The Veil of the Crescent Flame

When reluctant historian Elias Kane is summoned to authenticate a medieval manuscript in Istanbul, he has no intention of pursuing the mysterious crescent symbol that’s haunted him since his colleague’s death in Syria four years ago. But the discovery of hidden text visible only under multispectral imaging pulls him into a centuries-old puzzle designed by history’s greatest optical scientist.

Alongside brilliant archaeologist Noor Al-Masri, whose father vanished while searching for the same symbol, Elias follows an ancient trail of cryptic clues spanning three continents. Each solved puzzle reveals part of a remarkable scientific invention created by Ibn al-Haytham—a medieval Islamic scholar whose optical device could either revolutionize modern energy technology or become the world’s most devastating weapon.

As they race from Istanbul’s labyrinthine cisterns to Cairo’s spiraling minarets to the mathematical secrets hidden in Granada’s Alhambra, Elias and Noor find themselves in a deadly competition against Khalid Reza—a tech billionaire and leader of a shadowy organization determined to weaponize Ibn al-Haytham’s creation.

With cryptic puzzles based on astronomy, mathematics, and architecture standing between them and each crucial component, Elias and Noor realize Ibn al-Haytham’s true genius wasn’t just technological brilliance but ethical foresight. A thousand years ago, he designed not just an invention but a test—one that requires both intellectual capability and moral discernment to solve.

Now, as they confront the same profound questions that challenged Ibn al-Haytham centuries earlier, they face an impossible choice: preserve knowledge at the risk of its misuse, or protect humanity at the cost of losing scientific truth forever.