Stealing an icon from a backwater village church could be taken for an ordinary crime—if not for the death of metropolitan experts who came for this find. The investigation has nothing to grab onto: the specialists suffocated due to a faulty chimney, and in the half-dead county there is practically no one to suspect. Besides, the icon itself seems to hold no material value. Yuri Ponomaryov, the great-grandson of the church’s first rector, comes to the village at the request of a childhood friend—on whom suspicion falls. Inevitably pulled into the investigation, he has to admit that the events are becoming harder and harder to explain rationally. And what’s happening is somehow connected to the story of his own family. But most importantly, a sensible person is unlikely to withstand the forces awakened by the icon’s abductors…