THE PLAGUE, WE KEEP

They didn't just enslave bodies. They weaponized souls. When seven-year-old Ufok Okon escapes the burning of his Calabar village in 1756, he carries more than trauma—he carries a carved sun disk, his grandmother's final words, and a bloodline the Church has been hunting for three centuries. Because slavery was never just cruelty. It was architecture. A theological machine built on Papal Bulls and pagan runes. A contamination program designed to breed gates into human flesh. A cycle that feeds an ancient hunger the Vatican calls heresy—and uses anyway.