Location: The rooftop terrace of the Hotel de la Méditerranée, Marseille. Two weeks after the conclusion of the primary case.
The late afternoon sun poured honey over the Vieux-Port, gliding the masts of a thousand boats. The smell of salt, diesel, and frying fish rose with the heat. It was the smell of life, stubborn and commonplace. Elara Vance tried to let it anchor her.
In her hands, the artifact felt colder than it should. It was a bulla—a Roman lead seal, no larger than a coin. It had been pressed into the damp clay of a shipment manifest two millennia ago. This one was different. It bore not the mark of an emperor or a merchant, but a crude, chiseled symbol: a simplified labyrinth with a single, deliberate flaw in its outer wall.
The Builder's Mark. That's what they were calling it now.
It had been found on the body of Alain Renard, the man the press had dubbed "The Trident Killer." It was not part of his replication tableau; it had been tucked into a hidden pocket of his antique waistcoat, a final, private devotion. A direct link from a disciple to the source.
Marcus Thorne stepped out onto the terrace, a file under his arm and two glasses of pastis in his hands. He moved more slowly than he had in London. The knife wound from Renard's final, desperate lunge was healing, but it had left a stiffness, a new note of caution in his posture. He set a glass before her. The licorice scent cut through the marine air.
"Forensics came back," he said, his voice a low rumble. "Trace elements in the seal's corrosion. Sand, clay, specific mineral salts. It's a match for the analysis you ran on the Codex fragments from London."
Elara nodded, unsurprised. She took a small sip, the anise blooming sharp and medicinal on her tongue. "He didn't just read the Codex. He was given a piece of it. A physical token. A sacrament."
"A recruiting tool," Thorne corrected, ever the pragmatist. But his eyes were troubled. "Interpol is cataloguing it. They've opened a dedicated file: 'Project Labyrinth.' Chloe's been seconded to them. She's building a database, cross-referencing unsolved ritualistic crimes over the last fifty years against your historical templates."
"Good," Elara said, but the word felt hollow. An institution was being built around a shadow. It made the shadow more real.
She turned the bulla over. On the reverse, almost too small to see, was a single, punched Greek letter: Β — Beta.
"The second," she murmured.
"What?"
"In London, the Keeper was the first apprentice. The Initiate. This…" she held up the lead disc, "this is the mark of the second. 'Beta.' The next step in the sequence." She looked out over the shimmering water, seeing not the present port, but the ancient one that had lain beneath it. "He wasn't just copying Carthaginian rituals. He was continuing a curriculum. A progression."
Thorne followed her gaze, silent for a long moment. "The map from the first Codex. Six other cities. We're in one of them. He was here because the syllabus, or whatever you want to call it, demanded he be here. To master this chapter."
The implication settled between them, as heavy as the lead seal. They hadn't stopped a copycat. They had interrupted a student during his examinations. And the teacher was still out there, grading papers.
"Silas Rowe called," Thorne said, his tone carefully neutral. "From Alexandria. Said he's 'following a hunch' about a library fire that wasn't a fire. Wants to know if you'd like the details."
Elara felt a familiar, unwelcome pull. The ambiguous dealer with his too-convenient knowledge. A man who swam in the same dark waters as the cult, but for his own inscrutable ends. He was a shortcut, and she knew shortcuts in archaeology always led to unstable ground.
"Not yet," she said. "We do this clean. We follow the evidence."
Thorne's smile was a thin, grateful line. He reached into his file and slid a photograph across the wrought-iron table. It was a satellite image, marked with Interpol grids. It showed a swath of coastline, a modern city overlaying an ancient outline.
"The mineral salts on the seal," he said, his finger tapping a point just east of the city center. "The highest concentration profile matches one specific, submerged area. The old Phoenician docks. The heart of ancient Carthage."
Elara's breath caught. The final piece of Renard's obsession. He hadn't just studied the location; he had physically gone there, taken this token to its source to be… charged? Blessed? It was a pilgrimage.
"The cult isn't just using history," she realized aloud, the horror of it crystallizing. "They're treating locations like temples. Each murder site, each historical echo… it's a form of worship. They're not re-enacting crime scenes. They're performing rites."
The sun dipped lower, casting long, skeletal shadows from the rigging of the boats. The beautiful port suddenly seemed like a diagram of nerves and tendons, a body laid bare.
Thorne drained his glass. "So what's the next temple?"
Elara didn't look at the map on her phone, now filled with six glowing dots. She didn't need to. The sequence was clear. From the fog of London, to the salt of Carthage. The progression was a refining, a honing.
"Fire," she said, her voice quiet but certain. "Carthage was razed, its fields salted. The next chapter is about purification by flame. The destruction of knowledge itself."
She finally met Thorne's eyes. The weariness in them was deeper now, but so was the resolve. They were no longer just solving a case. They were tracing the architecture of a belief system—one built on the sacred geometry of violence.
"We need to go to Alexandria," Elara Vance said.
Beyond the terrace, the first lights of the city began to wink on, one by one, against the deepening blue. They did not dispel the darkness. They only proved how vast it truly was.