PROLOGUE - The Father's Legacy

Alexandria, Egypt - Three Years Earlier

The beam of James Calloway's flashlight caught the faint discoloration on the tunnel wall. After twenty-five years excavating sites from Turkey to Peru, he recognized human intervention.

Ancient. Hidden for centuries.

"There's something here," he whispered.

The words echoed off limestone walls that had witnessed empires rise and fall. James felt the familiar thrill of discovery racing through his veins, the same feeling that had driven him from graduate school in Texas to dig sites across three continents. But this was different. This felt final.

The tunnel beneath Alexandria was supposedly mapped and empty. But James followed a different map, one pieced together from fragments found across three countries during two years of increasingly dangerous research. Each piece had cost him. Academic colleagues who'd stopped returning his calls. Funding sources that mysteriously dried up. Colleagues who'd warned him he was asking too many questions.

The first warning had come in Istanbul, delivered by a nervous graduate student who'd approached him after his lecture. "Professor Calloway, some people don't want you to find what you're looking for." The second warning had arrived in his hotel room in Rome. A simple note slipped under his door: "Stop digging." The third warning had been more direct: his laptop stolen from his locked office, nothing else touched.