Linus stares at the word. Death.
He recalls his teenage years, when his father Darius Monfort forced him to memorize the ancient letters that spelled Magnus Monfort. Darius told him he would need to guard the fragile black book for the rest of his life and treat it as a family heirloom.
His father had made him swear an oath.
Linus had been barely ten years old and had understood almost nothing of it. He swore the oath to please his father. But he had held to it ever since. He had spared no effort in trying to translate the rest of the book himself.
It should have been simple enough. It was written in the ancient language of Altheon. The Monforts had the money and the connections to get it done. But Linus had never dared show the book to strangers, let alone hire experts to translate it.
