As Oliver's car devoured the kilometers of the Salerno-Reggio Calabria motorway, the landscape began to shed its skin. The gentleness of the Tuscan hills and the opulence of Lazio had given way to a more severe, almost primordial nature. The Sila and Aspromonte mountains loomed on the horizon like granite giants standing guard over an ancient secret. Gone were the manicured meadows of the Loire; here, the earth seemed scorched by the sun and whipped by the wind—a place where every broom bush fought for its own space among the rocks.
Azzurra stared out the window, her chin resting on her hand. She sensed a change not only outside but within herself. The air entering through the air conditioning vents was different: it was charged with an electric tension, a static electricity that made the nape of her neck tingle. It was the scent of pine resin mixed with the increasingly insistent smell of iodized sea salt.
"Do you hear that?" Azzurra asked, breaking the silence that had set in after hours of music. "What, the crickets?" Maya replied, trying to shake a veil of exhaustion from her eyes. "No. It's the sound of the earth. It's changing frequency. It's as if we're entering a magnetic field."
Oliver tightened his grip on the wheel. He felt it too. The heat in his arms—that legacy of the Wards and Samuele—was no longer a mere warmth. Now, it was pulsing. Every time the car crossed a viaduct suspended over deep gorges and dry riverbeds, Oliver felt a vibration rising through the steering column. Calabria was not just welcoming them; it was testing them, measuring their courage before letting them pass into the heart of the mystery.
They stopped at a rest area perched on a rocky ridge overlooking the Gulf of Policastro. The air was thick, almost solid. The blue of the sea, far below, was a cobalt so deep it looked like ink. "The lightheartedness of Provence is gone, isn't it?" Maya observed, leaning against the concrete parapet. "Recess is over," Oliver replied, looking at Azzurra. "But that's not a bad thing. It's like when the house lights go down and silence falls before the orchestra begins. It's the moment of truth."
Azzurra took a few steps away, walking toward a solitary olive tree that seemed twisted by an invisible pain. She touched the rough bark and closed her eyes. For a moment, she didn't see the road or her friends. She saw the villa at Sant'Alessio; she saw the windows that Belinda had flung wide on Elia's orders, and she felt Samuele's call bouncing off the cliffs of Calabria to reach her.
"We're almost there," she whispered.
They got back into the car as the sun began to dip behind the mountain peaks, staining the world a blood-red that sent shivers down their spines. The road became increasingly tortuous—a serpent of asphalt snaking through dark tunnels and sudden vistas of wild coastline. Each tunnel felt like a ritual passage, a small death and a rebirth. When they emerged into the light, the landscape appeared harsher, more authentic, stripped of any tourist pretense.
They passed Scilla in the darkness of the evening. The lights of the castle and the fishing village shimmered like gems set in rock. Azzurra felt a chill: she knew that here, according to myth, monsters devoured sailors. But she also knew that the real monsters were the ones who had tried to extinguish the light of her father and Samuele.
"Look down there," Oliver said in a low voice. Beyond the dark silhouette of the Calabrian coast, a carpet of flickering lights appeared on the horizon, separated by a strip of water that was invisible yet palpable. "Messina," Azzurra murmured. "That's it."
The approach to Calabria concluded thus: with the realization that their playful journey had ended and that every breath, from that moment on, would be dedicated to reclaiming their destiny. They had arrived at the toe of the boot, at the edge of the known world, ready to leap into the unknown of the Strait.