Prague – 9:41 a.m.
Langdon stood frozen at the centre of chaos.
Paramedics knelt beside a lifeless body—Professor Marek Kral, Charles University's Director of Antiquities. His neck was twisted at an unnatural angle, eyes wide open in a frozen gaze of terror. Katherine was nowhere in sight.
Langdon's thoughts spun, but he forced his eyes to the message on the screen.
"The Spirit Sleeps No More."
The phrase wasn't random. It felt symbolic—ritualistic. Langdon's symbologist instincts surged forward.
He stepped closer to the blood-red letters, ignoring the uniformed guards yelling at him to stand back. The handwriting was calligraphic, almost medieval.
A symbol sat beneath the phrase: a serpent devouring its tail.
Ouroboros.
An ancient emblem of eternity and rebirth.
But this version was stylized. The serpent's scales formed a pattern Langdon had seen only once—in a fresco hidden beneath Prague Castle, linked to the esoteric Order of Janus, a forgotten sect believed to have been wiped out in the 17th century. Supposedly, they practiced forbidden studies of mind projection, soul travel, and "mental alchemy." He turned to a nearby security guard. "Was Katherine Solomon taken?" The man hesitated. "There was no sign of her. Her assistant said she arrived this morning. Then—nothing." Langdon looked back at the symbol, a sick knot forming in his gut.
She hadn't vanished.
She'd been taken.