The discovery didn’t happen in a cathedral or a lecture hall, but in the quiet, dust-mote-filled sanctuary of my grandmother’s attic. It was late evening, that blue hour when the world slows down, and I was knee-deep in the remnants of a history I didn’t yet understand. I was sifted through boxes of old family Bibles, the air thick with the evocative, musty scent of decaying parchment and the heavy silence of a house at rest.
I cannot say what prompted me to reach for that specific volume. It was a rugged thing, bound in deep brown leather that had cracked like parched earth, its corners rounded and softened by the thumbprints of generations.
At the time, I wasn’t searching for divine revelation—I was looking for an escape. My heart was a tangled knot of secrets I hadn’t dared to voice. I had fallen in love with a man fifteen years my senior, and the weight of the world’s…
