Chapter One - The Boy from Genoa

CHAPTER ONE

The Boy from Genoa

HE WAS A boy born in Genoa.

Not Rome. Not Madrid. Genoa. A tangled port city that smelled like salt, sweat, and bad decisions. His father was a weaver. His mother, a ghost in the background. There was no palace. No prophecy. Just wool and poverty.

But Christopher Columbus had something worse than nobility.
He had obsession.

He wasn’t brilliant. He wasn’t chosen. He was possessed. By gold. By God. By glory. By the unshakable conviction that the world owed him something huge. That somewhere west of the maps was a crown with his name on it. That Asia would fall into his hands if he just kept sailing.

And he never let the facts get in the way.

The Earth? He thought it was way smaller than it actually is. Every trained mathematician knew he was wrong. But he didn’t care. Because delusion is stronger than evidence when you think you’ve got heaven on your side.

He read Marco Polo like scripture. Not for adventure, for license. If some Venetian could ride to China and come back with stories, why not him? Why not go bigger? Why not bring the Cross, the Crown, and the Chains?

He devoured apocalyptic texts, too. The kind that said the world would end once Christianity reached every soul. And he took that shit personally. Like he was the trigger. Like he was the sword of God, waiting to be thrown westward.

So he started drawing maps. Not accurate ones. Visions. Sketches of oceans that didn’t exist. Landmasses imagined into place. He built his own universe, one where he was the center. A sailor-prophet. A monarch-in-waiting. A man who thought the sea would part for him like it did for Moses.

And the wildest part?

He wasn’t completely wrong.
The world did make room for him.
But not because he was destined.

Because he was ruthless enough to take what wasn’t his. And the world, sick with empire, let him.

This is where it starts.
Not with sails.

But with sickness.

And he carried it like a cross.