There is a church at the bottom of the Mediterranean.
Its spire is broken. Its bells do not ring. But its altar glows — faintly, like the memory of a prayer long since betrayed.
This is where Lirilì Larilà sleeps.
Or slept.
She opens her eyes beneath the sea.
She does not drown.
The water does not touch her.
It bows.
She sits upright in the pew where she once died. Around her, pews rot in slow motion. Choir books float like dead birds. Fish with too many eyes sing songs they cannot remember learning.
Lirilì's dress is stitched from seaweed and silk.
Her hands are made of salt and silence.
Her mouth does not open — but she remembers.
The first end.A fire that sang in tongues. A kiss beneath the cross.Her voice broke the sun.
The second end.They danced on a stage carved into a mountain. The audience was made of angels and traitors.Her song made the stars fall.
The third end.She did not sing.She only screamed.
Lirilì stands.
The church shifts.
An ancient sculpture of the Madonna sheds tears of ink. A stained-glass window shatters inward. Somewhere far above, a whale turns in its grave.
And Lirilì whispers — her first word in centuries.
"Again."
A choir of drowned children rises from the floor, mouths wide, no lungs to scream with. But scream they do.
"Seven voices. One silence. The duet begins. The duet begins."
She walks barefoot down the aisle.
At the altar lies a violin, cracked in half, still vibrating.
She touches it.
Her fingertips spark.
And the sea begins to boil.
Meanwhile, in a convent buried under Milan,Capuchino Assassino falls to his knees in the middle of a burning rosary maze.
He clutches his side, bleeding from a wound that opened on its own.
"She's awake," he says aloud.
A novice nun runs toward him, but he gestures for silence.
"If she sings, it's over. If she weeps, it's worse."
In the skies above Rome,Ballerina Cappuccina dances on the back of a gargoyle, laughing and crying at once.
The melody in her blood is changing.
In Palermo,Bombombini Gusini carves sheet music into a wall using a tooth he pulled from his own mouth.
The ink is black fire.
And Tralalero Tralala,alone on a rooftop in Venice,looks into the rising smoke of the horizon, and says only:
"She remembers."
Back in the church beneath the sea,Lirilì Larilà raises her hands.
And the bells ring.
The sea turns red.
And the dead begin to sing.