Thirty years ago, Edmond de Luna had left Barcelona for the East in search of wonders and adventures. His journey across the Mediterranean Sea had taken him to forbidden islands that did not appear on navigation maps, to share a bed with princesses and creatures of unspeakable nature, to learn the secrets of civilizations buried by time and to be initiated into the science and art of labyrinth construction, a gift that would make him famous and through which he obtained employment and fortune in the service of sultans and emperors. As the years passed, the accumulation of pleasures and riches hardly meant anything to him anymore. He had quenched his thirst for greed and ambition beyond the dreams of any mortal and, now in maturity and knowing that his days were walking towards the sunset, he told himself that he would never again offer his services unless it was in exchange for the greatest of rewards, forbidden knowledge. For years he declined invitations to build the most prodigious and intricate labyrinths because nothing that was offered in return was desirable to him. He already believed that there was no treasure in the world that had not been offered to him when he heard that the emperor of the city of Constantinople required his services, in exchange for which he was willing to offer an ancient secret to which no mortal had had access for centuries. Bored and tempted by a last opportunity to rekindle the flame of his soul, Edmond de Luna visited the emperor Constantine in his palace. Constantine lived under the certainty that, sooner or later, the siege of the Ottoman sultans would end his empire and wipe from the face of the earth the knowledge that the city of Constantinople had accumulated for centuries. For this reason he wanted Edmond to design the largest labyrinth ever created, a secret library, a city of books that would exist hidden under the catacombs of the cathedral of Hagia Sophia where forbidden books and the wonders of centuries of thought could be preserved forever. In return, the Emperor Constantine offered him no treasure. Simply a flask, a small bottle of cut glass containing a scarlet liquid that glowed in the dark. Constantine smiled strangely as he handed him the bottle.
flask. “I have waited many years before I could find the man worthy of this gift,” the Emperor explained. “In the wrong hands, this could be an instrument of evil.” Edmond examined it, fascinated and intrigued. “It is a drop of the last dragon’s blood,” the Emperor murmured. “The secret of immortality.”
