“For once the world had thoroughly learned the lesson that too much of a good thing is worse than none of it.” When an unexpected discovery leads to superabundance of gold, the sudden flood of the precious metal throws the global economy into chaos. With the gold standard destroyed and commerce collapsing, the world’s leading financiers gather in desperation to find a new basis for money and stability. Their unlikely solution arrives in the form of the enigmatic Dr. Max Syx, who offers a remarkable substitute: a dazzling new metal called artemisium. Beautiful, rare, and perfectly suited to coinage, it promises to restore stability to a shattered financial system. But Syx alone knows the secret of producing it, and as nations rush to adopt the metal, the fate of the world economy begins to rest in the hands of a single, unsettling figure.