Greetings, readers:
Thank you for reading this fan-made work...
I hope you enjoyed the chapter. I, Wissumi Wizaki, wish you a happy reading
1050 B.N.
July 7th
The full moon reigned in the firmament, guarding a sky where the stars were scattered like forgotten promises. Giotto walked in silence, searching for answers that the day would not allow him to find. At this hour, the children were resting, but the young leader's mind was an engine that refused to stop. As he moved forward, the path near his home was decorated with the flickering of fireflies and the invisible weight of responsibility.
Giotto strayed from the usual path, venturing into an area where the vegetation grew dense and rebellious. There, protected by an embrace of thorny bushes and vines that seemed to guard a sacred treasure, lay a great shell. Its surface was of a pearly white, so smooth that it repelled the dew and shone with a faint, almost spectral luminescence that recalled the lunar glow.
As he placed his hand on the object's cold and perfect curve, a shiver ran down his spine. It had been nearly seven months since that shell had been his cradle in this rebirth. He remembered the uncertainty of those first days and the weight of his ambition: to build an organization capable of changing the order of this world.
"How can I raise an underworld with only children under my charge?" He felt lashed by this question a thousand times.
Although the System's rewards had been his compass and hope, he feared for the boys he cared for. He did not wish to repeat the mistakes of his past life; he did not want to become that Luciano who ended up dead at the hands of his own disciple for not knowing how to give the love he himself received from his grandfather.
The possibility of summoning his Vongola Guardians—companions who would possess the experience and maturity of an adult—restored his calm, lifting the weight from his shoulders. However, the current children were blank canvases, free from the corrupt ambition that usually rots the hearts of men. Their loyalty would not be bought, but forged in the fire of a shared destiny.
"Daiki, Sana, Haru... and the two who are missing," he whispered their names as he hid the precious object once more among the undergrowth.
Giotto took a few steps away from the great shell and stood in the center of the clearing, surrounded by the rustle of leaves and the intermittent glow of fireflies. Seeking an answer within himself, the suffocating weight of leading children into a world of shadows overwhelmed him.
"System," he invoked mentally, his voice heavy with a painful doubt, "I feel I won't be able to fulfill this mission. I cannot build an empire upon the broken innocence of children. I will not sacrifice their purity for my ambition, and time does not wait."
After a brief silence, a voice devoid of emotion but charged with absolute authority resonated directly in his consciousness, as if the very air of the forest had learned to speak.
"You must understand the nature of the threads you weave, Giotto," the entity began. "Those who have accepted your path are no longer simple infants at the mercy of chance. The moment they swore to follow you, their cognitive capacity was elevated; although they may retain the vitality and purity of their childhood before the world, their loyalty and operational cunning will mutate into those of a seasoned adult."
Giotto listened with a racing heart as the voice continued explaining the transformation:
"Under your tutelage, betrayal in the future will become a biological impossibility. Their world begins and ends within your vision, forging an unbreakable loyalty that no older man could ever match. Furthermore, you must not fear the fragility of their bodies; I have optimized their internal development so they can withstand the rigor of executive-level training—they will be stronger and more intelligent than the average."
Giotto closed his eyes, allowing every word to sink into his soul. If the System guaranteed that their childhood would be up to the task, the landscape changed drastically. The fear of corrupting them transformed into a sacred responsibility.
"Then," he whispered to himself, with a determination that made the air vibrate around him, "my only task is to be the pillar that never yields. I am not just their tutor; I am the architect of their destiny."
"It is time to sleep," he finally thought. With one last glance at the Great Shell, Giotto left the thickness of the forest to seek the rest that his body—the engine of this new era—so desperately needed.
…
The following day. The dawn light filtered through the trees like threads of liquid gold, bathing the clearing where Giotto stood. The morning air in this new world had a fresh quality, steeped in the scent of damp earth and wild flowers he still did not quite recognize.
For half a year, he had not sought the power of the Sky Flames of the Dying Will, but rather the temper of steel. His routine had been relentless, driven by the daily mission that allowed him to build compatibility with the flames within the physical body created in this world by the System.
Runs under the scorching sun to expand his lungs.
Extreme calisthenics so that every muscle fiber would be capable of withstanding the tension.
Meditation in absolute silence to discipline a mind that must now see beyond the obvious.
Today, his body finally felt like a solid and firm foundation, ready to channel the elevated energy of his previous world and manifest everything this new world demanded of him.
[Daily Mission Assistance]
[Reward: Flame Synchronization: +0.01%]
[Active Dying Will Flame Synchronization: 2.1%]
He closed his eyes. He inhaled the pure mountain air and searched deep within his being for that spark he had felt pulsing for months. It was no longer a mere premonition; it was an urgent necessity.
"It is time to train the flames," he whispered.
His voice, though soft, carried the weight of a leader who has finally reclaimed his crown.
He gathered his breath. In the center of his palm, the air began to distort from the heat. An amber spark emerged from nothingness, growing until it became a vibrant sphere: the Sky Flame of the Dying Will.
The flame did not burn his skin, but it emitted a pressure that made the leaves of the nearby bushes tremble and consumed his physical endurance with every second he held it. It was a pure energy, vast and serene, like the firmament itself. Giotto felt that force flowing through his veins, filling every corner of his body with an unbreakable determination.
Under the light of the rising sun, Giotto was no longer just a young man lost in a strange world. He was the axis upon which a new form of vital energy would begin to turn. The organization was no longer a child's dream; it was a reality that was beginning to burn with an orange and irrevocable glow.
The roar of the nearby river was the only thing that filled the silence of the mountain, a constant reminder of fluidity and strength. Giotto stood upon a flat rock, his bare feet feeling the coldness of the stone—a necessary contrast to the heat he was about to invoke. According to the records of the will residing in his memory, the balance of a complete sky lay not only in purity, but in the duality of its emission.
He took a deep breath, allowing his heart rate to slow while he visualized the flow of energy traveling down his spine, branching toward his shoulders and descending through his arms like torrents of molten gold.
The atmosphere that morning was dense, heavy with the dew that still clung to the thickets. Giotto observed the sphere of energy in his hand; the amber color of the Sky Flame of the Dying Will vibrated with an intensity that seemed to respond to his own heartbeat. It was an energy of harmony, yes, but also of absolute leadership.
He extended both hands in front of his chest. At first, there was only a tremor in the air, a thermal distortion that made the river landscape look blurred, like a mirage on the edge of dawn. Then, the burst.
From his right palm sprouted a violent and crystalline flare. It was not a conventional flame; it was a high-density energy explosion. The color was an intense orange, almost reddish at the core, with edges that vibrated erratically, as if trying to tear through the barrier of visible space. The sensation was one of overwhelming physical pressure, like holding a miniature jet engine. The tendons in his forearm tensed to the limit, resisting the recoil of a force that wanted to project itself and devour everything, giving his body no respite for even a single moment.
In his left palm, the contrast was absolute. A pale, translucent orange flame emerged, flowing with the delicacy of silk floating on water. It did not vibrate or emit that electrical hum of the right one; it simply existed, stable and harmonious. To the spiritual touch, it felt warm and enveloping, designed for stable propulsion and balance. It was the center of gravity that prevented his own strength from tearing him apart from the inside.
Giotto grit his teeth. A cold sweat beaded on his forehead as a sting of fatigue bit into his muscle fibers.
"The body is the engine," he murmured between short breaths, "but it is also the limit."
Maintaining both flames simultaneously was like trying to tame two beasts of opposite natures: one that roared to destroy and another that whispered to sustain. And he, at the center of both, was the only thing holding them together.
Despite six months of rigorous physical conditioning, the use of the Dying Will Flames demanded a high metabolic tribute. Giotto's muscles protested against the internal "combustion" necessary to generate the pressure of the hard flame; it was a struggle of pure endurance. If his physical foundation faltered, the soft flame would destabilize, and the raw energy from the right would hurl him backward with a brute force capable of fracturing his bones in the process.
Giotto shifted his gaze toward the course of the river. The hard flames were like that current hitting the rocks with violence, capable of piercing through any defense. Conversely, the soft flames recalled the water that adapts to the riverbed, allowing for movement and harmony. A leader of the family could not be only destruction, nor only calm; he had to become the Sky that contains everything.
He concentrated his will. Slowly, he began to move his hands in circles, trying to ensure the erratic vibration of the right did not disturb the absolute peace of the left. The synchronization system did not lie: the responsibility was immense, but as long as he felt that sacred heat coursing through his blood, he knew the sacrifice of his body would be worth it to protect what he was about to build.
"More control…" he whispered, as the orange glow illuminated the dancing waters of the river. "I need my will to be stronger than my pain."
The flames grew, reflected in his eyes with the promise of a power that was only beginning to awaken. The training by the river had left Giotto with his muscles vibrating under an electric fatigue, but the silence of the mountain was abruptly broken. The echo of erratic footsteps and heavy breathing announced the arrival of Daiki, who appeared among the trees with his face distorted by panic.
Giotto felt someone approaching and extinguished the flames from his hands in a fluid motion, though the residual heat still emanated from his skin like an invisible aura.
Haru appeared running, his breath broken and his face pale. He was so out of himself that, as he tried to stop in front of Giotto, his feet caught on the roots and he nearly ended up on the ground.
"Boss! They took him!" Haru shouted, as he rubbed the blow with a suppressed groan, letting it out all at once, his voice cracking from the effort and the panic. "There is news circulating in the village about the village chief's son! They say some bandits have taken him!"
Haru's words took a second to land with their real weight. Giotto, observing the youth with a calm that contrasted violently with Haru's chaos, processed every syllable with the coldness of one who has learned to separate emotion from analysis. To him, the news was an incomplete datum. He did not know the village chief, he did not know who the child was, and above all, he did not understand why that should interrupt his important day.
Although something stirred deep within Haru's chest, it was not out of fear, but something different: the immediate recognition of an opportunity disguised as a calamity.
"Since when?" Giotto asked, his voice icy. "And why are you so anxious about a matter that does not belong to us? Haru, do you know the victim?"
Haru tensed. For a second, Giotto's question seemed to hit him harder than the ...exhaustion from the run. He stood silent, clenching his fists, searching for a way to justify his anguish without completely exposing himself.
"They say it was last night," Haru responded, averting his eyes toward the forest, avoiding Giotto's gaze. "And I care because... because Reijiro is a good kid."
Giotto did not move. His analytical gaze swept over Haru's rigid posture, noticing that there was something more than simple neighborly concern.
"There are many 'good kids' in the world," Giotto replied with neutrality. "Give me a reason that isn't being a Good Samaritan for this to be our priority. Is it personal?"
Haru remained silent, swallowing hard. He knew Giotto operated with logic, but his heart dictated something else. Finally, in a sharp and reserved tone, like someone releasing a painful truth, he confessed:
"He helped me. When my parents died... before Daiki and Sana appeared, he was the only one who didn't look at me with pity. He gave me food when I had nothing. I owe him, Boss."
Giotto processed the words. He didn't need a complete biography to understand the weight of loyalty. He looked at the trembling in Haru's hands and, for an instant, the rigidity of his posture softened. It wasn't a logical reaction, but a spark of empathy: he recognized in Haru the look of someone unwilling to fail their convictions.
"I understand," Giotto said, relaxing as he looked at the sky for a second to think.
Giotto held that silence for seconds. To him, it felt like the village chief were merely pieces on a board he was just beginning to map out. He didn't know the chief, much less a son he had never heard of. But Haru did, and perhaps this was the push he needed to begin one of his moves to proceed into the underworld.
"...If it is a debt of honor, then it stops being the village's problem and becomes ours—the Vongola's. Let's investigate; we don't have much time."
"Haru, let's go. Tell me all the details on the way," Giotto said, starting to run with Haru at his side.
"Last night, they say. This morning, the woman who cared for Reijiro was found mistreated, soaked in the blood of one of the bandits at the city gate, all in tears. The boy went out to play near the edge of the forest and never came back. Mr. Aldino, the captain of the town soldiers, sent his men to find him, but..." Haru swallowed hard. "They only found his sandal. And marks in the mud."
Giotto nodded slowly. The machine inside him was already turning.
Since his first day in this village, he had mapped its structure with the same precision a general studies a terrain before battle. Aldino Bravar, the captain of the guard: a man in his forties, broad-shouldered with a tense jaw, whose authority rested on three unbreakable pillars: his fortune in lands, the respect he had earned mediating disputes between neighboring villages, while the village chief was the most influential merchant around here—also a very cowardly being.
And this was, without a shadow of a doubt, a very dark moment for that man.
"Very well," Giotto said, picking up his shirt from the trunk where he had left it. "Go find Daiki. Tell him to clean himself up and wait for me at the village entrance, while you and Sana stay at the house."
Haru blinked.
"Why do you want Daiki?"
"Because we are going to find that child ourselves," Giotto replied with a naturalness that was almost irritating.
Haru nodded without arguing; deep down, he also wanted to go and rescue Reijiro.
…
At the village gate
The heat still bit at his skin when Giotto stopped at the village threshold.
It wasn't the heat of the sun—that had already yielded hours ago, crushed by the afternoon humidity. It was the other heat. The one the flames left behind when they took something with them. It ran through his forearms like a second pulse, hypersensitizing every nerve ending until he could feel the weight of the air, the movement of the grass three meters away, the smell of burnt wood that had not yet finished dying.
He waited.
The wooden structure marking the edge of the village creaked slightly behind him, as if the entire village were holding its breath. Behind him, the last houses looked still, almost too still, with that specific stillness of places that have just witnessed something bad and do not yet know how to process the noise they made.
Daiki arrived two minutes later.
Giotto heard him before he saw him—not out of clumsiness, but because Daiki was young and urgency did not yet fit properly in his body. He moved with his chest open, strides longer than necessary, adjusting something at his belt as he walked. A small dagger. Practical. Giotto recognized the gesture: a bit of nervousness, but also preparation. There was a difference.
The boy planted himself in front of him and spoke directly, without beating around the bush. He had learned that well.
"Haru caught me up while I was gathering my things," he said, his breathing still somewhat accelerated. "The chief's son. Reijiro." He paused briefly, his eyes fixed on Giotto's. "What are we doing here, Giotto? The village soldiers already left through the main road."
There was something more in that question. Not questioning, exactly. Rather the need for someone to say it out loud so it would take a real shape.
Giotto looked at him for a moment before responding. He studied the clenched jaw, the way Daiki's fingers brushed the handle of the dagger without gripping it yet. The boy was holding it together. Good. At this point in the mission.
"The soldiers are going to follow protocol," Giotto said, and his voice came out low, without urgency, with the specific weight of things that do not need to be shouted to be serious. "Main road, formation, grid search pattern. Men who are more afraid of the brush than of the person they are chasing."
… The pressure in the environment was tangible; the air seemed to thicken, becoming heavy and electric as they approached the kidnappers' hideout. Giotto did not feel fear, but a cold, sharp determination that ran down his spine like the very "molten gold" he had channeled minutes before. The Sky of this world was about to prove that, even though it inhabited the body of a youth, its will was capable of subduing any man who dared to stand in its way.
"Let's move, Daiki," Giotto whispered, his eyes fixed on the ground, tracking any disturbance in the dew on the thickets. "Harvest time does not belong to them."
Despite the fact that his muscles still vibrated under an electric fatigue and his muscle fibers felt the "sting" of his previous effort, Giotto forced his body to be the engine he needed. He knew that his Dying Will Flame synchronization barely touched initial levels, but the orange and irrevocable glow of his resolution was already a reality that would not turn back.
Daiki nodded slowly.
"We are going through the inside."
"We are going through the inside." Giotto held his gaze for a second longer. "You are the only one of the three I've trained, aside from the other two, who won't break when the forest starts making noise."
It wasn't a compliment. It was a map of expectations, and Daiki understood it as such: he nodded once, with his chin, and said nothing more.
Giotto turned and entered the forest.
The forest near the village had a reputation, and it deserved it.
The first five meters past the threshold were enough to understand why. The air changed texture—it became dense, humid, with a deep green scent that wasn't exactly pleasant or unpleasant, but ancient, like earth that has gone centuries without seeing direct sunlight. The canopy closed over their heads with a silent brutality, turning the afternoon light into oblique fragments that fell at impossible angles between the branches, looking more like spears than sunbeams.
Every crunch under their feet sounded too loud.
Daiki controlled his footing well—that wasn't new either—but even so, every dry branch that gave way under his boot resonated in the silence with a disturbing clarity, as if the forest were taking note of their presence. Giotto moved without making a sound. The naturalness with which he did it was almost irritating, as if there were no difference between him and the ground.
Giotto had a vortex of memories as he pursued through the woods; he remembered his previous life. In the Amazon…
Greetings, readers:
Thank you for reading this fan-made work...
I hope you enjoyed the chapter. I, Wissumi Wizaki, wish you a happy reading
Giotto had a vortex of memories as he pursued through the woods; he remembered his previous life. In the Amazon…
Flashback
They always return to a jungle.
I never found out exactly who had sabotaged the helicopter. At that moment, what I knew was the only thing that mattered: the engine was coughing black smoke, the pilot was screaming something in Italian that the wind swallowed up, and the green floor—infinite, brutal, without mercy—was approaching too fast.
The impact was a white explosion.
I woke up with my face buried in mud, the taste of blood and earth mixed in my mouth, and a ringing in my ears that took hours to disappear. The helicopter lay in pieces among the trees, smoking like an offering. There were no other survivors. Only me, with three cracked ribs, a right ankle swollen like ripe fruit, and the cold certainty—colder than any waterfall—that someone within my own organization had sent me to die.
The Amazon is not a forest. That is the first thing you have to understand.
It is a living organism that evaluates you constantly. Every sound has a meaning. Every bright color is a warning. The golden and blue frogs I found in the first few days—tiny, almost comical in their beauty—carried enough batrachotoxin in their skin to kill ten grown men. I had seen them in photographs, in field files I never thought I would need. I left them alone. The trees oozed moisture at temperatures that could go from thirty-five degrees at noon to something that felt glacial with the night rain. The mosquitoes—the Anopheles, the carriers of malaria—were not nuisances; they were pending death sentences. I covered myself with mud. With leaves. With whatever I found.
On the second day, I found the river.
Almost fatal error. I waded in without thinking, with the urgency of the thirsty, and I felt the bite before I saw it: a red-bellied piranha that tore a piece of flesh from my left heel with a surgical precision that left me more impressed than frightened. I came out of the water screaming, bleeding over the roots, and I learned the lesson that men who grow up in cities never learn in time: still water always hides something.
The jaguars were more subtle. I never saw them head-on—they are too intelligent for that—but I felt them. A dense presence among the ferns, eyes that glistened thirty meters away and then vanished. Once I found the tracks of one right next to where I had slept. It had left them for me like a note. I am here. I have seen you. You do not interest me yet.
I ate what I could. Palm larvae—pure protein, tasting of nothing, a texture I prefer not to remember—fruits I identified by elimination rather than knowledge, a lizard I hunted with a makeshift trap made from the wire of a destroyed earphone I found among the remains of the helicopter. I learned what to eat and, more importantly, what not to touch: the bright red berries that smelled of almond could be miniature cyanide. The colorful mushrooms on rotting trunks, slow-acting poison. The jungle has its own language, and if you don't learn it in the first seventy-two hours, you won't make it to the week.
They were the ones who found me first.
The Yanomami.
Three young men, painted with red onoto pigment in lines that crossed their cheekbones like war scars, with bows in hand and an expression that was neither hostility nor welcome, but something more ancient: evaluation. They looked at me for what seemed like a very long time. I was on my knees, filthy, with my ankle bandaged with strips of my own shirt, holding a stick that was the most pathetic excuse for a weapon I had ever wielded in my life.
One of them—the oldest, with a horizontal scar under his lower lip—tilted his head and said something. I didn't understand the words, but I understood the gesture: stand up and follow us.
The shabono—their communal village—was a massive circular structure built under a roof of palm leaves, open in the center like an amphitheater where everyone lived together: families, hammocks, fires, naked children running between the legs of adults. The smell was intense, organic, completely foreign to anything I had ever known. They settled me in a hammock on the perimeter. They gave me a thick cassava paste that tasted of nothing and everything at the same time. I healed my ankle with a poultice of leaves that the shaman—an old man with the stillest eyes I have ever seen in a human being—applied with a seriousness that admitted no doubt.
I learned to communicate with signs first, with single words later. I learned that the Yanomami practice slash-and-burn agriculture, growing plantains, cassava, corn, and tobacco, but the jungle remains the center of everything. Their spiritual beliefs are deeply linked to the environment: they consider that spirits inhabit the trees, the rivers, the animals, and the sky itself. The shaman explained to me—or so I interpreted, in that language of gestures and repetition we built between us—that I had arrived wounded because the jungle had tested me and had not wanted to kill me yet.
I decided to take that as a compliment.
One of their most important ceremonies is the reahu, a feast where the entire village gathers to share ebene, a hallucinogenic snuff that connects them to the spiritual world, amidst songs and dances. They invited me once. I refused the ebene—I had enough chaos inside my head without adding hallucinogens—but I sat by the fire, listening to the chants that rose toward the palm roof and lost themselves in the darkness of the jungle, and for the first time since the accident, I felt something like peace.
It was during the reahu when what happened occurred, which I still don't know how to explain.
One of the small children—perhaps four years old, round belly, huge eyes—ran toward the fire with that suicidal recklessness that children of all cultures possess. His mother caught him half a meter from the flames, lifting him off the ground with one arm, and let out a string of words in Yanomami that sounded exactly like what it was: the desperate cry of a mother who almost lost her child. The boy wailed, kicked, and tried to break free with all the impotent fury of a four-year-old for whom the entire world is being unfair.
And in the midst of that crying, between one kick and the next, the child shouted something that sounded—I swear it sounded—exactly like "¡Ya no, mami!"
I laughed. A real laugh, from the stomach, the first since the accident. Because that—exactly that—was what Latin American children shouted when their mothers caught them doing something they shouldn't: ya no, mami, a mixture of surrender and negotiation, the universal phrase of the child who knows they've lost but is still trying to mitigate the damage. The Yanomami mother didn't understand why the wounded stranger was shaking his shoulders with laughter. But she looked at me with something that could have been solidarity. Or perhaps just resignation. The language of mothers with small children, I discovered that night, doesn't need a translation either.
I stayed with them for three weeks.
I learned to truly move in the jungle—not just to survive in it, but to inhabit it. I learned that the sudden silence of the birds means danger. That the leafcutter ants crossing in columns show you the way to water. That the particular smell of certain crushed ferns announces rain in two hours. I learned to hunt with traps and with patience, which is the same as saying I learned to wait without letting the wait consume me from within.
It was during one of those hunts, venturing further than usual toward the eastern edge of the territory, when I saw them.
A camp. Generators. Satellite antennas poorly camouflaged under green tarps. Men with automatic rifles who didn't have the posture of soldiers but of criminals—a difference someone from my world learns to read immediately, just as a doctor distinguishes between a surgical scar and a knife wound. And a twin-engine plane with a scraped fuselage and no visible registration.
I recognized them.
Not the men—I had never seen them. But I recognized the operation. I recognized the style. And above all, I recognized the discreet symbol painted on the rear door of the plane: a small three-pointed crown, black over gray.
The 'Ndrangheta had built alliances with Latin American cartels since the eighties, creating a transatlantic cocaine network that would eventually control up to eighty percent of the drugs circulating in Europe. I knew this because I had been part of the gears. Not with the Calabrians—my family was Camorrista, Neapolitan to the bone—but the networks crossed, the ports were shared, the favors were exchanged. The 'Ndrangheta had branches in more than forty countries and had woven alliances with South American criminal groups that allowed them to operate without intermediaries.
And someone from that network had been in the helicopter with me.
Someone from that network knew exactly where I would be that day, at that hour, on that route.
Someone had sold me out.
I memorized the location of the camp with the obsessive precision of a man who has had nothing but time and rage for weeks. I counted the entrances. I counted the guards. I watched the shifts from the top of a tree for two consecutive days, eating cold larvae and drinking the rainwater that accumulated in the folds of large leaves. On the third day, I returned to the shabono with my mind already made up.
I said goodbye to the shaman with the only gesture he had accepted from me since the beginning: bowing my head. He placed his hands on my shoulders, said something in a low voice, and pointed toward the north. I don't know exactly what he meant to say. I want to believe it was, "Go, and do not waste what we have returned to you."
What I did that night has little of the heroic in the honest version.
There was no epic music. There were no memorable dialogues. There was darkness, silence, and the absolute advantage of being the only man in that perimeter who knew how to move through the jungle without making a sound. I entered through the southern flank, where the vegetation reached right up to the generators. I neutralized the first guard before he could open his mouth. The second I surprised from above, from a branch I had mapped the day before. The rest was fire, time, and a very short conversation with the only man I left alive—the one who had access to the communication logs, the one who knew the names.
He told me everything.
The jungle burned behind me as I left the camp. Not literally—I took care not to let the fire reach the vegetation; the Amazon did not deserve that collateral damage. But the camp did. The generators, the antennas, the plane with its small crown painted on it. Everything.
I walked north for two days until I found a road. A logger driving a truck took me to Manaus without asking questions—perhaps because my face did not invite them. From Manaus, a regional flight, then an international one, then Rome.
In my inner pocket, written with charcoal ink on a piece of leather a Yanomami had given me to waterproof my field notes, I carried a list of four names.
Four traitors.
Four outstanding debts.
Italy was waiting for them, though it didn't know it yet.
The water of the waterfall kept hitting my shoulders.
I opened my eyes. The forest that surrounded me now—soft, temperate, without fangs—shone under the morning light. No piranhas in the river. No jaguars among the ferns. No mosquitoes inoculating you with death while you sleep.
But the memories of the Amazon never completely go away.
They are like scars: they fade, but climatic pressure makes them reappear.
I got out of the water. I dried myself. And I thought—not for the first time—about how strange it is that a jungle that tried to kill me turned me into someone capable of surviving anywhere else in the world.
End of Flashback
They had been in silence for perhaps ten minutes when Giotto stopped.
It wasn't a sudden movement. He simply stopped, as if something in the air had changed frequency and he had caught it before consciously processing it. He crouched next to a stretch of dry mud near where a stream—barely a thread of dark water—licked the roots of an old tree. He slid his fingers centimeters above the ground without touching it, reading the surface like someone reading a page.
"Here," he said.
Daiki approached and squatted beside him. He narrowed his eyes. At first he saw nothing, only cracked mud and decaying leaves. But then, he did: an almost imperceptible mark, a pressure on the ground with a shape that wasn't an animal's—too long, too deliberate.
"How long ago?" Daiki asked in a low voice.
Giotto tilted his head slightly.
"An hour. Less, perhaps." His eyes followed the direction the footprint suggested, venturing into the darkness between the trees. "They were going fast, but not running. Someone knew where they were going."
Daiki processed that. Someone knew where they were going. It wasn't a desperate escape, then. It was a route. Planned.
"That changes things," he murmured.
"It changes some things," Giotto conceded, standing up. "Not the direction."
"They didn't follow the path."
Giotto said it in a low voice, almost to himself, as he stood and brushed the dry earth from his fingers. His eyes were already moving north, toward where the terrain began to break into impossible angles and the trees grew twisted, forced by the weight of the rock.
"They went toward the cliff." He paused briefly. "There are many of them. A dozen, perhaps more. And they aren't being as careful as they think."
Daiki frowned.
"Are they confident that no one will follow them through that terrain?"
"Exactly." Giotto was already walking. "And they are almost right."
Almost.
The Sky energy ran beneath his skin like an electric current, sharpening every sense to a point that could become uncomfortable if he didn't manage it well. It was always like this after using the flames: the world became too present, too detailed, too noisy in its silence. He caught the change in the air before he could name it. The sweet, wild scent of the forest—damp moss, nameless flowers that smelled like approaching rain—gave way to something heavier. Rancid sweat. Smoke from poorly extinguished firewood. The unmistakable smell of a group of men who had been stationary in one spot for hours.
"Stop," he whispered.
Daiki stopped dead without asking.
Giotto pointed upward, toward the crest of a low hill covered in thorny bushes. They climbed in silence, bellies nearly pressed to the ground for the last few meters, until the camp appeared below them like an open wound in the forest.
It was exactly what he expected, and at the same time, worse.
About twenty men—poorly organized, poorly armed, but twenty nonetheless—were distributed around two campfires that someone had half-heartedly tried to put out. They carried what could only be called weapons out of generosity: rusted blades that had probably begun their lives as farming tools, axes with split handles, a few long knives that shone more from use than from an edge. They weren't soldiers. They were men with hunger and something to lose, which in many ways was more dangerous.
And in the center, tied to a trunk with a rope far too thick for someone his size, was a child.
The fine clothes. The posture. Even from that distance, Giotto could read his upbringing in every detail—the fabric, the cut, the way the boy kept his back straight even while crying, as if posture were the last thing he had left. He sobbed in silence, mouth tight, trying not to give them the satisfaction of the noise.
Giotto felt something tighten in his chest. He ignored it.
"There are too many," he said, his voice completely flat. "Even with the flames."
Daiki didn't understand the part about the flames. He was just counting. Giotto let him count.
"Twenty-one," Daiki confirmed in a low voice. "Twenty-one that I can see."
"And if there are more on the perimeter, which there probably are, it's twenty-five." Giotto noticed the amber energy accumulating in his knuckles, ready, almost impatient. He held it back with a conscious effort. "Besides, if we go in directly, the child becomes a shield before I even raise my hand. There is no clean angle."
Daiki turned his head toward him. It wasn't a question yet, but it was about to be one.
"Do we fall back?"
His hand was on the handle of his weapon. Not gripping it, just... there. Ready. Giotto recognized the state: it wasn't fear; it was the body of someone who had already made the decision to fight and was waiting for someone to tell them in which direction.
"No." Giotto leaned back against the earth for a moment, looking at the camp without seeing it, letting the pieces fall into place. "We redirect."
"The guards?"
"The guards." He nodded once. "They've been lost on the main road for half an hour, looking for a trail that went cold miles ago. If we give them the exact location, they provide the numbers. We make sure the boy gets out alive from the middle before they use him as a hostage."
Daiki processed that. Giotto could see when he did—there was a fraction of a second where the boy's eyes stayed still, not empty but concentrated, as if he were following a logical line to the end to see if it led anywhere.
"It works," Daiki said, without further comment.
They moved.
They retraced their steps with a speed the terrain almost didn't allow. Almost. Giotto knew the difference between moving fast and moving well, and in a forest in half-light with roots that sought ankles and low branches that appeared out of nowhere, the speed that mattered was the kind that didn't twist a foot or make enough noise for the camp to hear them retreating.
Daiki followed him without losing distance. Good.
The sound arrived before the image: footsteps against footsteps, the dragging of boots over dry leaves, a voice giving an order that no one was quite following. Giotto slowed his pace, calculated the angle, and stepped out from the tree line directly in front of the platoon with one hand raised.
Three spears pointed at him in less than a second.
"Stay still."
He didn't say it shouting. It wasn't necessary. There was something in the tone—or perhaps in the way he had materialized from the forest without making a sound, without warning, without the kind of clumsiness people have when they need to be feared because deep down they aren't—that made the guards obey before understanding why.
The captain was a large man, with the face of someone who had spent too much time under the sun and the expression of someone who had been frustrated for too long. He had one hand on the hilt of his sword and his eyes fixed on Giotto with a mixture of distrust and something that, if he had been asked, he would have called recognition.
"Who the hell—?"
"Captain." Giotto interrupted him without raising his voice. "Stop searching in the dead mud. We know exactly where they are holding the child."
Silence.
The captain studied him for three full seconds. Giotto held his gaze without moving, without explaining more than necessary, letting the weight of the information do the work on its own. Behind him, Daiki had also emerged from the forest, with his hands visible but his body in a posture that clearly said don't look for trouble where there is none.
"Speak," the captain said, at last, releasing the hilt.
A small concession. Enough.
Giotto was already looking north.
Captain Aldino Bravab was the kind of man who had earned his rank through years of service, not through special talent or strokes of luck. It was noticeable in everything: in the way he planted his feet when someone spoke to him, in how his eyes evaluated the threat first and the person second, and in the old scar that crossed his jaw—a remnant of a cut he had survived and wore with the indifference of someone who no longer remembers when it stopped hurting.
He was in his fifties, with a barrel-like build and an expression that suggested he had heard too many bad ideas in his life to be easily enthused.
He looked Giotto up and down.
Then he looked at Daiki.
Then he looked back at Giotto.
"How old are you?" he asked, with the neutral tone of someone who isn't being condescending, but genuinely calculating.
"Old enough," Giotto said.
"That's not a number."
"No, but it's the answer." Giotto didn't move, didn't look away, and didn't do any of the things young people do when someone reminds them they are young. "Captain, your men have spent forty minutes following a trail that went cold at the third kilometer of the main path. The group holding the boy veered toward the northeast cliff about an hour and a half ago; there are between twenty and twenty-five men, and they've camped in a hollow about twelve minutes from here at a fast pace. I was thirty meters away from them less than ten minutes ago."
Silence.
Bravab crossed his arms over his chest. Not as a gesture of rejection, but of listening—the posture of a man who is processing information and doesn't want anyone to interrupt him while he does.
"And what do you want in exchange?" he finally asked.
"For you to let me explain the plan before you tell me no."
Something shifted in the captain's face. It didn't quite become a smile, but it came close.
"Speak."
Giotto spoke with precision. No embellishments, no detours, with the verbal economy of someone who knows that every extra word is a doubt the other person has time to build.
"The problem isn't finding them. I've already found them. The problem is getting the boy out alive when the fight starts." He made a deliberate pause. "If your men enter through the northern perimeter with enough presence, the instinct of that group will be to regroup toward the center of the camp. Toward the fire. Toward where they have the hostage. It's what people without real training do when they feel cornered: they protect what they believe gives them power."
Bravab narrowed his eyes slightly. Listening.
"That means that in the first thirty seconds of the attack, the boy will have three or four men around him. Too many for your soldiers to go in directly without risking a blade to the wrong throat." Giotto pointed toward the east with a tilt of his head. "There's an entry line along the cliff flank. High ground, full angle of vision over the center of the camp. Narrow. Too narrow for men in armor."
"But not for you two," Bravab said. It wasn't a question.
"But not for us two."
The captain uncrossed his arms. It was a small, almost imperceptible movement, but Giotto registered it: it was the body language of someone beginning to seriously consider what they were being told.
"My men enter from the north," Giotto continued. "They make noise, they apply pressure, they force the group to concentrate. We enter through the flank while the chaos works in our favor. By the time the first bandit realizes there is a second threat, the boy is already out of the camp."
Silence again. Longer this time.
Bravab looked at his soldiers—eight men in a loose formation, tired, with that specific expression of someone who has been searching for something for hours and is starting to doubt it even exists. Then he looked at the forest. Then he looked back at Giotto.
"You are very young to talk like that," he said, in a tone that was difficult to read. Not exactly criticism. More like an observation.
"Yes," Giotto admitted, without defensiveness. "But the plan is solid regardless."
Bravab let out a short sound through his nose. It could have been a laugh in another life.
"The problem," he said, "is that you are asking me to put the life of the chief's son in the hands of two boys who appeared from the forest without warning. No insignia. No credentials. Absolutely nothing that tells me who you are."
"Correct."
"And you don't find that to be a problem?"
"I find that it is exactly the kind of difficult decision you were trained for, Captain. Besides, I am from the village." Giotto let that land for a moment. "Your men cannot enter through that flank without compromising the child. I can. That is the only variable that matters right now."
Bravab studied him for a time that felt longer than it probably was. There was something in his gaze that Giotto recognized: it wasn't the assessment of someone doubting the plan. It was the assessment of someone who already knows the plan is good and is looking for the weak point they haven't found yet.
"If anything happens to the child," Bravab said, his voice dropping an octave and gaining a specific weight, "there won't be a forest big enough."
"Understood."
"It's not a threat. It's a promise."
"Also understood." Giotto didn't blink. "Shall we?"
He guided them in silence.
Bravab had ordered his men to move without loose metal armor—a small tactical concession that raised him several points in Giotto's estimation. They weren't brilliant soldiers, but they were disciplined soldiers, which in this terrain and situation, was worth more.
When they reached the point where the forest began to descend toward the hollow, Giotto signaled for them to stop with a hand gesture that required no explanation. From that position, they could see the two columns of gray smoke still rising from the poorly extinguished fires.
He knelt beside Bravab and pointed without raising his voice above a whisper.
"Northern perimeter, there. There are two guards, but they've been still for too long; they are half-asleep. The child is still in the center, by the largest trunk. The leader of the group—the one giving the orders—is the large man by the fire on the left. Dark cloak, long beard."
Bravab nodded, memorizing.
"How much time do you need?"
Giotto looked at Daiki. Daiki held up two fingers.
"Two minutes from the moment the noise starts," Giotto said. "No more."
"My men enter from the north," Giotto continued. "They make noise, they apply pressure, they force the group to concentrate. We enter through the flank while the chaos works in our favor. By the time the first bandit realizes there is a second threat, the boy is already out of the camp."
Silence again. Longer this time.
Bravab looked at his soldiers—eight men in a loose formation, tired, with that specific expression of someone who has been searching for something for hours and is starting to doubt it even exists. Then he looked at the forest. Then he looked back at Giotto.
"You are very young to talk like that," he said, in a tone that was difficult to read. Not exactly criticism. More like an observation.
"Yes," Giotto admitted, without defensiveness. "But the plan is solid regardless."
Bravab let out a short sound through his nose. It could have been a laugh in another life.
"The problem," he said, "is that you are asking me to put the life of the chief's son in the hands of two boys who appeared from the forest without warning. No insignia. No credentials. Absolutely nothing that tells me who you are."
"Correct."
"And you don't find that to be a problem?"
"I find that it is exactly the kind of difficult decision you were trained for, Captain. Besides, I am from the village." Giotto let that land for a moment. "Your men cannot enter through that flank without compromising the child. I can. That is the only variable that matters right now."
Bravab studied him for a time that felt longer than it probably was. There was something in his gaze that Giotto recognized: it wasn't the assessment of someone doubting the plan. It was the assessment of someone who already knows the plan is good and is looking for the weak point they haven't found yet.
"If anything happens to the child," Bravab said, his voice dropping an octave and gaining a specific weight, "there won't be a forest big enough."
"Understood."
"It's not a threat. It's a promise."
"Also understood." Giotto didn't blink. "Shall we?"
He guided them in silence.
Bravab had ordered his men to move without loose metal armor—a small tactical concession that raised him several points in Giotto's estimation. They weren't brilliant soldiers, but they were disciplined soldiers, which in this terrain and situation, was worth more.
When they reached the point where the forest began to descend toward the hollow, Giotto signaled for them to stop with a hand gesture that required no explanation. From that position, they could see the two columns of gray smoke still rising from the poorly extinguished fires.
He knelt beside Bravab and pointed without raising his voice above a whisper.
"Northern perimeter, there. There are two guards, but they've been still for too long; they are half-asleep. The child is still in the center, by the largest trunk. The leader of the group—the one giving the orders—is the large man by the fire on the left. Dark cloak, long beard."
Bravab nodded, memorizing.
"How much time do you need?"
Giotto looked at Daiki. Daiki held up two fingers.
"Two minutes from the moment the noise starts," Giotto said. "No more."
The bandit leader fell backward as if the ground had suddenly decided to reclaim him—without a scream, only the sound of the dust betraying him—his eyes still open in an expression that was half pain and half the late realization that he had completely misjudged and underestimated what stood before him.
The kidnapper did not get up, nor would he for a long time.
Giotto lowered his fist. He turned toward Reijiro while Daiki removed his gag.
"Are you hurt?" Daiki asked.
Reijiro looked at him for a second. Then he shook his head slowly, with the slightly ridiculous and completely genuine dignity of someone who has decided he will not lose his composure—improper for his eight years—even though he was trembling inside.
"Good." Daiki finished untying the ropes.
They left the camp through the same flank they had entered, with the noise of the combat still active to the north and the child between them, who walked with feet somewhat numb from the ropes but without complaining, his eyes moving through the forest with an attention that was striking for his age.
When they reached the meeting point and Bravab saw them appear with Reijiro intact, the captain closed his eyes for a moment. Just a moment. Then he opened them and nodded once, with the compressed gesture of someone who does not externalize relief but cannot entirely hide it either.
Reijiro approached Bravab. Despite his fragile appearance, his presence commanded silence.
"Captain," the boy called, capturing everyone's attention. "There was a man who stole the gold necklace my father gave me; this man is in the north wing of the bandit zone, but another detail is that he limped on his right leg. He hid in the trench behind the tents. If you don't look for him now, he might lose or hide my precious possession."
"Bravab nodded. I will send my son to recover it, young master." Bravab looked at Giotto with deep analysis.
"Well done," he said, with a voice that sounded like more than what he was saying.
Giotto did not respond but nodded with a smile. Then he observed Reijiro, who was talking to the captain of the guard with confidence even after his kidnapping, speaking with absolute concentration, as if his mind were stable even after the horrific experience.
Yes, Giotto thought. This child is definitely going to be interesting.
To be continued...
Until the next chapter!