“Come here.”

Kors doomedly walked deep into the house, where he was shown. They went into a room that apparently had previously served as the master's bedroom. There was devastation here, and there was a large, rickety bed without legs, with broken vertical poles at the edges, which were once intended to support the canopy. Now there was nothing: no canopy, no pillows, no blanket – only a dirty mattress, from which a fat rat, the true mistress of this room, slowly jumped off.

Nikto was sitting in the corner right on the dirty floor in the same position as on the ferry, his mask was lying nearby. He slowly raised his head, and his gray face and black eyes looked creepy in the gloom.

Kors was suddenly seized by an inexplicable sticky and all-consuming fear. All this atmosphere of decay of an abandoned village, longing for the past lost life and some indescribable feeling of hopelessness in this house, rotten through and through, intensified a hundredfold. Before he could say anything, Arel rudely and forcefully pushed him onto the bed, knocking him over onto his back. Kors felt his invisible hands gripping him, pressing against the musty mattress. Kors froze. Arel just stood by, and at the same time Kors couldn’t even move. The prince slowly approached, leaning, and Kors, unable to restrain himself, screamed in pain, because he had an absolutely real feeling that Arel penetrated deep into his body through his skin and strongly squeezed something inside, and again and again. Stronger and stronger. He seemed to feel and squeeze every internal organ, twisting the insides, and it was unbearable. Kors was literally paralyzed and sprawled on the bed. He lay with his arms outstretched and couldn’t move. Arel didn’t stop, continuing to twist and press on every piece of flesh, making him feel a truly hellish pain, which was impossible to get rid of. And his victim writhed in agony under invisible, tenacious fingers. Overcoming these terrible sensations of pain, unable to utter a word and really breathe in air, Kors, by some incredible effort of will in his thoughts, confused and incorrectly began to feverishly read the divine saying, and Arel loosened his grip a little.

Kors heard and caught with a peripheral vision that Nobody got up and was approaching them.

“No! No!” Kors shouted with the last bit of strength, feeling the electrified air begin to tremble and vibrate, as if before a thunderstorm. He heard a rumble in his ears and an ever-increasing discordant cacophony of sounds.

“Iness! Iness, help me!”

There was a harsh clap.

A black figure with huge wings hung over his outstretched body. But the Demon did not lift him into the air as he expected. From the depths of this black figure, first from afar, and then closer and closer, with a low rumble at great speed, something began to approach him. Something incredibly strong, alien and ruthless, and Kors knew it was about to slam into him and kill him. He screamed loudly. The blow was so strong that it was thrown up from the mattress, and the bed shook. Something coming from the Demon burst into his chest, into his very essence, pierced him and broke. Bending convulsively, Kors wheezed, and it seemed to him that his heart had stopped and exploded into thousands of small pieces.

Kors screamed, practically losing consciousness from unbearable pain and despair. In some kind of haze, fog, in the last dying dash, he fell from the bed to the floor, clutching with stiff fingers into the broken post at the foot, gasping and wheezing. With an incredible effort, he got up and literally crawled to the door. “Quicker, quicker, get out of this room, out of this house!” He was dizzy and everything was floating in front of his eyes, he saw their black silhouettes, they pulled back a little, not holding him. Staggering like drunk, Kors rushed out, hitting the corners and stumbling over the steps of the porch, tumbled into a small square. The forces finally left him, and after walking a few steps, Kors fell to his knees in the dust, screamed hoarsely, rather howled, raising his face to the black night sky covered with heavy thunderclouds: