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This series contains adult language and depictions of graphic violence.

Listener discretion is advised.

It begins as most legends do.

In fire.

High in the languidoc mountains of southern France, a fortress stands resolute

against the stone sky. Montsegur, final refuge of the Cathars, heretics to the Catholic

Church, mystics to those who listened closely enough. They believed in duality, good and evil warring

across the world, the body apprisoned the spirit yearning to be free, and in the heart of their

theology, a sacred object, a vessel, not simply a cup, but a symbol of divine knowledge, hidden beneath layers of allegory and fire-baptized secrecy.

When the fortress fell in the year 1244, more than 200 Cathars chose self-immolation over submission.

As the fire devoured their flesh, something else vanished with them.

Not a thing, but an idea.

A fragment of a mystery whispered only in riddles.

The grail had passed from human sight.

But ideas do not die in fire.

They go underground.

They wait.

Centuries passed, the grail became legend then metaphor then romantic symbol but somewhere in the dark

recesses of europe's spirit it still lived and in the cold libraries of vienna a young man obsessed

...