Lost to time, space, and legend, Wakanda’s rightful king must answer the call of rebellion in this thrilling adaptation of Ta-Nehisi Coates’s acclaimed Black Panther run . On Earth, Wakanda is a beacon of prosperity and a bastion of freedom. But across the expanse of space, thousands of lightyears away, lies another Wakanda. One that has grown to hold five galaxies in its iron grip. One that steals the memories of those it enslaves. One that has abandoned the values of its forebearers and seeks only the glory and power of empire. Lost amongst unfamiliar stars, a man finds himself as the property of Emperor N’Jadaka. He knows not how he got there, who he is, or even his name. The only thing he does know, in his bones, is that he must fight the oppression that surrounds him. That drive for liberation leads him to the Maroons, a band of rebels determined to shatter the empire and restore the memories of the Nameless. When the man quickly proves his worth with an unparalleled skill for battle, the Maroons bestow on him a title of hope, promise, and responsibility: T’Challa. As T’Challa’s reputation among the rebels and ordinary citizens spreads, whispers of hope begin to swirl. Could this be the true T’Challa of old, the Avenger? The One Who Put the Knife Where It Belonged? When all eyes turn to him, T’Challa must decide if he will embrace a future of responsibility as their savior or pursue the mystery of his true past. Suyi Davies Okungbowa is an award-winning author of fantasy and science fiction. His latest books include Warrior of the Wind (sequel to Son of the Storm, in the Nameless Republic epic fantasy trilogy) and the novella Lost Ark Dreaming . He lives in Ontario, Canada, where he is a professor of creative writing at the University of Ottawa. Chapter 1 Goree “Come back to me,” the white-haired woman crooned. The galaxy was inky black, all streaks and stars and nothingness. It was a cocoon that soothed and suffocated, that coddled and crushed. It was dread personified, a darkness that plagued and gave no assurances, save for the assurance of despair. Anxiety brewed in the soul of the man, the dreamer, and panic bloomed in his sleep. He twisted and turned, sweat beading his forehead and dripping down his neck, face scrunched up in agony. Yet, amid this consternation, the face of the white-haired woman was there, a balm. She lay next to him, shoulders bare, head in her hand, propped up by a crooked elbow. Concern was written all over her face, but that did not stop her from being beautiful. Her skin, smooth and dark and unblemished, reminded him of home, her shining eyes a guiding light, a way out of this hellhole and into the comforting arms of a warm place he struggled to remember. “Come back home,” the woman whispered, and he was filled with the desire to do exactly that. He reached out to touch her, gain hold of something real amid this etherealness. But he never got there because an eerie sound, loud and sharp, pierced the moment, and the woman was gone. Rrrrooooo! The man opened his eyes and sat up. He was among people, like him and unlike him in many ways, all sitting on the floor of a cold, sterile room. Triangular windows brought little light in and opened up into nothingness: desolate land and planetary bodies round and large and far and near in the sky above the horizon. The vastness of space seeped from his sleep and stretched out before him, a dream he could not blink away. The stars offered no comfort, the constellations no familiarity; he could not shake the wrongness of his being among them. Rrrrooooorrr! Everyone in the room, though all different species, was dressed the same: a gray jumpsuit with snatches of blue, a label printed on their chests. He looked down and saw he was dressed no differently. They all wore the same tired, despondent expression, and no one spoke to anyone else. He mentally counted them in fives and realized they were about thirty, jam-packed into a room meant for half that number, which explained why he’d awoken to the sole of a boot resting an inch from his face. Rrrrooooorrroooo! The man turned to the windows and peered closer. Outside was a vortex. It was the only way to describe what he was seeing: a massive hole, surrounded by aircraft, groundcraft, and floating freighters, all hauling significant amounts of rock. A mine, he realized. Below, in the lower trenches of the hole—the mine—were beings all dressed like him. Some hacked at rocks with mechanized diggers, while others hauled large rock collections on their backs. There was something familiar about the rock itself, or about the mining, but the memory was too far to reach, buried somewhere too far back in time for him to place. Rrrrooooorrrooooo! It took him a moment, but he began to piece it all together. The locked doors, the piercing sound that he now realized was an alarm, the room that increasingly looked like a cell, and beings that increasingly looked like fel