The book arrived wrapped in oilcloth, tied with string, and carried by a courier who looked like he had not slept in three days.
I took it from him, tipped him generously, and sat down at the nearest table in the Gadgetzan inn. Durn was somewhere behind me — I could feel him watching, patient as always — but I did not turn around.
The text was old. The binding was cracked, the pages soft with age, and the script was a hand I recognised from the Shen'dralar libraries. I had seen similar writing in Dire Maul, in the margins of books that had not been opened in centuries.
I read slowly, savouring each sentence.
Silithid. Scarab. The desert born of the Old Ones.
The words confirmed what we had suspected. The chitin fragments we had been finding — in Feralas, in the Barrens, in the wound-scarred earth of Tanaris — belonged to the silithid. Creatures that had not been seen in force since before the Sundering. Creatures that belonged to an older world, a darker time.
I found myself smiling.
Not because the news was good. It was not. But because the puzzle was coming together. The fragments, the carapace, the silence in the forest — they were all pieces of the same picture. And I was holding the key.
I turned to show Durn the passage.
He was standing in the doorway, his expression unreadable. He had not moved.
"Silithid," I said.
He said nothing.
"They haven't been seen in force since before the Sundering."
Still nothing.
I looked back at the book. The weight of his silence pressed against my excitement, and for a moment — just a moment — I understood what he was feeling. This was not a puzzle to him. This was a wound.
I closed the book gently.
"We should keep moving south," I said.
He nodded.
We left Gadgetzan before the sun reached its peak.