Chapter 21: The Secret History of the World
Frank had thought The Haven was just a training facility—high-tech, secretive, elite. A place where people like him, awakened and dangerous, could learn control. But the more time he spent there, the more he realized…
The Haven was only the surface.
Literally.
Beneath the training halls and sparring chambers were entire levels devoted to something else entirely—launch bays, teleportation pads, vast hangars filled with ships not built on Earth. Some were sleek and obsidian-black, others ancient and humming with unfamiliar glyphs. One looked more like a living creature than a machine.
And the people who moved between them? They weren't just soldiers. They were miners, scavengers, warriors—and above all, explorers.
Athena told him the truth one night, after a brutal telepathic duel in the psychic training chamber. She had come to see him train, seated against the cool steel wall, sweat gleaming under dim red lights.
Why do you think we train
"You think this is about Earth, Frank?"
"It's not?"
She shook her head. "Earth is just home base. The game is out there."
She pointed upward. Or maybe it was outward.
Frank looked confused, so she continued.
"There are thousands of planets connected to us. Some have life, some are raw with resources—energy, metals, even time itself. While the world are still trying to set up moon bases, the real powers—old families, hidden organizations—they're already there. Mining. Conquering. Collecting."
That night, she told him everything.
The Okoli Family—Athena's bloodline—was one of the younger families in this hidden world, barely a century old. Compared to the great houses, with bloodlines stretching back to before the Great Flood, they were a spark in the storm. But that spark burned hot.
Her great-grandfather, Dike Okoli, was the family's founder. A naturally awakened child born in the colonial era—persecuted, hunted, and nearly killed for what people called witchcraft. But he survived. A European mage, part of a now-extinct order, found and trained him. When war came, that mage was killed… and Dike vanished.
He reappeared years later—changed. Stronger. Sharper. With abilities no one could explain.
He had traveled off-world.
No one knows how. Maybe he found a relic. Maybe he bargained with something ancient. All that mattered was, he came back powerful. And he began to build.
First, he carved out territory in Nigeria, quietly recruiting others like him. Then, he tapped into the interplanetary trade routes—secret networks of portals, ships, and dimensional vaults used by ancient families and off-world species.
Luck helped. So did raw talent. But it was his ambition that made the Okolis feared.
Dike didn't try to compete with the Great Families directly. He outmaneuvered them. He offered neutrality, acted as a go-between. And when some of them fell—through war, rebellion, betrayal—he picked up the scraps: lands, relics, loyalists.
And so the Okoli Family rose.
By the time Athena was born, they had outposts on seven planets, trade agreements with three off-world civilizations, and mining contracts in resource-rich dimensions no human government even knew existed.
Some of the older families hated them. Others underestimated them.
But no one ignored them.
Frank listened in silence, barely breathing as she spoke.
This was real. Not science fiction. Not fantasy. Reality.
"Why tell me this?" he asked.
Athena smiled faintly.
"Because you're one of us now. And because you're stronger than you know."
He didn't respond right away. Part of him still didn't believe it. But the rest of him—the deeper part that had touched the crystal crown, that had seen gods and monsters fight beneath a pyramid—knew it was all true.
And now, he was inside the game.