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“IS IT REALLY THIS WAY?”
Episode One: Funeral of a Father, Rise of the Sons
By Otis the Rounder, Who Don’t Miss

It began with silence.

Not the kind that brings peace—no, this silence had weight. It crouched on the shoulders of the Blackman bloodline like a waiting storm. The wind that morning didn’t move, but everything else did. Eyes moved. Rumors moved. Grief moved. And above all, the Queens moved—three of them, veiled and glittering like vipers in mourning gowns, not a tear among them.

Because this funeral wasn’t just a burial. It was a ritual execution.
And everybody who mattered knew why.

The Casket Was Closed.
You didn’t show a body like Dramond Blackman’s—not after what Ellis had to do.
Not after what the Queens made him become.

He was once untouchable.
The ruler of the streets, father to over 30 children, a god to fools and a ghost to lawmen.
But there were two things Dramond Blackman never did:

1. Disrespect the code of the Blackman men.
2. Lay hands on a woman.

That’s why they all knew something had gone wrong.
That’s why Ellis, just fifteen, had to do what a son should never do.

He killed his own father.
Not for power.
Not for revenge.
But because Dramond—possessed, twisted, screaming her name like a curse—was trying to kill Alicia, his mother, the woman who’d loved him despite everything.

And Ellis didn’t hesitate.
Steel flashed. Screams followed. Blood painted the kitchen walls of their Bronx apartment.
And by the time the spell broke, it was too late.

Alicia took the fall.
She wore the blood like a veil, told the cops the story like it was her own, and walked herself into a jail cell before Ellis even understood what he’d done.
But Jean-Pierre—Dramond’s quiet older brother, the one who had turned his back on the empire years ago—he saw through it all.

He went to the Queens. Made a deal with the devils in lace.
Told them he’d come back to the fold.
Told them he’d run Blackman Mansion the way it was meant to be run.
In return, Alicia walked free.

But the Queens weren’t just watching Jean-Pierre.
They were watching his son.

The Funeral:

James Blackman stood beside Ellis, and neither boy said a word.
They had never met before this day.

James was the quiet one from the hills, raised on a western Pennsylvania farm that doubled as a sanitation business—scrubbing death off the land like it was holy work.
Ellis was the wild one from the Bronx, known for fists, footwork, and fire behind his eyes.

Two sons from different worlds.
Same blood.
Same legacy.
Same buried thunder in their bones.

Jean-Pierre stood between them. One hand on each boy’s shoulder.
Venus, his wife and James’s mother, stood on one side. Alicia, Ellis’s mother and Venus’s younger cousin, on the other.

And behind them?
The Queens. Watching.
Smiling.
Plotting.

Later That Afternoon – The Schoolyard

It wasn’t long after the funeral that the chaos began.

The boys had walked down to the open blacktop near St. Maria’s Elementary, just trying to get air.
They didn’t expect a crowd—didn’t expect half the damn neighborhood to be there, kids playing hopscotch and uncles slapping dominos down like hammers.
Didn’t expect to see them.

Three girls.
Braided. Bright. Beautiful.
Watching from the fence line like shadows in silk.
India. Maria. Orisha.

They hadn’t remembered who they were yet—not fully.
But the air shimmered when they stepped closer.
Their eyes glowed with a forgotten war.

The Gang Came Loud.
Five of them. Older teens. Built like athletes.
Muscles tight. Eyes glazed with Archonic possession.
They swaggered in like they owned the earth—and maybe, just maybe, something under it.

They called Ellis soft.
Called James a hick.
Said the girls were theirs to train.

James moved first.
Fast. Clean.
Haymaker like a hammer off a Blacksmith’s forge.
But they caught him.
Dragged him down like hyenas.

Ellis jumped in.
Kicks sharp. Elbows brutal.
But even he was outnumbered.

Until they moved.

India screamed. A name. Not hers. One from a past life.
Maria’s feet left the ground—levitated just enough to twist gravity.
Orisha’s hands shimmered with blue fire no one else saw.

And the boys?
They changed.

Something in their blood roared awake.
Their DNA wasn’t just human—it was First One.
The ancient kind.
Born of gods.
Bred for war.

Fist met jaw.
Knee cracked ribs.
A scream split the summer sky, and every child watching forgot their popsicles.

When the gang ran—bloodied, broken, hollering that “those kids ain’t natural!”—
the crowd erupted.

Old folks cheered.
Young girls cried.
One elder whispered:
“It done started again.”

After the Fight – In the Car

Venus drove. Alicia rode shotgun. Jean-Pierre sat in back, arms folded.
James and Ellis sat between him, still breathing hard, knuckles scabbed.

Venus smirked in the rearview.
“Y’all out here showin’ off in front of your little girlfriends already?”

Ellis looked down, grinning despite himself.
James said nothing—but his eyes stayed on the rear window, watching the girls fade behind them.

End of Scene.
The war hadn’t begun yet—but the gods had taken their first steps onto the stage.

Would you like Otis to write the next chapter?
The night they remember the dreams…
The Queens’ next move…
Or when James first hears the drums from the Blackman Mansion basement?

Say the word, and I’ll swing the pen again.

🔥 THE BRAWL AFTER THE FUNERAL

Otis the Rounder Presents: The Day the Bronx Held Its Breath
Setting: One Block From Blackman Mansion — 1963, July heatwave
Tone: Cinematic. Reverent. Fierce.
Narrative Weight: Legendary. Etched in collective memory for 30 years.

It began the way many myths do—in silence, in sweat, and in the shadow of death.

The funeral of Draymond Blackman, crime boss and monarch of the Bronx underworld, had just ended. Not a soul cried honestly. Only Ellis Blackman, 15, who had killed his father two weeks prior to protect his mama, held his silence like a shield.

Beside him walked James Blackman, age 13 but grown beyond his years. A farm boy from western Pennsylvania. Leather-tough hands. Steel in his posture. Levi Blackman’s grandson—though most didn’t know it yet. He had just arrived in the Bronx, and fate was about to baptize him in blood and bone.

The walk from the cemetery to Blackman Mansion was only six blocks. But on the fifth block, the gods of war whispered. A rusted playground stood crooked like an altar. And at its gates—three girls, radiant and rooted like goddesses out of time, were surrounded by nine street wolves.

These weren’t just any boys.
They were the worst kind of predator: broken boys who broke others.
Tattooed with neighborhood scars.
Raised by corners and concrete.

One of them grabbed India’s wrist—the quiet one, the one who hadn’t spoken until she was twelve.
Another reached for Maria, who stepped back, fire already lit in her dark eyes.
Oya, tall and whirlwind-voiced, spat before they even touched her: “Try it, bitch. You’ll leave here boneless.”

Ellis moved first.

Didn’t ask. Didn’t wait.
He broke the first boy’s nose with a hook that sang of righteous rage and Blackman blood.
James was right behind him, farm-strong, tossing a thug into the swingset with a shoulder tackle that cracked ribs.

The street froze.

But it wasn’t just the boys.

India moved like a ghost with a knife no one saw.
Maria ducked, twisted, jabbed—street ballet with blood.
Oya leapt from the monkey bars, dropped like thunder on a back-of-the-neck.

It wasn’t a fight.
It was a Bronx prophecy.

Five minutes later…

Nine street thugs lay bleeding in the gravel, their pride stripped, faces rearranged, limbs twitching like marionettes cut from strings. The sirens didn’t come. Not that day. The neighborhood watched from windows. Old men didn’t intervene.
They just nodded.

Because they’d seen it before, long ago, when other warriors had returned in flesh.
Because they knew: something ancient had just awakened.

Ellis bled from the lip.

James’s knuckles were raw.

India stared at them both like a storm remembering its name.

“Y’all don’t know who we are yet,” she said, voice like thunder wrapped in velvet.

“But you will.”

Maria smirked, cleaning blood from her fingernails.

Oya grabbed James’s face and kissed his forehead.

“Welcome to the real Bronx, country boy.”

And that was the day.

The day whispered through fire escapes.
The day old folks told their grandkids.
The day the Bronx almost caught fire.

The day five kids—fifteen, sixteen, no more—rewrote the streets.

And from that day forward, the world began to turn differently.

Because gods had returned to the Bronx in human skin.

And their war… had only just begun.

⚰️  Nightfall at the Mansion

Blood on the Knocker

They didn’t speak the rest of the way.

Not Ellis. Not James. Not the girls. Only their footsteps talked—five shadows stretched long by the setting sun, trailing heat and history down Valentine Avenue.

The mansion sat like it remembered pain.
Blackman Mansion.
Three floors of stone and sorrow. Black iron gates curled like claws.
Porch columns thick as tree trunks. Glass windows fogged with a kind of breath that hadn’t belonged to the living in decades.

James stood still at the bottom of the stone steps.

“This… where you live?”

Ellis didn’t answer. He just pushed the gate open with his forearm, and the iron groaned like something waking up.

India paused beside James.

“You feel it?” she whispered.

James nodded.

It wasn’t cold. Not exactly. But there was a drop in something—temperature or time, he couldn’t say.

The door loomed.

And carved into it—not etched, not nailed, but grown into the wood itself—was the Blackman sigil: a serpent eating its own tail, wrapped around a keyhole dripping with dried wax.

“Don’t touch the knocker,” Ellis said.

Too late.

James already had.

It was hot. Not metal-hot. Not Bronx-summer hot.

Spirit-hot.

A surge went through him, and in one blink of pain-light, he wasn’t standing on a porch anymore.

He was—

🌑 Interlude: James’s First Dream in the Mansion

A red grove. Silent trees pulsing with flame beneath bark. Sky, cracked and violet. The air hums like a choir underwater.

In the center of the grove—
Zubari.

She stands naked but unashamed, her back covered in ritual tattoos of firebirds, suns, and one crescent eye. She is India before time. The one who hadn’t spoken till twelve because language is too small to carry memory.

She turns.

“You found me,” she says, voice like charcoal wind.

James can’t speak. His tongue is ash.

Zubari touches his chest, and his shirt melts away like mist.

“You are Jurgatha,” she says. “You are mine.”

Her hand pushes through his chest.

The Parlor of Queens

James wakes up gasping. Chest wet. But there’s no blood. No wound. Just sweat.

He’s in a bed now—an old four-poster carved with stories. Stories of warriors, wombs, and things with wings.

At the foot of the bed stand three chairs, empty but facing him.

“They’ll come when you’re ready,” India says from the window.
“The Queens.”

“Queens?”

“The ones who run this country. And your grandfather made a deal with them. That’s why you’re here.”

James sits up slow.

“What kind of deal?”

India turns fully. Her eyes are ancient now. Older than the fight. Older than the Bronx.

“The kind you inherit.”

  “Queens Beneath the Floorboards”

The floorboards will creak tonight.

And from the crawlspace beneath James’s bed, something female, ancient, and serpentine will whisper his name in four tongues—each one older than empire.

Because the Blackman Mansion is not just a house.

It’s a contract.

And James just opened the door with blood still on his hands.

🔮 NEXT CHAPTER:

“The Floor That Remembers Feet”
Where Ellis’s nightmares return. Where Maria dreams of water. Where Oya hears drums no one else can.
And the four Archon Queens send their first vision.

—

Understood. Here is how I’ll structure and begin Episode One of this epic mythic novel:

EPISODE ONE: “The Church of Forgetting”

10 Chapters | 25 Scenes | ~10,000 words
Voice: Alternates between India, Maria, James, Ellis
Rhythm: Shifts dynamically — lyrical prophecy, slow-burning grief, ritual intensity, ancestral quiet
Motifs: Salt, Song, Bones, Veils, Smoke, Broken Mirrors, Dreamwater

✦ CHAPTER STRUCTURE ✦

Each chapter features 2–3 scenes, culminating in a rising revelation, and braided across multiple character arcs.

CHAPTER 1 — THE FIRST DREAM: SALT

India speaks her first dream in a trembling Bronx church, tearing open veils of memory.
Scene 1: India awakens in sweat, salt on her lips, dream still echoing — a child made of salt walks into fire.
Scene 2: The sermon begins. India rises. She speaks not her own voice, but the voice of the dreaming world.
Scene 3: James stands in the back pew. He does not bow. He does not cry. He remembers.

CHAPTER 2 — MARIA’S HEADACHE

Maria, far across the borough, clutches her skull as a soundless scream drills through her mind.
Scene 4: Lourdes prepares a tea of guava leaves and silence. The spirits in the mirror stir.
Scene 5: Maria’s father tells an old story — of twins born under broken moons.
Scene 6: Maria draws something in the fog of her breath on the window. A shape not yet born.

CHAPTER 3 — THE SECOND DREAM: BONES

India dreams of a staircase made of bones. At the top: her own skull, weeping.
Scene 7: Ellis interviews an old woman who remembers a girl like India from 1926.
Scene 8: India walks the Bronx streets at night. Her shadow splits into seven.
Scene 9: A dreamwalker with no eyes tells her: “You carry what the world once buried.”

CHAPTER 4 — THE VEIL IS THIN

Scene 10: Lourdes conjures under a black cloth. The veil rips.
Scene 11: Maria sees her first partial spirit in the mirror. It has her hands, but not her face.
Scene 12: James passes through a funeral and hears the eulogy in a forgotten language.

CHAPTER 5 — THE THIRD DREAM: SONG

India sings in her sleep. The walls of her bedroom weep.
Scene 13: A neighbor records the sound and sends it to the local radio station.
Scene 14: Ellis listens. He feels something ancient return.
Scene 15: India’s body trembles like a struck bell. In her dream: a thousand ancestors humming.

CHAPTER 6 — MEMORY AS WITNESS

Scene 16: James and Ellis cross paths at a cemetery where no names remain.
Scene 17: Maria visits a botanica and touches a stone that pulses.
Scene 18: India sees herself in the mirror — but older, crying, and speaking in tongues.

CHAPTER 7 — THE FOURTH DREAM: VEIL

Scene 19: A dream of veils falling. One by one, revealing every lie her mother believed.
Scene 20: India writes the dream down. Every letter burns into the paper.
Scene 21: A stranger shows up at her church and says: “You’ve dreamed me before.”

CHAPTER 8 — MARIA MAKES A SPIRIT

Scene 22: Maria chants a name not found in any language. A wind enters the room.
Scene 23: The spirit blinks. It does not speak, but it feels sorrow.
Scene 24: Lourdes slaps Maria across the face. “You’re not ready.”

CHAPTER 9 — THE CHURCH OF FORGETTING

Scene 25: Final sermon. India returns. All seven dreams curl like smoke above her head.
The people listen. Some cry. Some flee. One falls into trance.
James kneels. Ellis weeps.
Maria walks through the door as it ends.

Would you like the full prose of Chapter One now? It will begin with India’s first dream of salt, then bloom into her public revelation. I’ll write it in full mythic cadence. Just say:
“Otis, begin Chapter One.”

Here is the technical breakdown for Game of Thrones (the HBO series):

1. Total Episodes

The series spans 8 seasons, comprising a total of 73 episodes (2011–2019) (Wikipedia).

2. Chapters Adapted per Episode

• On average, each episode adapts roughly 7 chapters from George R. R. Martin’s novels (Reddit).
• This aligns with the structure of the books: most of the A Song of Ice and Fire volumes contain 70–80 chapters, which are distributed across the episodes (especially in ten‑episode seasons) (Reddit).

3. Scenes per Episode

• Episode structure typically includes 4 to 6 concurrent storylines per episode.
• Each storyline unfolds through approximately 5 to 6 scenes, resulting in around 20 to 36 scenes per episode (Just TV).

📊 Summary Table

⚙️ Notes & Observations

• Variance exists depending on the season and pacing. Early seasons (S1–S6) typically adhere to ~10 episodes per season adapting one novel’s chapters; final seasons are shorter but often more densely plotted.
• Season 7’s episodes are longer on average (some exceed 80 minutes) and may include more scenes despite fewer storylines (Vanity Fair, Wikipedia, Reddit, Wikipedia).
• Themes or episodes built around large set‑pieces inevitably shift chapter adaptation density or scene count distribution—but the overall averages remain strong approximations.

✅ Technical Summary

• Total episodes: 73 episodes across 8 seasons.
• Chapters adapted: Approximately 7 per episode (book to screen conversion).
• Scenes per episode: Roughly 20–36, based on 4–6 storylines × 5–6 scenes per storyline.

If you need further breakdowns—such as specific episodes, season‑by‑season counts, or scene-by‑scene analysis—feel free to ask.