Lao-Vietnamese borderland, November 1954: a helicopter shot at by guerrillas lands on the jungle edge. Searching for water, pilot Bernard Traven enters a Buddhist temple and steals a precious casket. A monk casts a curse. Thirty years later, Jan Tarnas, an expert on old Thai manuscripts, is giving a lecture at Sorbonne. Traven pays him an unexpected visit and asks to decipher a manuscript from the Thai casket. While Tarnas is dissecting it, the lights in the laboratory go out, and snakes appear.