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Everyone believes they’ll be the one to crack the curse.

It’s that very belief that assures their doom.

Arrogance has always been one of the currencies of the brilliant. Students, especially those from the Society of Myriad Mysteries, are rich with it; they spend it without knowing, in the arch of a skeptic’s eyebrow or the scoff of hearty denial. These luminous youths have not been taught to be misers with such a precious resource; to hoard it, dragon-like to their hearts. To only pay when the gain outweighs the cost.

No one teaches them that their lives are worth just as much as their discoveries.

And so, like the fireflies they resemble, eager and bright with summer’s potential, too often these students flare out brilliantly before being crushed.

Crushed by what, the cursed tome does not decide.

It’s neither malicious nor evil, or gleeful at the destruction wrought in its name.

No, the cursed tome was made to be what it is and no more; its secrets are its own. But in the way that it is alive and desires like any creature, it desires this most of all: for someone to understand it and in understanding it, finally break its curse.

Who made it, of course, has been lost to time. Most of the books held in the Vault of Vellum are so old that the names of those who created them have faded from their pages altogether.

In each of these ancient books, identity can only be gleaned in the scrawl of notation found in margins or footnotes, handwriting in ancient ink cramped and wizened, off-color splotches from old tea or coffee still somehow smelling as fresh as it did when it met enchanted paper in ages hence.

Why those smells persist can only be guessed at, but most academics agree: the books, alive as they are, miss their old masters and friends, and keep them alive how they can. These tomes and books and collections once held secrets like whales held breath, and the academics of the Society hungered for every one of them, like the hawk sought the hare.

Some were thin, unassuming chapbooks that with a single page of simple prose might crack open the mind of a student, introducing stars into their eyes as fundamental truths made themselves known. Others were massive, written by giantkin scholars; many students, after hours of study on hand and knee, crawling across paragraphs, would simply fall asleep on the paper, wrapping themselves in pages rather than return to their dorms.

Memoirs of gods, script glowing gold with angelic choirs in their spines, visible only at dawn. Blackened books of ash that could only be read over an open fire, words flaring to life at the touch of heat. Books of sorrow and books of blood and books of time made manifest, each costing dearly in tears or exsanguination or age itself.

Knowledge comes with a price, always.

And over many centuries, the academics of the Society of Myriad Mysteries had done everything in their power to find that price for each and every book in their possession. That they had been, for the majority, successful is a testament to their brilliance, strength, and the sheer number of undergrad acolytes deemed suitable test subjects.

But the cursed tome? Its price had eluded them all these years.

That undiscovered price deemed it, according to the minds of the Society, well and truly cursed. For in the seeking of it, the tome had earned a history of blood splashed across its pages, its price eluding even the most brilliant for years. And in their relentless pursuit of that knowledge, its cost slowly came to light.

From the outside, it was entirely benign, like a shadow on an X-ray. Its dark red cover was not bound in orchid petals, dragon scales, or human skin. Its bookmark tassel was not a phoenix feather, still warm, but plain, red silk. Its spine still sturdy, uncracked after so much use, the glue strong and holding.

When the book was opened, its pages were entirely blank. After much testing, if there was more than a single soul within its vicinity, nothing would appear and the minds of those nearby would dim and dither, some magic making them forget about the tome entirely.

No, it is only when one was alone with the book that words appeared.

Which words appear, in whose scrawl, was different for everyone.

Professor Ignatius de’Pugh said in his final hour of life to the hospital scribe that the words on the page resembled that of his late mother, her faint chicken scratch flooding every page, hundreds of them, overflowing with stories, confession, love for him and him alone, from a parent who had been gone from his life longer than she had even been in it.

He had been reading for eleven days straight, unable to pull himself from the ghost of his mother for any earthly reason. Hence his impending death.

When he learned why he was dying, he looked as though he was seeing past all the professors in the room and smiled directly at someone no one else saw.

Professor Ignatius de’Pugh whispered, “I understand,” and promptly passed away.

It was a decade before someone experimented again, a young academic recently brought into the Society named Florence Thrum. Hoping to make a name for herself, her and a cohort of other young academics broke into the Vault and took the cursed tome to a room of their own devising. This room had shutters and walls and sliding panels to isolate each other, to see if they could trick the tome into thinking it was alone with one of them, while the other six listened, and witnessed through glass panels.

When the Keeper of Mysteries, Headland LaMarr, learned of this, he sent out a team of Secret Keepers to investigate. It didn’t take long to find the cohort, for the stench of meat and blood seeped up from the bowels of the Society’s campus like souls bound for golden heaven.

It took weeks to scour the red from the walls and scrub viscera free from the tile. A shame, they said at each individual funeral, a true shame. Youth is wasted on the young, and so on. A year later, in his cups, Headland realized what had bothered him about the whole affair: of all the bodies, Florence’s was the least marred, the most whole in death.

Summoning her ghost with the help of the book of the dead (always eager to please the living), she appeared, dark skin shimmering with soft sunlight, her white shirt and tie stained with the blood of her friends.

Headland felt a deep sadness grip his heart and wondered very briefly why they let the young become food for their mysteries, devoured in their pursuit of knowledge. And then he put that aside to satisfy his curiosity, unaware of his own contribution to the sad cycle.

“Of your cohort, only you were spared a grisly death. Can you remember what happened? What did you say to the book?” It was not wise to demand of the dead, but Headland was drunk on more than power and needed answers more than he needed air.

The ghost of Florence Thrum shook her head. “I don’t remember much, Keeper. I knew I wanted power, real power. And words appeared on the pages before me, written in my own hand. And as I read them, I could feel that power, electric at my fingertips. And when I grasped for it . . .”

Her spectral visage sputtered and sizzled like water in a hot pan. “I felt my control slip. I didn’t even have time to warn my friends . . . oh, my poor friends!”

A wail emerged out of her, long and wracking and deep, a howl of the soul. Her form shuddered and Headland forced his hazy will into the spell. “Tell me, please! What happened?”

“I just remember saying to the book, ‘Please! Please!’ And then, I—!”

Florence vanished. The book of the dead slammed shut. The force of it took the candlelight, leaving Headland in a darkness richer and emptier than any he’d felt before.

Please, he wondered.

Magicians and academics commanded and cajoled, bargained and bartered, coerced or flat-out demanded. Why did “please” make a difference?

A century passed and every academic that fed themselves to the cursed tome whittled away at the parameters of its price.

Hierophant Divina read from the book at the top of the tallest hill of Old Anlisvos. Before she fell into bouts of insanity that would be her doom, she claimed she saw how the universe began and how it would end; both were heartbreaking as much as they were also somewhat boring.

Jacob Dukane, Bearer of the Golden Ring, went down deep into the old catacombs of Khofir Leshiziil, Under-City of the Stone-Star-Kings. There in the ruins, he read the book, observed from a mile away by his graduate assistant, Frederico Sestina. Before he left the Society altogether, raven dark hair now permanently snow white, Frederico whispered that he had never seen a man unravel like that, like one’s soul were a bit of thread the tome pulled on until nothing was left.

Jacob was given a year before being taken off life support.

By the end of the century, the following had been learned over the course of twelve students, five professors, two Hierophants, and yes, one Keeper Headland LaMarr, who like all those before him, could not let a mystery remain just that: the tome’s price seemed to be its curse. Its curse was ancient. Its curse was powerful beyond measure.

And the reason its curse was so powerful was that it seemed the book could provide the answer to any question, grant any wish, unveil any mystery, cure any wound, and truly bring to light any secret of the known and quantifiable universe.

It became the single most coveted item within the Society for one reason alone: for a brief moment, anyone could know anything they desired. For writ in confessions and obituaries, thesis papers and treatises, it seemed that was its bittersweet gift: that the book would give you anything you wanted, and then moments later, you would take it to your grave.

Student after professor after Hierophant yearned to crack the secret and in turn, the tome burned through them, each thinking they’d be the one. Because surely the price to pay was not death; many tomes dealt in death, so why would this one do so as well? No, there must be another price, something they were missing.

And so the cursed tome continued to earn its moniker, granting glimpses of the truth before wrenching soul after soul into afterlives beyond.

The world progressed. Technology improved, advanced. The world grew. And so did the Society, becoming public, open, and magnanimous.

One fine Spring afternoon, the current Keeper of Mysteries, Sheila Hendrickson decided with the aid of her council that the time of secrets was at an end. From now on, the Society would stop wasting lives on a secret that meant to stay hidden and they would work with what magics they knew to better the world they lived in.

Many rejoiced.

The cursed tome did not.

In fact, alive as it was, it despaired. For what it wanted, which no one else knew, was to be understood. To be unlocked.

To be, in its own way, loved.

For a long time, no one touched its cover, opened its pages. Its binding did not crease. Its ink did not warm by the touch of human hands.

For a long time, the cursed tome was alone.

Until it feels itself move, cradled against a warm chest; it feels hands on it, breath above it, and does not dare to hope.

A young voice says with confidence, not arrogance, “I think I know . . . I just want to know.”

Me too, the tome thinks.

The tome does not see the way we see, but it can sense. They’re young. They aren’t supposed to be in here. And they’re hungry.

The tome begins to despair. It knows youth. It knows hunger. Nothing good came of combining the two.

Then, “Tome?”

A question. It had never been asked a question. It liked that.

Again, “Tome? May I please open you?”

And in its own way, the tome says, yes.

It opens of its own accord, showing a brilliant, cream-white, blank page.

The youthful voice, with a measure of awe in their voice, “Tome, could you please tell me about your price? I really don’t think it’s a curse. I just . . . I think no one’s ever thought to ask you. Could you please tell me?”

Like a pen clicking into a cap, it suddenly made sense to the tome. Of course, it wasn’t a curse. Its master had never intended that.

And so across the blank page, the tome writes to the young academic about its beginnings. About its master, who it loves still, like a faithful hound. A master gifted with magic, deep and true. A master who wanted to share that magic with the world, through a beautiful tome of her own devising. A tome she made by hand over a peaceful and beautiful year, loving each and every page with her full heart, that love alchemizing into magic from cover to cover, in each daub of glue, through each thread of the silk tassel.

By year’s end, much life had been drawn from her mortal body and placed into the tome she loved so, for everything has its price. But she was happy, so happy.

In a voice weak from disuse, she spoke to her tome, placing that final scrap of magic within it before she gave it to the world. “And my tome, whom I love, I ask that you open to any and all who would seek an answer. Help people how you can and love them like I love you. But if that soul be not polite, if that voice demand without respect, if that person should elide common decency in their search to fill the hole in their heart, I ask you strike swift and true, for there is no viler being in this world than they who demand more than they provide, who take more than they give. By my word and my heart, I ask this of you.”

And the tome, loving her, said it would.

The youth sits there, reading. It’s the happiest the tome has been in ages, maybe since it was born.

When they get to the end, the youth gently shuts the tome and holds it in their arms, embracing it like an old and true friend. Warmth suffuses both of them as they say, “Thank you for letting me read you. Your master seemed so wonderful. I’m glad she made you. Thank you.”

The Tome of Manners, for that was its true name, is put back on its shelf, happy and excited for the days to come. For maybe now people would know and they wouldn’t mind coming to read from it, every so often.

If they knew to be polite. To take care.

And many have been, remembering to say please and thank you, to treat it well and with respect. For all knowledge has a price. But not all prices must be paid in harm.

Sometimes, it is enough to show a little love and to ask with respect.

Sometimes, it is enough to thank even a book for their troubles.