Shadow had long been locked up in a particular house and was told to read a large novel written in a language he didn’t know. He would be allowed to come out only after reading and understanding the said novel. This was a punishment that put his patience as well as his intelligence and faith to test.

Shadow wasn’t the first to receive this sort of a punishment. Some others who received this punishment in the past were able to learn the language with their own intellect, but it had taken them months if not years to do it. And then there were others who were able to understand the foreign novel with the gift of the tongues, which they believed was given by God himself.

Ryan and Galen came to greet him together. “How far have you come?”

“I deciphered a bit of it,” Shadow replied, annoyed. “Are you guys really going to keep me here until I completely decode this language? Even if it takes a few years?”

“When I came here last time, you were using the book as a pillow and was snoring like a