Dr. Aris Thorne, a brilliant but cynical 21st-century linguist, has spent his life deciphering the dead languages of the past. He views history with a detached, academic curiosity, dismissing tales of magic and destiny as ancient superstitions. During a violent thunderstorm while studying a newly discovered set of Sumerian clay tablets, a lightning strike arcs through the museum, and Aris is killed.
He awakens not in an afterlife, but in the sun-scorched land of ancient Sumer, in the body of a young scribe named Ilu. Disoriented and disbelieving, Aris must navigate a world he has only ever read about. His modern knowledge of language and history makes him both a prodigy and a pariah. As he grapples with his new reality, he uncovers a conspiracy that threatens to topple the city-state of Uruk. To survive, Aris must become the man he is pretending to be and embrace the possibility that the “superstitions” of the past hold more truth than he ever imagined. He will have to decide whether to use his future knowledge to simply survive or to change the course of history itself.
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