🪞Title: Sankofa

(“Go back and get it” – A West African concept symbolizing return and reclamation)

Genre: Afrofuturist speculative fiction
Structure: 4-book series (this outline is for Book 1)

📚 Book 1: “Sankofa” – Outline

THEME

You are not the beginning, but you might be the return.
A story of identity, bloodline, and invention—where the future can only be unlocked by facing a stolen past.

ACT I: The Mark

1. Parallel Lives Begin

  • We meet two teenage girls:

    • Asha, a brilliant, quiet Black American girl with a military family, growing up surrounded by structure, support, and inherited excellence.

    • Zola, a Ghanaian girl adopted by a white American professor and his wife after a mysterious “educational opportunity” removed her from her homeland.

  • Neither girl knows about the other, but both are marked—a mysterious scar or symbol that has been commented on but never explained. It occasionally itches or pulses.

2. Quiet Awakening

  • Asha builds her first web-based game inspired by Kemetic mythology, frustrated that Black myths are erased while Greek and Norse legends are celebrated.

  • She begins anonymously posting YouTube tutorials about how she built it—sparking a quiet underground community of other young Black coders, artists, and builders.

  • Zola is quietly brilliant but emotionally distanced. Her adoptive sister (the professor’s biological daughter) notices their dad’s strange behavior—obsessive files, maps, and timelines.

3. The Bloodline Mystery

  • Asha’s mother tells her Caribbean folktales before bed. Her father trains her in focus, leadership, and military values.

  • Zola’s adoptive mother (a “Karen” archetype) gaslights her subtle discomfort. Zola begins to have vivid dreams of African ancestors and blood rituals.

  • The mark on Asha burns during intimacy with her boyfriend—he comments on it. Later, when Zola and Asha unknowingly cross paths (online or physically), the mark activates and neutralizes—a silent connection made.

ACT II: The Professor’s Long Game

4. Two Roads Converge

  • Zola’s sister discovers her father has been tracking two girls, not just Zola. Asha and Zola’s family trees trace back to a powerful bloodline—the descendants of a West African community split during the transatlantic slave trade.

  • The professor is the latest vessel in a lineage of colonizers who passed down a ritual of soul-transfer, each generation seeking to delay a prophecy of Afrocentric global renewal.

  • In his youth, the original colonizer seduced an African elder to gain entry to the village, found a shard of ancient power, and stole it—using it to orchestrate the first slave shipment.

5. The Girls Begin to See

  • Asha is focused on building, not fame. She continues growing a network of diaspora-based creators, unknowingly recreating the foundation for a united African digital future.

  • Zola confronts her adoptive father, triggering ancestral memories. She begins to reject the myths she was fed and seeks out hidden truths about her origin.

  • The professor watches nervously—he spent his life trying to separate these bloodlines. But now he needs them together to complete a final ritual.

6. Secrets Surface

  • Asha is invited to a prestigious event or military conference—Zola is there too. When they meet, they’re struck by their eerie resemblance.

  • Zola’s adoptive sister shows Asha the room of surveillance—the professor has been orchestrating both their lives from the shadows.

  • They realize the professor needs them, and he has always feared what would happen if they realized they didn’t need him.

ACT III: Sankofa Rising

7. Reclaiming the Path

  • The mark’s true purpose is revealed—it's not a curse or anomaly, it’s a spiritual tracking system encoded into the bloodline to one day lead descendants home.

  • Through research and ancestral rituals (assisted by a Mami Wata figure or elder), Asha and Zola begin to unlock fragments of a forgotten language or energy system.

  • Zola discovers her “father” isn’t immortal—he’s a shell, hosting the soul of the original colonizer. His soul was ripped out in his pursuit of Kemetic power. His survival depends on keeping the African bloodlines fractured.

8. The Betrayal That Broke the Line

  • Flashbacks or visions reveal the original split: Two brothers from the same African family—one enslaved, one who stayed. To protect half the community, the village made a terrible choice: sacrifice the marked to preserve the seed.

  • The professor seduced the community into weakness, and one of the women he betrayed bore his child—beginning the cursed bloodline.

  • This reveals: Asha and Zola are descendants of both power and betrayal—they are the convergence point.

9. The First Battle

  • The professor lures them into a “reunion” under the guise of reconciliation.

  • He tries to extract their power via a ritual—but it backfires. Their connection short-circuits the ritual, and the mark glows in unison.

  • Zola’s adoptive sister helps them escape. The professor’s physical body dies, but they know the soul will return.

  • Before they leave, they both utter a phrase—taught separately by their mothers—that unlocks the next step.

Epilogue

  • Asha and Zola head to Africa. The soul of the professor is wounded, but not gone.

  • Their journey has just begun. The true war is not for revenge—but for reclamation.

  • We see one last quiet moment: Asha’s YouTube account that started it all… now archived, but still growing.