen languages, scrawled with a unsteady and inaccurate hand. Letters were mazes. Runes were puzzles to be unbent and reshaped into meaning. I bent my head over the page, more determined than ever.

Five days later, just before I passed out on the marble floor of Wintergrasp’s Inner Sanctum, I finished my translation:

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