Recovering from a shocking act of violence, Cory Chase, classicist and mythographer, decides that taking part in The Papyrus Project, which aims to restore the charred scrolls of Pompeii, might offer her a much needed escape. That is until she suspects that the Modern Pythagoreans, a cult who believe that a lost manuscript of Pythagoras may still exist, are also interested in the scrolls. Suddenly Cory finds herself following a trail that leads her through Southern Italy, Sicily and to Pythagoras's birthplace, where she is pulled into a terrifying underworld of conspiracy to reignite an ancient cult that once rivaled Christianity in the Roman World.