The Thief's Gambit

On the surface it should be an easy job, break into one of the great Kioku vaults hidden away within the peaks of the Seven Blind Brothers, retrieve a book from the depths of the library's vast store, get out and get paid. Handsomely.

In this life, though, some things are best left lost, as the thief was about to learn.

Getting in was easy for a man with his particular talents. Almost too easy. In truth, a more suspicious man might have thought the ancient volume wanted to be found.

From the moment he lays his hands on the book, freeing it from the first of the rusted chains that secured it, the thief's life is no longer his own. He carries more than a musty old book out of that pit. The ancient evil he has freed promises to be the death of every man, woman and child in Ikaiguchi. A little knowledge truly is the most dangerous thing...