THE NAKED SPIRIT. A POWERFUL, BUT FRAGILE, MIND...

Hello !

It's me, Olivia... But you can call me Liv. It is with sincere joy that I will tell you my story. Open the doors to my world and reveal family secrets long kept in the shadows... Even to me.

As you hear my story, I have only one request: open your mind wide and leave your certainties behind… Because what you are about to discover surpasses everything your beliefs and your schoolbooks have taught you.

Where I'm taking you lies far beyond the paths traced by humanity. And if you tried to locate the Kingdom of Alkeb on a map, you would search in vain.

Officially, it doesn't exist... At least, not in the eyes of the world.

Unofficially ?

It lies somewhere in the heart of the South Atlantic Ocean, between the coasts of Brazil and South Africa. A timeless continent, whose history stretches back to time immemorial...

Oh yeah... I forgot. I'm what you call "a rich kid," raised in the southern districts of Brussels, in the Marais...

But it was in Órelota that I landed, through a chain of circumstances far too long to explain right now. Don't worry, I'll tell you about them later.

Órelota became my adopted home. I learned there, grew up, and was lulled by the legends of the Alkebs, this ancestral people to which I belong, and who have always managed to preserve their balance, far from prying eyes.

Well… In appearance.

Some time ago, a friend of mine, Alkeb, also a rich kid, introduced me to a fascinating character: a djele. The Master of Words, as he calls himself.

An incredible storyteller, capable of bringing his tales to life and transporting his listeners. The kind of man who climbs on chairs and tables, who modulates his voice, who overflows with passion and emotion when he begins to tell his story.

The kind of person whose stories you could listen to for hours without ever stopping.

Listening to her narrate, with her melodious and imaginative words, the mythical epics of my ancestors, I felt, for the first time, a real pride in being an alkeb.

He spoke as if he himself had lived in those distant times... And I began to dream of being there.

When not travelling throughout the kingdom, this djele resides at the Nār, where he has the honour of entertaining the King and his court with the glorious tales of the Mamake clan.

But today, it's my story that I want to tell you... And, in all humility, my family's story deserves to be heard.

No, I am not a djēli and I will probably never have the words of the greatest storytellers.

I'm just a little Brussels girl who found herself, from one day to the next, plunged into an unknown world, with events that... in hindsight, completely overwhelmed me. And in my opinion, they deserve to be told.

Through my story, I offer you a rare opportunity to discover my world.

A world that is still unknown to you.

A world so vast that trying to imagine its limits would be an insult to its immensity.

Do you still have doubts?

Tell me... have you ever felt, deep inside, another person's emotions as if they were coming from your own heart?

Or... Have you ever come face to face with a giant panther the size of a horse, ridden by a heavily armed warrior?

There you go... That's what I thought.

But before we go any further, a fun little detail: here, the days of the week don't exist. Instead, we count days in orbs, and months in moons... Strange, isn't it? You'll see, you get used to it.

Recently, during the last dinner with my family before leaving for the country of Odon, my sister and I learned something.
The Alkeb origins on my mother's side, in addition to those on our father's side...

It all started almost 220 years ago with Awa, my great-great-great-grandmother.

According to what my mother and godmother told us, Awa came from the Water Tribe and was a native of the Three Moons, in a rather remote and modest region located in the south of the island of Kózane. It was there that she met Djamãri, my great-great-great-grandfather.

He was an airman, also from the Three Moons, and a native of Namale, the island neighboring Kózane to the north. Like Awa, he shared the culture of the water tribe. From their union was born my great-great-grandmother, whom they named Fëana, after the lunar cycle of the Alkeb calendar that bore that name at the time of her birth.

Years passed, and Fëana in turn united with Adama, a half-blood from the southern water tribe native to the Purple Islands, west of Kagatonde.

But our family's fate took a tragic turn in 1903 when an earthquake, followed by a volcanic eruption in Kozane, devastated their village and much of the southern Three Moons region. Only ruins and plumes of smoke remained as evidence of the catastrophe. The ensuing tsunami claimed countless lives, numbering in the hundreds.

That day, no fewer than 3,852 people died, and the king declared a national day of mourning. Among the missing were Adama, Awa, Djamãri, and so many others… My ancestors…

After this tragedy that shook the entire kingdom, Fëana, the only survivor of the family, took refuge in Africa, for reasons that, to this day, remain unknown…

However, her journey took a tragic turn when she was captured by colonists hunting the Leopard Men, accused of terrorizing western Kongo with violent murders and nighttime abductions. Fëana fell into their hands and was forced into servitude for several months within a wealthy and influential Belgian family living near the Kongo River.
During this period, my great-great-grandmother, Fëana, suffered numerous acts of violence, both physical and emotional, at the hands of the family she was obligated to serve. She eventually became pregnant by the baron's eldest son, Achille Dubois.

The circumstances of this pregnancy remain unclear. According to my mother, who learned this story from my grandfather, it was never clear whether this pregnancy was voluntary… or forced.
According to my aunt, who had reached a completely different, more pessimistic conclusion about the case, Fëana had been raped by Achilles.

However, the few letters found in a box full of correspondence suggest acts of violence perpetrated, particularly by the youngest member of the family, Albin Dubois…
But... nothing, regarding Achille Dubois. Nothing seemed to indicate any violence on his part towards Fëana and moreover, judging from the few memoirs and photos I could see of him, he seemed to be a humble man with a passion for science.
That said... evil doesn't always wear the face we expect.

We know, however, that a servant of the family eventually guessed Fëana's true origin. Through various deductions related to her singular physical appearance, her ignorance of local languages, and the mystery surrounding her past, he understood that she was not a wild African from some tribe, as some had supposed, but indeed an alkeb.

Other villagers, convinced that she was linked to the Leopard Men, suggested that she be banished, imprisoned… or burned alive for the more superstitious, believing that she practiced black magic.
Fortunately, nothing of the sort happened. Otherwise, I wouldn't be here to tell you this story.

Some would say that the man who impregnated her had always known that Fëana was different from other women. She was taller than all the others… She was more beautiful than all the others… She was darker and purer than any other woman he had ever met. And presumably, he was captivated by Fëana's dancing prowess, whom he affectionately called his “Black Panther” in his letters.

Achille Dubois, my grandfather, in total disagreement with his mother and younger brother, who saw this union as a disgrace, proposed to marry her and accompany her to Belgium once the war was over.

Fëana agreed. She stipulated one condition, however: that she keep her Alkeb name. In exchange, my Achilles granted her this favor, but imposed a strict rule. In Belgium, she was never to reveal her true Alkeb nature, neither to her family nor to anyone else. To ensure that their child could one day inherit the title of baron, he insisted that the child be baptized with a Christian name and raised accordingly. Once their agreement was reached, she followed him to Belgium after the war. There, as promised, she married him in a traditional Christian ceremony.

Enjoying the colossal fortune that the Dubois family had amassed over the years through the exploitation of ivory, rubber and diamonds in Kongo, Fëana Dubois became a baroness, on the same footing as her husband, upon the death of the latter's father.

However, numerous rumors began to circulate about her. And soon, the first dissonances and discords concerning this union would appear, as her dark complexion clashed sharply with the codes of conservative Belgian society, which at the time was not inclined towards mixed-race relationships… and even less so towards inter-species unions. The topic was a Black woman, from a country perceived as savage, married to a man of the young nobility, a baron.

Her nickname, "The Black Panther," stuck with her from the moment she entered classical dance school, her favorite pastime as a newly minted grande dame. So much so that everywhere she went, she captivated attention, arousing astonishment, curiosity… and jealousy. Dance seemed to flow in her veins like second nature, to the point that in barely four years, she became the company's prima ballerina. This meteoric rise triggered a wave of bitterness, jealousy, and hatred among her own teammates and within her in-laws' family, which abruptly shattered her dreams of a future in that career.

Despite this, she raised her son, Florentin Dubois, with all the love a mother could have for her child. In Brussels, he attended the best schools and grew up in comfort. Shortly after reaching adulthood, he married his childhood friend and classmate, Nelly Van Haelen, a young woman of Flemish origin and the daughter of General Henri Van Haelen, a former colonial officer specializing in operations in West Africa.

At only 17 years old, at the time of her marriage, Nelly Dubois, my great-grandmother, gave birth to two children: Rose Dubois, my great-aunt, and Narcisse Dubois, my grandfather.

In her youth, Nelly became the face of a swimsuit brand, as well as the designer of her own line of women's hats. But when World War II broke out, she was conscripted, like many women of the time, to make military uniforms for men.

Although, according to posthumous testimonies, as well as the various letters and articles I was able to read when my mother told us this story, Nelly never knew the true Alkeb ancestry of her husband...

According to my mother, my great-great-grandfather, Baron Achille Dubois, maintained throughout his life that his wife, Baroness Fëana Dubois, was the daughter of a chief of the Kongo Leopard Men. He claimed that the chief had offered him Fëana's hand in marriage in exchange for the protection of Belgian soldiers against rival clans, particularly a group established on the other side of the river separating the two villages. A story worthy of a Halloween movie and... completely fabricated, of course...

Nevertheless, for reasons unknown, my great-grandmother, Nelly, was convinced that her children would one day be saved by the alkeb. Her husband, Florentin, as well as the rest of her circle, considered her completely insane, prone to hallucinations which she transcribed in numerous letters and drawings inspired by her dreams…

Until the day when, bedridden for several days in a makeshift hospital, weakened by a leg injury caused by shrapnel that had severed her tendons, she received a visit that would forever change the destiny of my family… and, in some respects, the face of the entire world.

The alkab, who, it was said, appeared to him in the guise of an old family friend, revealed that he came from the land of Odon. He announced that he had come to save his two children from the war and that his lineage, through them, would be preserved...

A few weeks later, at sea, on the front lines, my great-grandfather, Florentin, learned of his wife's death in that same hospital, as well as the rescue of his children by the man known as the Guardian Angel. He fell in combat during a German assault two months later, at the age of 23. As for my great-great-grandmother, Fëana, she survived the war. In 1960, knowing that as the baron's wife she would automatically lose her title of baroness upon her husband's death, along with many of her privileges, still being considered by many as a wild woman of the Kongo, she summoned her two grandchildren from the Kingdom of Alkeb. She wanted them to be able to say goodbye to their grandfather, then 76 years old, bedridden and weakened by cancer, which he had been battling for several years.

Once there, seeing that the time had come, my great-great-grandmother, Fëana, handed over their inheritance: a vast, manor-like property in southern Spain, which would later become our family's holiday home. In addition, there was a second property, the house in the heart of Brussels where my great-great-grandparents had lived for nearly thirty years, a three-story house. Years later, my grandfather, Narcisse, tired of his elders' extravagance, decided to divide this house into several apartments to house multiple tenants. This is how he became financially independent and retired at only 41 years old.
He chose to occupy the ground floor with my grandmother, who died the year I turned 18. My great-great-grandmother, Fëana, also passed on to her two grandchildren the sewing workshop of "Maison Van Haelen", the clothing brand founded almost thirty years earlier by their mother, Nelly, which would later become a real family business.

As for the rest of the inheritance… and what my ancestors did afterwards… as well as the role that my little sister and I will play many years after this reunion…

Let's just say that the story of the Naked Spirit should reveal more to you...

But before that… I would like you to know an important part of my life.

A simple decision that saved my life, as well as my sister's.
This decision, made in a fraction of a second, which I did not imagine at the time, would change the entire course of my destiny.

And I made that decision in 2011...

The day I crossed paths with a serial killer named Peters Mertens was the day Olivia gave way to the Naked Spirit.