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

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

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

He was an air sailor, also from the Three Moons, a native of Namale, the neighboring island of Kózane to the north, and shared, like Awa, the culture of the Water Tribe. From their union was born my great-great-grandfather, whom they named Fëana, in reference to the lunar cycle of the Alkeb calendar, which bore that name at the time of his birth.

As the years passed, Fëana in turn united with Adama, a half-blood of the southern water tribe native to the Purple Isles, west of Kagatonde.

But our family's fate took a tragic turn in 1903, when an earthquake, followed by a volcanic eruption in Kózane, devastated their village and much of the southern Three Moons region... Only ruins and billowing smoke bore witness to the disaster. 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 mourning. Among the missing were Adama, Awa, Djamãri, and many others... My ancestors...

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

However, her journey took a tragic turn when she was captured by settlers hunting the Leopard Men, accused of spreading terror across western Congo through violent nighttime murders and kidnappings.

Fëana fell into their hands and...was forced into servitude for several months within a rich and influential Belgian family, established in the region near the Congo River.
During this period, my great-great-grandmother, Fëana, suffered a lot of violence, both physical and mental, from the family she was supposed to serve.
She eventually became pregnant with 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.
The few letters found in a box filled with correspondence suggest violence perpetrated, in particular by the youngest of the family, Albin Dubois... But... nothing about Achille Dubois, who seemed to be, in view of the few memoirs and photos that I was able to see of him, a humble man, keen on science.

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

Other villagers, convinced that she was connected to the Leopard Men, suggested that she be banished, imprisoned... or burned alive.

Fortunately, it didn't happen. Otherwise, I wouldn't be here to tell you this story.

The man who had impregnated her knew that Fëana was unlike any other woman. Taller… More beautiful… Blacker… Purer than any other woman he had ever met. And presumably, he was captivated by Fëana's dancing prowess, calling her his "Black Panther" in his missives.

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

Fëana accepted, on one condition: to keep her first name Alkeb.
In return, my great-great-great-grandfather granted her this favor, but imposed a strict rule on her. In Belgium, she was never to reveal her true alkeb nature, either to her family or to anyone else. To ensure that their child could one day inherit the title of baron, he demanded that he be baptized with a Christian name and raised as such.

Once their agreement was reached, she followed him to Belgium after the end of the war. There, as promised, she married him in a traditional Christian wedding.

With the colossal fortune that the Dubois family had amassed over the years through the exploitation of ivory, rubber and diamonds in the Congo, Fëana Dubois became a baroness, like her husband, upon the death of the latter's father.

However, many rumors circulated about him, as his dark appearance clashed with the codes of conservative Belgian society, which was not very inclined towards crossbreeding at the time... and even less towards inter-species crossbreeding.
We were talking here about 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 ballet school, her favorite pastime as a new grande dame. So much so that wherever she went, she caught the eye, arousing astonishment, curiosity... and jealousy. Dance seemed to flow through her veins like second nature, so much so that in just four years, she became the troupe's star dancer. This dazzling success unleashed a wave of bitterness, jealousy, and hatred among her own teammates and her in-laws, which shattered her dreams of a future in this career...

Despite this, she raised her son, Florentin Dubois , with all the love a mother could give her child. And in Brussels, he attended the best schools and grew up in relative comfort.

Shortly after coming of age, he married his childhood friend and classmate, Nelly Van Haelen , a young woman of Flemish origin, daughter of General Henri Van Haelen, a former colonial officer specializing in operations in West Africa.

At only 17 years old, during 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, my great-grandmother became the face of a swimwear brand, as well as the designer of her own line of women's hats. But when the war broke out, she was requisitioned, like many women of the time, to make the men's military uniforms.

Although, according to posthumous testimonies, as well as the various letters and articles that I was able to read when my mother told this story to my sister and me, my great-grandmother never knew her husband's true Alkeb ancestry...

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

However, for some unknown reason, my great-grandmother, Nelly , was convinced that her children would one day be saved by the alkebs.
Her husband, Florentin , as well as the rest of her entourage, considered her mad, subject 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 wound caused by a shell fragment that had severed her tendons, she received a visit that would forever change the destiny of my family... and, in some ways, the face of the entire world.

The alkeb, who was said to have appeared to him in the guise of an old family friend, revealed that he came from the land of Odon . He told him that he had come to save his two children from the war and that his descendants, through them, should be preserved for the sake of world balance.

A few weeks later, on the open sea, at the front, my great-grandfather learned of the death of his wife in this same hospital, as well as the rescue of his children by the man nicknamed the Guardian Angel .

Before falling in combat during a German assault two months later, at the age of only 23, he sent a final letter to his father, Baron Achille Dubois , my great-great-grandfather.

As for my great-great-grandmother, 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, and many of her privileges, still being in the eyes of many a Congolese wildling , she had her two grandchildren called from the Alkeb Kingdom .
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.

But once there, my great-great-grandmother handed them their inheritance: a huge, manor-like property located in southern Spain, which would later become our entire family's vacation home.
Added to this was a second property, the house in which my great-great-grandparents had lived for almost thirty years, in the heart of Brussels , and extending over three floors.

Years later, my grandfather, tired of the excesses of his elders, decided to divide this house into several apartments in order to install tenants. Thus, he became a rentier 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 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, which would later become a real family business .

As for what happened next in the inheritance... and what my ancestors did next... and the role my little sister and I would play many years after this reunion... Let's just say the story of the Naked Spirit should reveal more to you...

But before that…

I would like you to know an important element of my life.

A simple decision that saved my life, as well as my sister's.

This decision, taken in a split second, which I did not imagine, at the time, would change the entire course of my destiny.

And I made this 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.