A deep rumble shook the cave. The floor cracked. Steam hissed from the walls.

Calculus, bandaged but cheerful, added: “The magnetic anomaly has dissipated. The world is safe—though my resonator is beyond repair.”

“Place the disk here,” Calculus said, pointing to a depression in the altar’s center.

Footsteps echoed. Vega emerged from the shadows, flanked by armed mercenaries. “Thank you for opening the door, Tintin. Now, if you’ll step aside…” Vega’s men seized the Eye. But Vega, greedy and impatient, tried to activate it immediately using Calculus’s resonator. He misaligned the calibration.

As the disk clicked into place, the floor trembled. A wall of rock slid aside, revealing a chamber filled with ancient Portuguese astrolabes—and in the center, a pedestal holding a crystalline sphere: the (Eye of Magma), a device that could induce volcanic eruptions by manipulating Earth’s magnetic field.

Tintin smiled, stroking Snowy. “Some treasures are meant to stay lost.”

No return address. Inside: a broken bronze disk, no larger than a pocket watch, covered in strange nautical symbols and one phrase etched in archaic Portuguese: “Onde o sol se perde, a serpente acorda.” (“Where the sun is lost, the serpent awakens.”)

Want a sequel? Perhaps the serpent’s compass points to another island... or another era.