The air in Charlotte hung thick with the scent of woodsmoke and something else,
something acrid and unsettling. It was 1666, a year etched in blood and whispers. The
fledgling city, a mere shadow of its future self, was a cauldron of simmering tension, a
tinderbox waiting to be ignited. Nat McCoy, barely a man, found himself at the heart
of this storm, a young Black man caught in the web of racial prejudice and fear.
The year had begun with a chilling silence, a quiet that felt oppressive, a blanket of
a blanket of
unease settling over the city. Then, it started. A stray dog, found torn to shreds in the
town square, a farmer's sheep gone missing, its mangled carcass discovered in the
woods, and then the first human victim. A white woman, discovered in her home, a
single crimson stain marring her pristine white gown. Rumors spread like wildfire,
carried on the wind, whispering of a monster lurking in the shadows, a creature of
darkness with a taste for blood.
Nat McCoy, a blacksmith's apprentice, was haunted by the whispers. He was too
young to remember the brutal legacy of slavery, but he saw its ghosts in the hardened
eyes of his people, felt its weight in the uneven justice meted out by the white settlers
who ruled this land.
His days were filled with the clang of hammer against metal, the heat of the forge