Silence was the first thing Marco felt. Not normal silence, the kind that came with quiet nights or empty rooms. This was wrong silence. Silence that pressed against his ears like deep water.
He opened his eyes. Gray sky. Stones beneath his back. The smell of cold ash filling his throat.
He shot upright. A square. Houses all around, their windows black and their doors standing wide open. Weeds grew between the cobblestones. No sound. No birds. No wind.
Sara was three steps away, already awake, already on her feet. She held Luca tight against her side. The boy's eyes were wide and his lips trembled, but he was not crying. Sara looked at him and shook her head: I don't know where we are.
"What is this place?" Marco said. His voice sounded flat, as if the air swallowed it.
"I don't know." Sara slowly scanned their surroundings, her eyes taking in every detail. "But I don't like it."
Luca tugged on his sister's sleeve. "Sara. Someone's there."
Marco saw it a moment later. At the far end of the square, in the shadow of an archway, a figure was moving. Slowly. It dragged its feet across the cobblestones with a sound that scraped against the bones. Then another. And another. They came out of the open doors like thick smoke, one at a time, their movements broken and wrong, like marionettes with tangled strings.
They were people. Or they had been. Dirty clothes, gray skin, white eyes like spilled milk. They did not run. They did not need to run. They were all moving in the same direction.
Toward them.
"Run," Marco said. He did not shout. Shouting seemed impossible in that silence.
They took the first street they found. Luca stumbled, and Sara hauled him up without stopping. Houses slid past on either side, all alike, all dead. Behind them, the sound of dragging footsteps grew louder, multiplying. Marco looked back. There were dozens now. They filled the street like a slow, relentless river.
An alley. Another. A locked door. Another locked door.
"This way."
The voice came from above. Dry, decisive, old. Marco looked up. A woman leaned out of a second-story window in a building with the faded sign of a bookshop. She was small and thin, with white hair pulled into a tight braid. She watched them with dark, impatient eyes.
"The back door. Move, I don't have all night."
There was no time to question it. They turned the corner and found a small wooden door left ajar. They slipped inside one after another. Marco entered last and shut the door behind him. He felt something press against the other side, slow and insistent. Then nothing. As if whatever had been chasing them had lost interest, or could no longer sense them.
Inside was another world. Shelves of books stretched from floor to ceiling, packed so tightly the walls could not be seen. Candles everywhere: on tables, on shelves, on the floor, in saucers, in cups, in every corner. The light flickered warm and yellow. The air smelled of wax and old paper, and for the first time since he had woken up, Marco felt something that resembled safety.
The woman came down the stairs with surprisingly quick steps. She looked at them one by one, as if weighing them.
"Three," she said. "Three kids in the middle of Ossavuota. You're the luckiest or the stupidest people I've ever seen."
"Ossavuota?" Sara repeated.
"That's what it's called now. It had another name before, but it doesn't deserve it anymore." The woman wiped her hands on her gray apron. "I'm Agata. And you're alive, which is already something."
"Those... those people outside," Marco said. "What are they?"
"They were people. Now they are walking ash." Grandma Agata picked up a candle and brought it close to Luca's face, studying him. The boy did not pull away. "The Black Ash Curse. It came one night and took everyone. Everyone except me."
"Why not you?" Sara asked.
The old woman smiled, but it was not a happy smile. "Because I know things. And the curse cannot take someone who knows. Don't ask me why. I don't know either. I only know that's how it works."
Luca pulled away from his sister and went to the window. He shifted the wooden board covering it just enough to look outside. High above the rooftops of the dead city, the gray sky had been torn open. It was not a cloud. It was not a star. It was a hole, a circle of black light pulsing slowly like a sick heart.
"What is that?" he whispered.
Grandma Agata came closer. She looked at the tear in the sky, and her face changed. Something between wonder and fear.
"A portal," she said quietly. "They open sometimes. They lead somewhere else. Other realms, other worlds." She turned toward the children. "Sooner or later, you will have to cross through one. Not today. But soon."
Silence returned. The candles trembled. Somewhere far away, beyond the empty houses and dead streets, something wailed. A long, low sound that did not belong to any animal Marco knew.
Luca let the wooden board fall. He turned toward the others. His eyes were huge, but not with fear. With something else.
"I know where it comes from," he said. "The wail. I know where it comes from."
Grandma Agata stared at him. For the first time since they had met her, she seemed speechless.