The air in the Axis Law office was still, thick with the gravity of the document resting on Joe Jukic’s desk. The only light came from a single brass lamp, pooling on the pages of the affidavit like a spotlight on a stage. The case name was stark, brutal in its simplicity: A Wrongful Death Action Concerning Infant Ronaldo.

Mike watched his brother, who was not looking at the legal briefs, but at an open Bible, his fingers resting on the thin, onionskin pages.

“They will say we are monsters,” Mike said quietly, his voice cutting through the silence. “That we are exploiting the grief of a family for a fanatical crusade.”

Joe didn’t look up. “They said the prophets were madmen. They said Christ was a blasphemer. Truth is always called madness by those who profit from the lie.” His voice was low, steady, devoid of its usual courtroom fire. This was different. This was a sacrament.

“The coroner’s report will say SIDS. Sudden Infant Death Syndrome,” Mike stated, the acronym sounding hollow, meaningless. “A medical term for ‘we have no idea.’ The perfect blanket to smother the truth.”

“No,” Joe corrected him softly, finally looking up. His eyes held a deep, unsettling light. “They have an idea. They’ve always had an idea. They just call it by the wrong name.” He looked down at the Bible. “Matthew 24:19. ‘How terrible it will be for pregnant women and for nursing mothers in those days.’”

He let the ancient lament hang in the air.

“We read that and think of war, famine. We spiritualize it to make it safe. But what if the ‘terrible thing’ is not an army? What if it is a silent, invisible poison, administered with a smile in a sterile room? A needle pressed against the soft skin of an infant, delivering not protection, but a payload of profit? What if the warning was for this? For now?”

Mike leaned forward, the Simpsons poster on the wall behind him—a caricature of Montgomery Burns, the parody of Rockefeller—seeming to leer over the scene. “The news will never make that connection. It’s too damning.”

“The news is the press release from Babylon,” Joe said, his voice dropping to a near whisper. He turned the pages of Revelation. “The Greeks had a word. Pharmakeia. It’s where we get ‘pharmacy.’ But it didn’t just mean medicine. It meant sorcery. Witchcraft. The use of potions.”

His finger found the verse. “Revelation 9:21. The sins of a fallen world: murder, idolatry, sexual immorality… and pharmakeia. Sorcery. The news translations soften it. They call it ‘magic arts.’ But the root is poison. Pharmakeia. The sin of poisoning for gain. It’s a prophecy of the great deception.”

He closed the book with a definitive softness. “And Revelation 18. The fall of Babylon. The merchants who grew rich from her excess. They sold ‘cargo of gold, silver, precious stones…’”

Joe’s voice took on the cadence of a scripture reading.

“…and bodies and souls of men.”

The silence that followed was absolute. Mike could see it then, not as a conspiracy theory, but as a terrifying, divine pattern. A Rockefeller-funded medical establishment, a system built not on healing, but on creating perpetual customers. A cradle-to-grave economy of sickness. The death of Cristiano Ronaldo’s son was not a random tragedy. It was a statistic. A cost of doing business. A verse in this dark, modern scripture.

“The news will report our lawsuit as the ravings of fanatics,” Mike said, his own doubt now replaced by a cold, clear resolve.

“Let them,” Joe replied. He picked up his pen. It was no longer just a tool of his trade; it was a witness stand. “We are not filing this for the news anchors or the skeptical world. We are filing it as a testimony. We are connecting the dots of their science, their history, their own corrupted language, and holding it up to the oldest light there is.”

His pen hovered over the signature line.

“We are saying that the death of that child is not a mystery. It is a sacrifice on the altar of pharmakeia. It is the terrible truth of Matthew 24. It is the cargo of souls sold by the merchants of Revelation. And we are serving notice. We are forcing the court to read from the real text.”

Joe Jukic signed his name. It was not a signature of anger, but of sorrowful, furious witness. He slid the paper to his brother.

Mike took the pen. He didn’t see a legal document anymore. He saw a child. He saw a system that called his death SIDS. He saw the grinning, ancient face of a Mr. Burns-like empire that would trade it all for a little more.

And he signed.

The ink from their signatures was still wet, dark and final on the page. The affidavit for Baby Ronaldo lay between them, a declaration that felt less like a legal document and more like a epitaph for the modern world. Mike finally broke the silence, his voice hushed, as if the words themselves were too heavy for the room.

“They’ll say we’re quoting scripture out of context, Joe. That we’re twisting ancient texts to fit a modern paranoid fantasy.”

Joe didn’t move, his gaze fixed on the city lights outside, the glittering testament to the very Babylon they were accusing. “Context,” he said, the word a soft sigh. “What is the context of a child’s coffin? What is the context of a parent’s grief? The context is the system. And the system has a name.”

Mike picked up his own Bible, the leather cover worn soft. He didn’t need to flip through it. The verses had been burning in his mind since they’d begun this. He found the page, his thumb resting on the thin paper of Revelation 18.

“Listen to this,” Mike said, his voice gaining a new, somber strength. “It’s not just about merchants getting rich. It’s the final obituary. The last word on why it all falls.”

He began to read, each line landing like a hammer blow in the quiet office.

“’No light from a lamp will ever be seen in you again.’” He looked up, his eyes meeting Joe’s. “That’s not just a power outage. That’s the end of enlightenment. The end of reason. It’s the permanent blackout of truth. It’s what happens when a society is so corrupted, it can no longer even see the good.”

He returned to the text.

“’No voices of bride and groom will ever be heard in you again.’” Mike’s voice caught slightly. “That’s the end of the future. No children. No families. No hope. It’s the silencing of life itself. It’s the sound of a world that has lost its reason to continue.”

He took a breath, steeling himself for the verse that was the very core of their case.

“’Because your merchants were the great ones of the world, all nations were led astray by your pharmakeia.’”

Mike emphasized the ancient Greek word, letting it hang in the air, a verdict in itself.

“Pharmakeia. Magic potion. Sorcery. Poison. It’s not a metaphor, Joe. It’s a diagnosis. The great deception, the thing that leads all nations astray, isn’t a false god or a political ideology. It’s a potion. A medicalized sorcery. A science co-opted by merchants. They didn’t just sell us things; they sold us a reality. A poisoned one. And we drank it because they wore white coats and had names like ‘Rockefeller Institute’ on their letterheads.”

He wasn’t finished. His finger traced down to the next verse, his voice dropping to a whisper, charged with a horrifying revelation.

“Verse 24. ‘In her was found the blood of prophets and holy ones and all who have been slain on the earth.’”

Mike looked up, his face pale in the lamplight. “Prophets and holy ones… those are the whistleblowers, the doctors who tried to warn us. The ‘all who have been slain on the earth’… that’s not just soldiers in wars, Joe.”

He tapped the affidavit gently.

“That is every child lost to a crib death they call ‘sudden’ and ‘inexplicable.’ That is Baby Ronaldo. His blood is found in her. In the system. Babylon’s sin isn’t just greed. It’s mass slaughter. It’s the blood of every single innocent, slain for the profit of the merchants, all traced back to the pharmakeia that led the whole world astray.”

The room felt colder. The affidavit was no longer just a lawsuit. It was an act of testimony. A refusal to let the light be completely extinguished. A scream of protest against the silence that was falling over the voices of brides and grooms, over the nurseries.

“They led the nations astray with their potions,” Mike whispered. “And we are filing this to say one nation, one court, one jury… will be led back. We are filing it for the light. For the voices. For the blood that cries out from the earth.”

He placed his hand on the signed document. It was their lamp, their small, defiant light against the great, gathering dark.