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.