The Bronx Chosen
Nelson Correa is nineteen, broke, and going nowhere fast. A sophomore at Bronx Community College with Lenape and Caribbean blood running through his veins, he's the kind of young man the....
Nelson Correa is nineteen, broke, and going nowhere fast. A sophomore at Bronx Community College with Lenape and Caribbean blood running through his veins, he's the kind of young man the world overlooks — handsome, sharp, carrying more potential than his circumstances allow. On a Tuesday night he makes one bad decision down by Hunts Point. Maybe it isn't even a bad decision. Maybe it was always going to happen exactly this way. Because that's where the sword found him. Half-buried in the mud at the waterline, catching the light of a distant streetlight like it had been waiting specifically for him — and it had. The moment his hand closes around the grip, something ancient and enormous recognizes him. Not his name. His blood. The blood of people who walked this land thousands of years before it had a name anyone living would recognize. And then the portal opens. A door standing in the air over the East River, its edges burning with the color of pre-dawn sky. Through it — silence. Vegetation, unlike anything they know. A world that smells like ocean and something older than ocean. Five people go through. Nelson — the reluctant chosen one who never asked for any of this and cannot walk away from any of it. Donovan — his best friend since elementary school, a brilliant biology nerd whose scientific mind is about to meet a world that breaks every rule he ever learned. Selena — a chemistry student and bodybuilder who protects Donovan the way fire protects everything it surrounds, whether it means to or not. Mariana — a businesswoman with secrets, a moral compass that points toward opportunity, and a fascination with Nelson she has never been able to explain or extinguish. And Apollonia — the girl Nelson never forgot. The girl from elementary school who grew up in the wrong direction, who has been waiting for a door out of her life for years without knowing the door would look like this. They land in Norumbega. Not another world. The same world — thousands upon thousands of years in the past, before cities, before maps, before history as anyone alive understands it. The cartographers who drew Norumbega on their ancient maps were not fantasizing. They were remembering a frequency. An echo of something that actually existed in deep time. Norumbega is alive. Its ancient castles are hospitals and schools and government halls. Its ecosystem breathes with intelligence. Its people carry power in their blood the way the five newcomers are about to discover they carry power in theirs. Nelson commands the air. Donovan carries the water. Selena burns with fire. Mariana moves the earth itself. And Apollonia — Apollonia carries something none of them have a word for yet. Something closer to what the gods carry. Because the gods are here too. Three of them. Ancient, powerful, complicated — and desperate, though they would never use that word. Because something fell from the heavens. Something dark and hungry and philosophically certain of itself. The Abyss landed in Norumbega and it has been spreading ever since, converting everything it touches into the belief that existence itself was the original mistake. Its followers call themselves the Niflach. They are not mindless destroyers. They are true believers. And their Unmaking Circle — five leaders each more dangerous than the last — has been waiting for the chosen one to arrive. Not to fight him. To convince him. Among them is Eldrmyrka — dark fire given a woman's shape, who wants Nelson with a hunger the Abyss amplified beyond reason. She is the most beautiful danger he has ever faced. And she will make Apollonia's blood run cold. This is the story of five people from the Bronx who stumbled into the world beneath their world. Who carry powers they didn't ask for. Who are being asked to save a civilization that will eventually become the land they grew up on. Every decision Nelson makes in Norumbega echoes forward through thousands of years of history — all the way to a boy standing by the East R
Disclaimer: This show may contain expletives, strong language, and mature content for adult listeners, including sexually explicit content and themes of violence. This is a work of fiction and any resemblance to real persons, businesses, places or events is coincidental. This show is not intended to offend or defame any individual, entity, caste, community, race, religion or to denigrate any institution or person, living or dead. Listener's discretion is advised.
