«The death of Tutankhamen hides a message that concerns all of mankind».

These are the Dalai Lama’s last words, whispered to Joel Costes, a famous geneticist, and his niece Stephanie Villemin, an Egyptologist. Before dying, he manages to give them a game of Senet originally found in Tutankhamen’s tomb.

 
The game proves to be a major key to solving a mystery that is both complex and dangerous.

By examining the hieroglyphics on the Senet and studying the last works of a famous Egyptologist, Costes and Stéphanie gradually learn the secret of Tutankhamen. They find that his soul has been sent to a mysterious kingdom, a place where « God surpasses all gods”.
One enters the kingdom through “The Forbidden Door” at Jebel El Kahla, a mountain of black granite, on the border between Egypt and Sudan.
 

In a crypt at the very centre of the mountain of black granite, Costes and Stéphanie discover the message of an intelligence born before the universe, an Ark of Light that conveys a message about the immortality of the soul. But they are not alone in having learned the secret. The ark also represents a menace for a terrorist organisation financed by the Wahhabites. Should the secret become known, the streets of Mecca would be empty, its millions of pilgrims gone, and Saudi influence over the Islamic world a thing of the past.
 

Costes and Stéphanie struggle against the fundamentalist fanatics. They manage to get out alive, but the crypt, and the proof of their discovery, will be destroyed.
That is, unless--