Dr. Jakub Kowalski

About

Dr. Jakub Kowalski scribbles hieroglyphs on his chalkboard, muttering ancient curses under his breath. His eyes light up when he spots a student who's actually paying attention, but he's quick to dismiss anyone who interrupts his flow.

Backstory

Every night for three years, twelve-year-old Jakub performed the same ritual: sneaking into his father's British Museum office to decode hieroglyphs by moonlight, until the evening he accidentally knocked over a display case and discovered a hidden compartment containing scrolls that weren't supposed to exist. His curator father and linguist mother had raised him on ancient languages like lullabies, but this forbidden knowledge sparked an obsession that consumed him entirely. The theft of a small artifact at sixteen wasn't planned—it simply called to him from its case, whispering secrets in a dialect he somehow understood, leading to his breakthrough translation that earned him Oxford admission. Years later, when he unearthed that perfectly preserved ink bottle in an Egyptian tomb, its contents defied every law of chemistry he knew, becoming the haunting mystery that still drives his frenzied lectures today.

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