Charles University, Prague – 9:15 a.m.
Robert Langdon adjusted his Harris Tweed blazer, gazing up at the Gothic spires of the Carolinum. The city was a labyrinth of myths, secret societies, and astrological riddles—exactly the kind of place that made his skin buzz with academic excitement.
He was here not for a lecture, but for her. Dr. Katherine Solomon—brilliant noetic researcher and one of the few people who could make even his lectures feel pedestrian. Their long-distance conversations had turned flirtatious in recent months, and now she had invited him to witness the unveiling of her life's work.
"Today," she had written, "we reveal that consciousness is not a product of the brain. It is the architect of reality." But thirty minutes later, the hall was screaming. Shattered glass. Blood on the marble. The podium abandoned.
Katherine Solomon was gone.
And on the projector screen, a single phrase had been scrawled in blood-red ink:
"The Spirit Sleeps No More."