Prague, Czech Republic
Seven Days Ago
The rain fell in an unbroken sheet, hammering the rooftops and cobblestone streets, turning the ancient alleyways into rivers of glistening black. Prague had always been a city wrapped in history, but tonight, it felt different.
It felt like a city wrapped in something else—a secret.
I pulled my coat tighter against the wind and quickened my pace through Old Town Square. It was well past midnight, and the usual hum of street musicians and drunken tourists had been replaced by something quieter. Something heavier.
The stillness felt wrong.
I had just finished a lecture at Charles University—a conference on historical cryptography and the evolution of lost languages. My field was a niche one, yet the turnout had been overwhelming. Scholars and amateurs alike had packed into the auditorium, drawn by the same unsatisfied curiosity that had haunted me for years.
The greatest secrets of human history were not lost. They were hidden.
I had spent over a decade traveling the world, tracing coded messages left behind by civilizations that had mysteriously vanished. I had deciphered languages that predated known history, found patterns in symbols that shouldn’t have been connected.
And yet, the deeper I dug, the more I encountered one unexplainable pattern.
There were messages—embedded across different cultures, in different centuries—that hinted at something more. A deliberate silence, as if something had been erased from time itself.
I had spoken about that theory tonight. And though the audience had been engaged, I had felt a presence in the back of the room.
A shadow watching me.
Waiting.
I should have trusted my instincts.
Because ten minutes later, I heard the footsteps.
The Man Who Came to Die
They came from somewhere behind me—fast, erratic, the pace of a man being chased.
I turned my head slightly, catching the reflection of movement in a storefront window. A figure, drenched in rain, weaving through the narrow street.
His posture wasn’t right.
He wasn’t running toward something.
He was running from something.
Then, he saw me.
And the moment his eyes met mine, I knew he was coming for me.
He stumbled forward, collapsing into my path. His body collided with mine, nearly knocking me off balance.
“Please,” he gasped. His breath was ragged, his voice raw. He was soaked through, trembling, his coat torn, blood smearing the fabric.
Before I could react, his ice-cold fingers latched onto my wrist.
Something small, something leather-bound, was shoved into my grip.
“Take it,” he wheezed. “You have to—”
His voice cut off as he winced, gripping his stomach. His face twisted in pain. My mind raced—had he been shot? Stabbed?
I looked down at the object he had given me.
A manuscript.
Old. Very old. The cover was black leather, its edges damp from the rain, its pages yellowed and cracked.
But what made my stomach tighten were the symbols burned into the spine.
Ancient. Unlike anything I had ever seen.
The man squeezed my arm tighter. His eyes locked onto mine with a terrifying urgency.
Then, he whispered the words that would haunt me for the rest of my life.
“The Lucifer Code must not be broken.”
And then—
He collapsed.
The Vanishing
I crouched beside him, my breath coming fast.
“Hey—hey! Someone call an ambulance!”
Nothing.
I turned, looking frantically at the bar across the street, at the pedestrians walking just yards away.
Not one person reacted.
Not one person even looked.
As if they didn’t see him.
As if they didn’t see me.
I turned back.
The man’s chest had stopped rising. His fingers twitched once, then went still.
His eyes, once so full of panic, were now empty.
He was dead.
And then—
He was gone.
Not in the way a dying man slowly fades.
I mean gone.
Like he had never been there.
I blinked. My head spun. The spot where his body had been—empty.
The street was clean. No blood. No footprints in the rain.
No proof that he had ever existed.
Except for the manuscript in my hands.
I staggered back. What the hell had just happened?
Then—the engine roar.
A black SUV skidded around the corner, tires screeching against the wet pavement.
No plates. Tinted windows.
It wasn’t here by coincidence.
And neither was I.
The First Cipher
I didn’t stop to think. I ran.
Down the alley. Through the back streets. My heartbeat hammering in my skull.
The rain pelted against my face as I ducked through a narrow passage between two ancient buildings, the manuscript clutched tightly against my chest. Behind me, I heard car doors slam, followed by footsteps—heavy, determined footsteps.
I knew the labyrinth of Prague’s Old Town better than most tourists. I had spent weeks here, studying the architectural patterns of the medieval structures, connecting them to the mystery I’d been unraveling for years. Now that knowledge might save my life.
Three rights, then a left, then through the unmarked door of a building that housed an abandoned bakery. I had discovered it during my research—a forgotten space with a back exit that led to another alley.
I burst through the back door, my lungs burning, and kept running until I reached the Vltava River. The Charles Bridge loomed ahead, its statues like sentinels in the rain. I slowed to a walk, trying to blend with the few late-night stragglers brave enough to be out in the storm.
It took me twenty minutes to make it to my apartment, my mind still trying to process what had happened.
I locked the door. Pulled the curtains shut.
Then, I placed the manuscript on my desk.
The symbols stared back at me.
I reached out, running my fingers along the leather cover. It was cold to the touch. Almost too cold.
I exhaled. And then—slowly—I opened it.
The first few pages were blank.
Then—
A wall of numbers and symbols, meticulously arranged in rows.
A cipher.
A complex, ancient encryption system that made no logical sense.
I had seen encryption before. I had worked with complex ciphers written by the Romans, the Greeks, even systems used by early secret societies.
But this?
This was something else.
This wasn’t just any cipher. The arrangement—the way the symbols seemed to flow into each other—suggested something older than any language I’d studied. The closest comparison I could make was to fragments I’d encountered in Egypt, pre-dating hieroglyphics, but even those weren’t quite the same.
And then I saw it.
In the bottom-right corner of the page, written in faded ink—
My name.
Nathaniel Graves.
I recoiled.
How?
How was my name in a book that should not exist?
How had it known I would be the one to read it?
I staggered back, knocking over my chair.
Had the man known who I was? Had he sought me out specifically? Or was this some elaborate hoax?
No. The fear in his eyes had been real. The blood on his coat had been real.
And just as the panic truly set in—
My phone buzzed.
Unknown number.
I hesitated. Then answered.
I didn’t speak. Neither did they.
For a long moment, the only sound was breathing.
Then—a single sentence.
Low. Flat. Mechanical.
“You were never meant to see this.”
The line went dead.
The First Attack
I didn’t sleep.
Outside, the rain continued its relentless pounding against my windows. I made coffee—strong, black, bitter—and returned to my desk.
The manuscript lay open, its pages now seeming to pulse with a life of their own. Or perhaps that was just my exhaustion playing tricks.
By sunrise, I knew two things.
- Whoever gave me this manuscript was dead.
- Whoever was calling me wanted me to be next.
But I had made my choice.
I had spent my entire life chasing the secrets buried in history.
And now, one had been handed to me.
A secret someone—or something—was trying to keep hidden.
So I opened the book again.
I began to translate.
The first layer was straightforward enough—a substitution cipher based on astronomical symbols. The kind of thing I’d seen in 16th-century alchemical texts. But beneath that was another layer. And another. Each revealing just enough to hint at the next.
I worked methodically, filling pages with notes, connecting patterns that hadn’t been connected in centuries—perhaps millennia.
Hours passed. The rain stopped. The sun rose and began its arc across the sky.
And in doing so—
I made the greatest mistake of my life.
Because by the time I deciphered the first line—
I was already dead.
At least, according to the text.
The first fully translated line read: “Those who seek this knowledge have already ceased to exist.”
A chill ran through me. Not a metaphor. Not a warning.
A statement of fact.
I stood, stretching my cramped muscles, and walked to the window. Pulled back the curtain just enough to peer outside.
The street below was quiet. Normal. A woman walking her dog. A delivery man with a package.
And a black SUV, parked across the street.
I let the curtain fall back into place.
They were waiting.
Watching.
I returned to my desk and stared at the manuscript. The first line I had translated seemed to mock me now.
What had I stumbled into?
What was the Lucifer Code?
And why was my name written in a book that predated my existence?
I needed answers. And I knew exactly where to start.
I reached for my phone and dialed a number I hadn’t used in years.
“Eleanor,” I said when she answered. “It’s Nate. I need your help.”
“Nate?” Her voice was wary. The last time we’d spoken, it hadn’t ended well. “What’s wrong?”
I took a deep breath.
“I think I found it,” I said. “The pattern we were looking for. The one that connects everything.”
A long pause.
“Where are you?” she finally asked.
“Prague.”
“Don’t move. Don’t tell anyone else. I’ll be there tomorrow.”
She hung up.
I turned back to the manuscript. Eleanor was the only person I trusted with this. The only one who might understand what I was seeing.
As I prepared to continue my translation, a sharp knock at the door made me freeze.
Three quick raps. Authoritative.
I held my breath.
Another knock. Louder this time.
“Dr. Graves?” A male voice. American accent. “We need to speak with you.”
I didn’t answer.
“Dr. Graves, we know you’re in there. This concerns national security.”
National security? What did they think I had?
I carefully gathered the manuscript and my notes, sliding them into my laptop bag. There was a fire escape outside my bathroom window.
“Dr. Graves, we’re coming in.”
The door handle jiggled. Then—a sound I recognized all too well.
The metallic click of a gun being cocked.
I had seconds.
I moved quickly, silently to the bathroom. Opened the window.
Behind me, I heard the door splinter.
“He’s running!”
I stepped out onto the fire escape just as the first bullet whizzed past my ear.