No one spoke for a long moment. The wail had faded, but its echo lingered in the air like a bitter taste.
Grandma Agata knelt in front of Luca. Her knees creaked, but she paid them no mind. She took the boy's hands in hers, small inside small, and looked him in the eyes.
"Where is it coming from, Luca?"
Luca swallowed. "From underneath," he said. "Under us. Under the city."
Sara took a step forward. "Luca, how do you know that?"
"I can feel it." He touched his chest with one hand. "Here. Like when you know someone's watching you, but stronger. It's like something is pulling me."
Marco looked at Grandma Agata. The old woman's expression was impossible to read. She wasn't surprised. Not completely. It was something more complicated: the look of someone who had found something she'd been searching for a long time, but wasn't sure she truly wanted it.
"The Labyrinth," Grandma Agata murmured. She stood slowly and went to a shelf at the back of the room. She pulled out a large book with a dark leather cover and worn edges. She opened it on a table, pushing aside candles and cups. The pages were filled with drawings: lines twisting together, corridors turning back on themselves, symbols Marco had never seen before.
"There's a labyrinth beneath Ossavuota," Agata said. "It's older than the city. Older than anything I know. The walls are covered in markings, and I understand maybe one out of every ten." She ran a finger over a map drawn in faded ink. "No one who has entered has ever come back."
"And the wail comes from there?" Marco asked.
"Something lives down there. Or something is trapped down there. I don't know." Grandma Agata looked at Luca. "But he can hear it. And that changes everything."
Sara clenched her jaw. "Changes everything how? My brother is twelve years old. You are not sending him into any labyrinth."
"I'm not sending anyone anywhere, girl." Agata's voice was hard, but her eyes were kind. "I'm telling you what I know. What you do with that information is your business."
Silence fell again. Marco moved closer to the map. The lines of the Labyrinth seemed to shift in the candlelight, but it was only an illusion. It had to be an illusion.
"You said there are portals," he said. "That they lead to other realms. And that the curse has seven rings. What does that mean?"
Grandma Agata closed the book about the Labyrinth and opened another, thinner one, its pages as fragile as butterfly wings. "The Black Ash Curse isn't one thing. It's seven things woven together, seven layers of power, one on top of another. Each layer is tied to a different realm, one of the realms reached through the portals."
"And if they break?" Sara asked.
"If one ring breaks, the curse weakens. The hollow slow down. The creatures retreat a little. The air becomes lighter." Agata paused. "If all seven break, the curse dies. And maybe, maybe, the people come back."
Marco felt something tighten in his chest. The people come back. His parents. His home. The life he'd had before.
"How do you break a ring?" he asked, his voice steadier than he'd expected.
"Every realm has a key. Not a metal key, not always. It could be an object, an action, a truth waiting to be uncovered. You have to find it and use it the right way." Grandma Agata looked at all three of them. "But the realms beyond the portals are not kind places. Each one has its own monsters, its own traps, its own rules. And the portals don't stay open forever. If you don't make it back in time..."
She didn't finish the sentence. She didn't need to.
Luca had sat down on the floor, his knees drawn to his chest. He stared at the ground as if he could see through the stone, down into the darkness of the Labyrinth.
"The thing that's howling," he said quietly. "It's not bad."
They all looked at him.
"How do you know?" Sara asked. There was fear in her voice, but something else too. Trust, maybe. The blind, stubborn trust reserved for a brother.
"Because it's sad," Luca said. "It howls because it's sad. Like when a dog is locked outside the house and wants to come in."
Grandma Agata dropped heavily into a chair. All the candles flickered together, as if the bookshop had sighed.
"Tomorrow I'll show you the portal up close," she said. "Tonight, sleep. Eat something. You're safe here. The salt and the words keep everything out." She stood and went to a cabinet, pulling out bread, cheese, and a bottle of water. "Eat," she repeated. "You don't face anything on an empty stomach. That's the first rule."
Marco took the bread. It was hard, but it tasted real, tasting of wheat and the oven, and it brought tears to his eyes for no reason. Sara ate in silence, one piece at a time, precise even in the way she chewed. Luca ate little, but he drank all the water they gave him.
Grandma Agata watched them from her chair, her hands folded in her lap. In the candlelight, she looked ancient, a piece of the old world that refused to disappear.
"Grandma Agata," Marco said. The word "Grandma" had slipped out on its own, without him thinking.
The old woman raised an eyebrow. "Yes?"
"Why us? How did we get here?"
Agata studied him for a long time. Then she looked at Sara. Then Luca, who had lain down on the floor with his head on his backpack and his eyes already half-closed.
"That," she said, "is the right question. And when I have the answer, you'll be the first to know."
Outside, in the darkness of Ossavuota, the portal in the sky pulsed. Slow. Steady. Like a heart waiting.