A dangerous scroll in the Library of Alexandria

In 48 BC, as the flames of Caesar’s siege threaten the Great Library of Alexandria, head librarian Apollodorus makes a desperate choice. He cannot save the vast collection, but he can protect one scroll: a forbidden text known as the Typhon Codex. It is not a work of philosophy or science, but a meticulous, encrypted ledger documenting every secret alliance, betrayal, and blood debt of the city’s elite, compiled by a spymaster who vanished.

Ten years later, the surviving library annex is a shadow of its former self. Apollodorus’s star pupil, Hypatia, discovers the Codex hidden within a mundane geometry text. When a prominent scholar—and rumored Roman informant—is found murdered in the scriptorium, the method matches a political assassination described in the scroll’s first entry. Hypatia realizes the Codex is not a historical record but an active blueprint. The killer is using it to execute a long-delayed purge.

Now, Hypatia must decipher the scroll’s aliases and ciphers to identify both the next target and the murderer, who could be a vengeful scholar, a Roman agent, or a member of her own trusted circle. Pursued through the city’s bustling markets, sacred temples, and smoky taverns, she races to stop the killings before the Typhon Codex destroys what remains of Alexandria’s intellectual heart—and before the killer decides the last loose end is the librarian who knows too much.