Elena stood frozen in the dim tunnel light.
The words carved into the stone wall refused to leave her mind.
Matteo… please… don't…
Her grandfather's name.
Daniel knelt again beside Lucia's remains, studying the floor carefully.
"Something's strange," he said quietly.
Elena barely heard him.
"My grandfather raised this town," she murmured. "People trusted him."
Daniel brushed more dirt away from the stone near the skeleton.
She forced herself to step closer.
Near Lucia's hand, partially hidden beneath decades of dust, another scratch mark was carved into the stone floor.
Not a tally.
Not a name.
A symbol.
Three letters.
C.B.
Elena frowned.
"What does that mean?"
Daniel stood slowly.
"Carlo Bellini."
Elena's eyes widened.
The mayor's father.
The man who had ordered the tunnel sealed.
Daniel pointed his flashlight back toward the wall.
"Look at Lucia's message again."
Elena stared.
Matteo… please… don't…
But now something looked different.
The carving wasn't finished.
The line stopped suddenly.
As if Lucia had been interrupted before she could finish writing.
Daniel spoke carefully.
"She might not have been begging Matteo."
Elena felt her breath catch.
"What do you mean?"
Daniel's voice dropped.
"She may have been warning him."
Elena looked between the unfinished message and the letters on the floor.
Her heart began racing again.
Lucia could have been writing something like—
Matteo… please… don't trust…
Don't trust who?
The answer might already be carved beside her.
C.B.
Carlo Bellini.
The man who later ordered the chamber sealed.
The man who controlled the town.
Elena felt the pieces shifting again.
Maybe her grandfather had discovered Lucia trapped here.
Maybe he had tried to help.
And maybe someone else had arrived before he could.
Someone powerful enough to rewrite the story.
Someone powerful enough to bury the truth for forty years.
Daniel exhaled slowly.
"Moonveil… I think your grandfather wasn't the killer."
Elena looked back at Lucia's skeleton.
The scratched message.
The unfinished warning.
And for the first time—
The real villain of Seravalle's darkest secret began to take shape.
Carlo Bellini.
And the Bellini family had been protecting that secret ever since.