Masonic Crypt Beneath Columbia – 1:29 p.m.
The chamber was still. The amplifier had gone dark, its glow fading into the rough stone beneath. But its effect lingered—like the aftertaste of a vivid dream.
Langdon stood motionless, absorbing what he had just witnessed. His mind replayed the ancient faces, the layered voices, the shared ache of generations reaching for something just beyond comprehension.
Katherine touched his arm.
"It's over," she said softly.
Langdon shook his head. "No… it's just beginning." Lenka stood watchfully near Dean Asher's unconscious body. "We need to leave.
They'll send others." Katherine nodded. "Asher wasn't acting alone. He mentioned a benefactor— someone funding the project from London." Langdon remembered the earlier message intercepted from the Prague consulate: Sapiens Lux. The Enlightened Ones.
"Someone wanted the amplifier to work—but only in a way that served their agenda," he said. "And they may not stop until they get it." They exited the crypt through a narrow service tunnel, emerging into a maintenance stairwell that led them back to the library stacks. Langdon paused at the bronze relief of Athena above the reading room—a figure representing wisdom, armed yet serene.
Katherine whispered, "She always saw war as the last resort of the forgetful." Langdon smiled faintly. "Let's not forget what we just saw, then." Outside, snow had begun to fall across New York. A quiet, steady drift. A strange calm lingered in the air—as if the city had unknowingly absorbed a psychic tremor.
Langdon's phone buzzed. An encrypted message from an unknown number:
We saw it.
We are coming.
Protect the memory.
— L.
Lenka read it over his shoulder.
"They know the amplifier activated," she said. "Whoever they are." Langdon looked up into the gray sky.
Katherine whispered, "Robert… we've just awakened something that won't sleep again."