The first time she had seen it, it was a wet, bedraggled thing, and she had wanted little to do with it. She hadn’t picked it up – Rowan had.

“Saya,” he had said, brown eyes bright, “look at the patterns on the front. This must be worth a fortune!”

Indeed, the patterns had been exquisite. The front of the book appeared more like stained glass more than anything else, with kaleidoscopic colors of blue, pink, red, orange, yellow green sprawling on its surface, ingrained into the sturdy leather.

It was bound with a single black thread that seemed thin and weak; it was not so. No knife could cut through it, no fire could burn it – it was dry in water and sturdy in wind.

It kept the book mercifully shut.

But then came the day when it finally opened before her like a hell-flower, drawing her into its world of inexplicable and intricate graphs.

Names crawled its yellowing pages, attached to names which were attached to lines which spiked the graphs in innocently brutal measurements.

She saw her name.