The certainties of the modern world are about to be blown apart by a three-thousand-year-old conspiracy nurtured by blood and lies.
A man throws himself to his death from the oldest inhabited place on the face of the earth: a mountain known as the Citadel, a Vatican-like city-state that towers above the city of Ruin in southern Turkey. But this is no ordinary suicide; it is a symbolic act. And thanks to the media, it is witnessed by the entire world.
Few people understand its consequence. For foundation worker Kathryn Mann and a handful of others around the world, it is evidence that a hopeful, new beginning is at hand. For the cowled and secretive monks who live inside the Citadel, it may mean the end of everything they have built - and they will kill, torture, and break every law to stop it. For Liv Adamsen, a New York reporter, it spurs the memory of her lost brother and begins the next stage of a journey into the heart of her own identity. And at that journey’s end lies a discovery that will change everything.