You and your friends are first-year students at the New Salem University of Alchemy. After a long night of studying for your upcoming exams, you and your group begin making your way out of the study hall. Near the exit, you notice a hallway you've never seen before and a door at the end you've definitely never seen before. Curiosity gets the best of you so you decide to swing open the ajar door only to reveal a dark room with a spiral staircase leading down. As you and your colleagues descend, you hear the door slam behind you. Nowhere to go but down. After what seems like hours, you reach the end, only to be greeted by the ruins of a massive library polluted with ancient shelves and forgotten sculptures.

Baffled by the sheer size of the wasteland, you walk down the main corridor towards a mysterious aura in the distance. It’s a light, and under that light is a pedestal, and upon that pedestal is a book. You immediately recognize it; this world’s most sought after title, forged in the darkest depths of Hell and given to the Earth as punishment to those who lust for limitless power. You recall a warning from your studies.

“Madness shall fall upon those unworthy enough to handle the power that lies between the pages of this Wretched Grimoire.”

You ignore it. You reach your hands out to touch the book but as soon as you make contact with the cover, there's a blast of light and you're forced back! Once you come to, you see the tome levitating in mid air for just a moment before it explodes into hundreds of pieces, littering pages all across the abandoned library. Before you can process what just happened, you look behind you only to see your friends pushing and shoving each other, desperately trying to reconstruct parts of the book to grasp a shred of its violent abilities. You’re enraged by the greed and selfishness displayed by your peers, as this book is far too powerful for one man alone to have. If this Wretched Grimoire should fall into the hands of a single mortal, it might as well be you.