Naples does not sleep; it ferments.
Its streets pulse with the breath of saints and sinners, the smell of citrus and fire. Beneath one of its oldest quarters, where the stones remember plague and prophecy, Bombombini Gusini walked barefoot into the Biblioteca Abbandonata — the Abandoned Library — with a cigarette behind his ear and a matchbook between his teeth.
It was midnight.
Naturally.
"Why do you always burn the past?" asked a voice, distant, echoing from a nearby shelf stacked with rotting hymnals.
Bombombini smiled. "Because the past never shuts up."
He lit a match with his thumbnail. The flame caught in his palm like a lover's sigh.
He kissed it.
Then hurled it into the nearest bookshelf.
The flames spread like spilled wine — eager, wild, unholy.
Ancient parchment curled. Ink screamed as it boiled. Choir scores exploded into sparks, the notes fluttering upward like burning moths.
But Bombombini didn't watch.
He was following the pull.
A hum beneath the smoke.A whisper within the crackling wood.A voice that called him not by his name, but by the one he had given up when he set the monastery on fire.
Il Portavoce dell'Inferno.The Voice-Bearer of Hell.
He reached the center of the library — a sunken pit of black marble — just as the ceiling began to collapse in chunks of red brick and angelic frescoes.
He stepped into the fire, unburned, and pulled from the coals…
…a book that was not there before.
Bound in human skin, inked in melted wax and old blood.
"La Partitura di Fine Mondo" — The Score of the World's End.
He opened it. Slowly.
Each page hummed. Each note thrummed in the air like a heartbeat.
And on the final page:
A duet.
Two voices. One melody. The instructions read:
"To be sung at the end of all things. One must love. One must betray. Both must bleed."
He stared at the signature.
Not his.
Hers.
Tralalero Tralala.
He slammed the book shut.
Smoke rose from his sleeves. The library collapsed behind him, but the fire did not consume him.
Instead, it bowed.
He emerged into the street barefoot, coughing up ash, a song etched in his chest like scripture.
And leaning against a broken lamp post, arms crossed, chewing on a banana, stood Chimpanzini Bananini.
"Find what you were looking for?" the monkey asked, in a Neapolitan accent thick enough to butter bread.
Bombombini raised the book.
Chimpanzini grinned. "Well, shit. Guess we're doing this again."
"What do you mean again?" Bombombini narrowed his eyes.
But the monkey was already tap dancing through smoke.
Far away, Tralalero felt a chord tighten in her lungs.
Far beneath the Vatican, Capuchino Assassino felt his holy blade whisper "Sing, sinner."
And across Italy, a storm began to form in the shape of a violin.