“Everyone says don’t. That’s why I have to.”

“And then?”

“Then the marsh rose. The huts sank. The people scattered. But the Memory remained. And every city built on top of it has inherited its hunger. Internapoli sinks because it is trying to reach that memory. The tunnels go deeper because the city is grieving , and it doesn’t know how to stop.”

The neon sign above the café flickered— Sospiro —in that unstable lavender-pink that meant the city’s grid was dreaming again. Marco pressed his palm to the wet iron table. Rain from three hours ago still clung to everything. Internapoli didn’t dry; it merely decided, moment by moment, whether you would feel the dampness or not.

“That sounds good.”

Level -5: the temperature dropped. Marco could see his breath. The tunnel widened into a cavern, and in the center of the cavern, a scale. Not a modern scale—an ancient one, brass and iron, with two pans hanging from chains that disappeared into the darkness above.

Level -3: water up to his ankles. He waded through it, the cold seeping through his boots. On the walls, graffiti in languages that predated Italian: Oscan, Greek, a script that looked like folded cloth.

Three years. Nothing temporary about it.