—Wake up.

I don’t want to. Laila thought. I’m too tired and my legs hurt. And my head too.

—Wake up, you’ll die if you stay here.

I’m already as good as dead anyway.

—Wake up!

Startled by the piercing shout, Laila’s eyes flew open.

“Where is…?”

She could feel her voice bouncing off something very close. Quickly raising her hand, she felt rough, damp wood scraping the back of her hand.

“Hey!”

Laila pounded on the walls around her with clenched fists. A space too narrow to even swing her arms freely… She realized she was trapped inside a wardrobe.

“Open this right now! You said you’d follow the rules! You promised!”

She cried out, but there was no response from outside.

Darkness! The darkness was so deep Laila felt suffocated. She felt a chilly breeze below her knees, and when she carefully moved her feet, she felt dried dirt crumbling beneath them.

“You can’t get out on your own.”

Laila’s head jerked back at the sudden voice right in front of her.

There was a bang as the back of her head hit the hard wardrobe wall.

Her eyes felt like they were bulging out, and for a moment her head spun painfully, but that wasn’t the issue. Laila let out a choked groan as she saw the child’s face that had appeared before her.

“You…”

The child shrugged its small shoulders. Strangely, the child’s form was clear in this pitch-black darkness where Laila could barely see her own hands.

Laila realized that every part of the child was semi-transparent, but even without that, she could tell it wasn’t human.

Above all, if it were a corporeal child, there was no way it could be standing face-to-face with Laila in this cramped wardrobe. It was already so tight that Laila alone could barely move her arms freely.

“You’re that child from inside the frame.”

Laila said, tightly clenching her ice-cold hands.

“I can tell from your hair. The one who appeared before me earlier… that child called Smelkin, was different from you, right?”

“My name is Rilin.”

The child said. Then, with an expression that was hard to tell whether it was smiling or angry, it glared at Laila for a moment before adding:

“And that’s not a child. Not human either. I told you. You didn’t listen.”

Laila was about to retort that it wasn’t that she hadn’t listened, but that the child hadn’t explained clearly, when she sighed instead. Whether it had become a ghost or whatever, she didn’t want to argue on the same level as a child who looked not even ten years old.

“You said your name is Rilin?”

When Laila asked as if repeating, the semi-transparent child’s face wavered strangely like a ripple. Laila wondered what caused this change… She had seen many ghosts before, but this was the first time she had seen such a reaction.

Well, it hasn’t been long since I started conversing with ghosts anyway. Laila thought. Then she let out a small laugh. Laughing in this situation, she wondered if she was going mad.

Suddenly, she thought of Eustar. What was he doing? Was he safe? Or had he too been dragged off to some unknown place…

“That man is fine. He’s outside.”

Laila’s lips parted in surprise. The child, who had been twirling the longer part of its hair around its finger, glanced at her and continued:

“Anyway, my name is indeed Rilin.”

“It’s a pretty name.”

“Don’t you think it sounds similar to your name?”

Maybe so. Laila thought. She could have voiced her answer, but for some reason her lips wouldn’t move. Perhaps it was because having such a peaceful conversation with a non-human being was beyond her common sense.

“I have a favor to ask you.”

Rilin said. It was an exceptionally solemn voice for a child.

“You’re a ‘medium’, right?”

Laila, who had been staring intently at the small, semi-transparent face, answered.

“Yes.” Then, after looking around to both sides, she added, “That’s right. So that’s why I’m having this conversation with you in a place like this, Rilin.”

Rilin’s lips moved into a pout, and a laugh was heard. Though it didn’t seem malicious, it was a chilling sound that Laila never wanted to hear again. It was the kind of sound a wildcat might make after biting the thick neck of a rat.

“Then I have a favor. If you grant my request, Laila. I’ll grant yours too.”

Laila responded, showing her disbelief with her whole body.

“Being fooled twice is enough. First, I was tricked by the promise to follow the rules and searched through a hundred rooms. Uselessly, I might add. Then, just when I thought I had found something, now I’m trapped in a place like this. And I’ll die standing, won’t I?”

“That’s why I told you. That thing isn’t human.”

“Couldn’t you have said that sooner?”

Laila’s eyebrows furrowed as she snapped back sarcastically. The expression had disappeared from Rilin’s face.

It didn’t seem like anger. It would have been better if the wardrobe had shaken and the wooden corners had crumbled from fury.

The child with strangely uneven hair lengths, the dead child who would never grow hair again, seemed hurt, and also regretful.

Though it was unclear exactly what it regretted.

“I wanted to tell you.” Rilin said. “Really. I didn’t want you to come in here. That thing wanted it.”

Laila let out a short, challenging sigh.

“What exactly is this ‘thing’ you’re talking about? You mean that pigtailed girl, right? She said her name was Smelkin. Did you know that?”

Rilin looked at Laila with a pitying expression before finally answering.

“Of course I know. I know best what that is. It’s not human, not a ghost, and not a monster either. It’s a demon. I summoned it, and the sink nurtured it. Smelkin appeared because of me. And it forcibly dragged me into this ‘hide-and-seek’ game. Me, who is dead.”

After the team members threw the monster’s heart into the sink, Eustar quickly ordered them to establish the defensive line as planned.

“Remember. We must capture whatever comes out of the sink before it can hide in the village.”

“Understood, Sir Eustar!”

The team members, including Robsker, answered in unison.

Then, one team member looked at Eustar and asked:

“Um, but… Isn’t the sink bottomless?”

Eustar nodded without taking his eyes off the sink.

“That’s right, Henry.”

“Then where does the heart we threw in go?”

The end of the team member’s words trembled slightly. Fear of facing the incomprehensible, the anxiety just before the overwhelming dread of something that cannot be resisted, was evident in his voice.

“No one knows where it goes.”

Eustar answered briefly, then added:

“But if there’s one thing for certain, it’s that the sink will definitely swallow it.”

“Swallow it?”

Before his question could finish, Eustar felt a thin flash of light brush past his face.

His body moved before his mind could process what it was. Eustar quickly retreated and shouted a beat late.

“Fall back!”

Simultaneously, there was a sound like ‘pshhh’. The eyes of the remaining team members, except for those who had instinctively retreated either upon hearing Eustar’s words or even before that, widened in shock.

“Sir Eusta…”

“Henry!”

Eustar reached out to grab the team member next to him, but couldn’t reach. It was the moment when his uniformed shoulder tilted as if collapsing.

Eustar saw the blood vessels bulge prominently on his neck. They were pulsating as if about to burst at any moment. It seemed as if he could hear the sound of the pulse beating. Thump, thump, thump…

There was a sound like ‘splat’. Not just from Henry, but simultaneously from various places. And indescribably bright red blood spurted like fountains here and there.

“Sir Eustar! We can’t maintain the defensive line!”

Robsker. Eustar was relieved to know she was alive. He couldn’t even tell how many had died. Three? Four? Or were only Robsker and himself left? What came out of the sink wasn’t a monster, but this…

—How presumptuous of you two-legged humans. If you were going to offer me something, you should have brought something fresher.

The heads of the surviving Tentinella team members, including Eustar, suddenly jerked upward. It was an instinctive reaction to the voice eerily echoing in the air, a sound that made their souls tremble like a funeral bell.

“Sir Eustar! What is that?”

Robsker shouted. She was shocked to see a child, a girl who looked no more than six or seven years old, floating in the air.

It wasn’t a ghost. It certainly wasn’t a monster, and it couldn’t possibly be human either. Even to her, who wasn’t a medium, the aura emanating from that child, the pigtailed girl, was too ominous and evil.

The girl looked down. She started cackling at the sight of the heads cleanly separated from their bodies rolling around.

—I see, I see! So you’re the prince of Sierow. You’re quite famous! The curse placed on you is very well-known!

Eustar gripped his sword tighter and glared at the child, gritting his teeth.

“Robsker.”

“Yes, Sir Eustar.”

“You and the team members fall back. And bring out any weapons or magical items blessed by Marnak, as many as you have.”

“Sir Eustar, what…”

“Do as I say immediately, Robsker! Otherwise, we’ll be annihilated. That’s not a ghost that came out of the sink. It’s not a monster either! That’s…”

Eustar caught his breath and looked up at the air again before speaking.

“That’s a demon. The sink was rather being controlled by it. The sink’s energy source was actually being manipulated by that thing.”

Robsker didn’t fully understand his words, but she didn’t question further. She pulled back the surviving team members and formed a new formation centered around Eustar.

Although she had faced various monsters as a matter of course and had several near-death experiences, she could say with certainty that nothing had ever made her tremble with fear as much as today.

Even when facing a giant dragon-type monster that withered dozens of forest trees with each exhale, she hadn’t felt this overwhelmed.

That’s a demon.

Eustar’s single statement completely dominated Robsker’s mind.

The pigtailed girl—what Eustar had called a demon—was spinning round and round in the air, cackling loudly as if something was terribly funny. Her neck, shoulders, and waist twisted and bent in turn, then her legs folded as she spun.

As she spun once, twice, three times, the girl’s body curled up like a snake biting its own tail. Though a human would have surely suffocated long ago, she was still screaming with laughter.

—Did you throw even the heart of Echenaeis to find that witch girl? You blood-stained descendants of Sierow, you truly are, generation after generation, incomparably stupid!