When the opera house explodes, there is no fire.
There is only light.
A light older than the sun.A light that sings.
And when it fades—Tralalero, Bombombini, and Lirilì are gone.
No bodies.
No ashes.
Just a whisper, like a refrain without music:
"The Score has chosen."
Somewhere Else
Tralalero awakens in a desert cloaked in fog.Her mouth tastes of salt and rust.She is dressed in black lace, but it's burning slowly — in reverse.
"Where am I?" she asks aloud.
Her voice echoes — but it doesn't come back as her own.
It comes back in Lirilì's tone.
Lirilì, in turn, wakes in a flooded cathedral.Her hands are covered in ink.
The floor beneath her is etched in staves and rests, bleeding musical notation that floats upward like incense.
She touches her lips.
"I remember the kiss," she murmurs.
"But I don't remember if we finished it."
And Bombombini?
He finds himself in a bedroom made entirely of mirrors.
In every reflection, he sees a different life.
— One where he kissed Lirilì.— One where he killed Tralalero.— One where the Score was never written.
In the center of the room lies a sleeping child.
Their mouth is sewn shut.
Their heartbeat plays a lullaby in 7/8 time.
Bombombini feels it in his bones:
"This child is the Final Note."
The Dream
They fall asleep in their separate realms.
But they share a single dream.
They sit around a table of salt and ash, under a black sky pulsing with holes — as if the stars were peeling off like old wallpaper.
Tralalero sits to the left.
Lirilì to the right.
Bombombini across.
None of them speak at first.
Until Lirilì reaches for Tralalero's hand.
And Tralalero doesn't pull away.
"We were one voice, once," Lirilì says softly."And they broke us into harmony. Into parts."
Bombombini pours wine that tastes like time."I burned my verse," he confesses."Because I knew it would lead to this."
"To what?" Tralalero asks.
"To the world choosing."
"Choosing what?"
Lirilì smiles like a funeral hymn."Whether to end with a scream — or a kiss."
Above them, thunder cracks.
The sky splits — not with lightning, but with sheet music.
Notes fall like ash.
And far below, in the waking world…
A monk in Florence begins to hear their song.
He drops his rosary.
He begins to write — in a trance — the True Score.
It begins with three names:
Lirilì Larilà Tralalero Tralala Bombombini Gusini
And ends with a phrase no human has ever survived reading aloud:
"If We Kiss, The World Ends"