Tawaret fires her grappling hook, snagging a rocky outcrop outside. The line goes taut. Corto swings himself and the boy out of the cave just as the entire ceiling collapses, burying the U-boat, the Egg, and the greed of men forever.

Corto, Rasputin, Tawaret, and Lady Venetia (who followed them in a rowboat) begin the ascent. Behind them, the Cossack’s Red Army soldiers and Venetia’s Gurkha mercenaries eye each other with mutual hatred.

Corto raises an eyebrow. “The war is over, old friend. Let the Kaiser keep his rust.”

Inside the cave, the U-boat rests on a cradle of petrified giant clams. Its hull is scarred, but intact. And in the conning tower, embedded like a dark heart, is the : a sphere of rotating rings and mercury-filled glass tubes, crackling with silent blue lightning.

The entire mountain begins to shake . The magnetic field inverts. The U-boat, the clams, the stones – all begin to fall upward , crashing against the cave’s ceiling.

“Corto! Still chasing women and lost islands?”

Here is the story, presented as if it were the lead tale in I Classici del Fumetto Nr. 01: Corto Maltese . Corto Maltese “The Serpent of the Magnetic Moon” Venice, 1921. A damp fog clings to the canals like a ghost’s shroud. In a dimly lit trattoria near the Ghetto, a man sits alone. Gold earring, dark curly hair, a slight smile that has seen too much. He stirs his coffee, watching a drop of milk spiral into oblivion.

She then whispers: “Rasputin works for the Bolsheviks. He plans to use the Egg to sink the entire American fleet in Manila Bay and start a new war.”

As Achille runs off, Corto Maltese lights his last cigarette. The sun sets over the Pearl River, painting the world in shades of gold and blood. He has no treasure. No prize. No glory.

A shadow falls over his table. It’s Rasputin, his enormous Siberian frame blocking the light from the oil lamp. The Cossack grins, gold teeth flashing.

One night, the boy, , asks Corto: “Why do you help people who betray you?”

Rasputin slaps a stained nautical chart onto the table. It depicts the Sulu Sea, with a strange, hand-drawn circle around a place that doesn’t exist: – Island of the Magnetic Moon.

A letter arrives, carried by a white pigeon. It is from Lady Venetia. She survived, barely, with a broken arm and a newfound respect for the sea. She writes that the British committee has disbanded. And that Rasputin’s body was never found.

Then, with a metallic shriek, the Egg’s rings begin to spin backwards.

“We won the right to choose our own map, little one. Now go. Your mother is waiting.”