The skull was an ancient object of Jewish incantation, an invocation to God for mercy and salvation.
Pope Leo had offered up this treasure to Attila with a plea for Rome’s salvation. Additionally, the pontiff had warned Attila that this potent talisman was but one of many that were secured in Rome and protected by God’s wrath, that any who dared breach its walls were doomed to die. To press his point, the pope offered up the story of the leader of the Visigoths, King Alaric I, who had sacked Rome forty years prior and died upon leaving the city.
Leery of this curse, Attila took heed and fled out of Italy with this precious treasure. But as in all things, it seemed time had finally tempered those fears, stoking the Hun’s desire to once again lay siege to Rome, to test his legend against God’s wrath.
Ildiko stared across his prostrate body.
It appeared he had already failed that trial.
Ultimately, even the mighty could not escape death.
Knowing what she had to do, she reached for the skull. Still, her eyes fell upon the scratches at the center of the spiral. The skull’s invocation was a plea for salvation against what was written there.
It marked the date of the end of the world.
The key to that fate lay beneath the skull—hidden by iron, silver, gold, and bone. Its significance only came to light a moon ago, following the arrival of a Nestorian priest from Persia to the gates of Rome. He had heard of the gift given to Attila from the treasure vaults of the Church, a gift once passed to Rome by Nestorius himself, the patriarch of Constantinople. The priest told Pope Leo the truth behind the nest of boxes and bone, how it had come from much farther east than Constantinople, sent forward to the Eternal City for safekeeping.
In the end, he had informed the pope of the box’s true treasure—along with sharing the name of the man who had once borne this skull in life.
Ildiko’s fingers touched that relic now and trembled anew. The empty eyes seemed to stare into her, judging her worth, the same eyes that, if the Nestorian spoke truthfully, had once looked upon her Lord in life, upon Jesus Christ.
She hesitated at moving the holy relic—only to be punished for her reluctance with a knock on the chamber door. A guttural call followed. She did not understand the tongue of the Huns, but she knew that Attila’s men, failing to gain a response from their king, would soon be inside.
She had delayed too long.
Spurred now, she lifted the skull to reveal what lay below—but found nothing. The bottom of the box held only a golden imprint, in the shape of what had once rested here, an ancient cross—a relic said to have fallen from the very heavens.
But it was gone, stolen away.
Ildiko stared over at her dead husband, a man known as much for his keen strategies as for his brutalities. It was also said he had ears under every table. Had the king of the Huns learned of the mysteries shared by the Nestorian priest in Rome? Had he taken the celestial cross for his own and hidden it away? Was that the true source of his sudden renewed confidence in sacking Rome?
The shouting grew louder outside, the pounding more urgent.
Despairing, Ildiko returned the skull to its cradle and closed the boxes. Only then did she sink to her knees and cover her face. Sobs shook through her as the planks of the doors shattered behind her.
Tears choked her throat as thoroughly as blood had her husband’s.
Men shoved into the room. Their cries grew sharper upon seeing their king upon his deathbed. Wailing soon followed.
But none dared touch her, the grieving new wife, as she rocked on her knees beside the bed. They believed her tears were for her fallen husband, for her dead king, but they were wrong.
She wept for the world.
A world now doomed to burn.
Present Day
November 17, 4:33 P.M. CET
Rome, Italy
It seemed even the stars were aligned against him.
Bundled against the winter’s bite, Monsignor Vigor Verona crossed through the shadows of Piazza della Pilotta. Despite his heavy woolen sweater and coat, he shivered—not from the cold but from a growing sense of dread as he stared across the city.
A blazing comet shone in the twilight sky, hovering above the dome of St. Peter’s, the highest point in all of Rome. The celestial visitor—the brightest in centuries—outshone the newly risen moon, casting a long, scintillating tail across the stars. Such sights were often historically viewed as harbingers of misfortune.
He prayed that wasn’t the case here.
Vigor clutched the package more tightly in his arms. He had rewrapped it clumsily in its original parcel paper, but his destination was not far. The towering façade of the Pontifical Gregorian University rose before him, flanked by wings and outbuildings. Though Vigor was still a member of the Pontifical Institute of Christian Archaeology, he only taught the occasional class as a guest lecturer. He now served the Holy See as the prefect of the Archivio Segretto Vaticano, the Vatican’s secret archives. But the burden he carried now came to him not in his role as professor or prefect, but as friend.
A gift from a dead colleague.
He reached the main door to the university and marched across the white marble atrium. He still kept an office at the school, as was his right. In fact, he often came here to catalog and cross-reference the university’s vast book depository. Rivaling even the city’s National Library, it held over a million volumes, housed in the adjacent six-story tower, including a large reserve of ancient texts and rare editions.
But nothing here or at the Vatican’s Archives compared to the volume Vigor carried now—nor what had accompanied it in the parcel. It was why he had sought the counsel of the only person he truly trusted in Rome.
As Vigor maneuvered stairs and narrow halls, his knees began to complain. In his midsixties, he was still fit from decades of archaeological fieldwork, but over the past few years, he had been too long buried in the archives, imprisoned behind desks and stacks of books, shackled by papal responsibility.
Am I up for this task, my Lord?
He must be.
At last, Vigor reached the university’s faculty wing and spotted a familiar figure leaning against his office door. His niece had beaten him here. She must have come straight from work. She still wore her Carabinieri uniform of dark navy slacks and jacket, both piped in scarlet, with silver epaulettes on her shoulders. Not yet thirty, she was already a lieutenant for the Comando Carabinieri Tutela Patrimonio Culturale, the Cultural Heritage Police, who oversaw the trafficking of stolen art and relics.
Pride swelled through him at the sight of her. He had summoned her as much out of love as for her expertise in such matters. He trusted no one more than her.