An old woman locked away in a Russian asylum has a secret-knowledge of a 500-year-old manuscript written by a long-dead alchemist that will show a passage to the mythical center of the Earth.She knows it's real because 50 years ago, she and a team traveled there. And only she made it back. Today, caving specialist Mike Monroe leads a crew into the world's deepest cave in the former Soviet Union. He's following the path of a mad woman, and the words of an ancient Russian alchemist, that were the basis of the fantastical tale by Jules Verne.But what horrifying things he finds will tear at his sanity and change everything we know about evolution and the world, forever.In the tradition of Primordia, Greig Beck delivers another epic retelling of a classic story in an electrifying and terrifying adventure that transcends the imagination."Down there, beyond the deepest caves, below the crust and the mantle, there is another world."