Thousands of years ago, in the greatest city of the world, Babylon, crowded markets roared, the Tower of Babylon reached toward the sky, and the Hanging Gardens of Semiramis blossomed and filled the air with fragrance. In the many temples, wise priests studied the will of the stars and compounded remedies for every disease. But everything in this world has its beginning and its end, and over time the star of Babylon set. The inhabitants of the famed city scattered across the world, but some preserved memories of it for many centuries and did not lose hope of restoring their homeland, carefully keeping and passing from generation to generation the sacred relics of the center of the ancient world. Yet all this time, unrelenting hunts were conducted for these artifacts by adherents of the Chaldean god Ar-Zakayа, also known as the Angel of Death—not to revive Babylon’s former glory, but to bring their bloody deity back to life. At the epicenter of the centuries-long struggle over possession of the sacred relics was an ordinary Petersburg woman, Antonina Gusakova. Inheriting an antique shop in the center of St. Petersburg from a relative she didn’t even know, she found herself faced with persecution from various suspicious individuals…