PROLOGUE – "Ashes & Glass"
(From the whispers of the city)
“They say he was born under a blood sky, crying smoke instead of tears. That the moment his lungs filled with air, the world exhaled something ancient…and dangerous.”
The rain fell soft that night, not like a storm—more like the city was weeping for something it knew it was about to lose. New Makurdi has always been a place of paradox. Neon gods danced on rusted rooftops. Ancient whispers echoed in silicon halls. A city caught between empires, balancing on the tip of a needle made of light and rot.
And in the middle of it all...
Him.
Mr. Black.
A name the world baptized him with. Not for his skin, or his suits, or his secrets—but for what followed him: silence, smoke, shadows, and salvation.
Some say he used to be a priest. Others? That he was a ghost in the war who just never stopped fighting. But the truth was simpler and more complicated. He was the last of his bloodline—a family that once ruled art, code, and the soul of New Makurdi. Now, ashes. Only two sisters left, five children between them, and one man—carrying a dead legacy like a crown of fire.
By day, he built dreams. His animation studio? The best in the region. Legends in motion. He gave color to a city too used to gray.
By night, he moved green. m*******a—illegal, sacred, forbidden. Not poison, but poetry. He treated it like a ritual, a rebellion, a gift. And in this city of contradictions, he was both Messiah and Menace.
No one knew how he did it—how he wore peace like perfume and war like a second skin. He was calm, erotic, dangerous, divine. A god among mortals. And he knew it. Not with arrogance, but acceptance. Like fire knowing it burns.
He gave to the poor, stole from the rich, rewrote laws with actions not ink. A flirt with a thousand hearts, but loyal to one. She, who knew his demons, kissed them, and stayed. The city feared him, worshiped him, whispered about him in late-night cafés and high-rise boardrooms.
But the thing about legends?
They’re always hunted.
And when the wolves come, when glass shatters and blood speaks louder than truth—the world will remember not what he was called…
…but what he became.
“In the end, there will be no gods. Only the Son.”
