Where is Nilly?
Nilly was nowhere to be found. Nathan wanted to borrow the empty warehouse. Benny hesitated. The space had originally been meant to become a playroom for the children they had rescued, but Nathan intended to use it for interrogation. “Once the kids are all gone, a toy room won’t be of any use anyway.”
“...Could other children disappear like Nilly did?”
“It’s not just the children. You’ll end up screaming too if you slip up.”
Benny eventually gave in to Nathan’s persuasion. It was better to leave matters she knew nothing about to the experts.
------------------
Dreams are the wellspring of all humor and art. That is why the satyrs who guard the forests maintain a strict culture of observing proper sleep hours. The expression on the hoofed child’s face was therefore far from pleased.
“Can’t I just go back to sleep?”
“Sorry for waking you. Even at an age when you love staying up and playing, you wouldn’t want to be awake until two in the morning. But I had to ask. Don’t you remember who Nilly is?”
The room still carried the musty smell of long neglect. Nathan and Somby sat facing each other on two chairs. Benny was the only other person present. She watched the two of them with a resolute gaze, as though she were the referee of a duel.
Somby squirmed uncomfortably, glanced at the floor, and visibly relaxed. The dusty boards still bore the footprints of the children who had passed through earlier. While observing the boy closely, Nathan repeated the explanation he had already given. Even if everyone else forgot, this child alone had to remember.
“There was a kid named Nilly. The girl who opened the door to cargo hold three and let you in when the ghouls attacked you. Long ears, white hair. She was about two heads taller than you. You really don’t remember?”
“There was no such girl. Think harder.”
Yet the child only smiled innocently. Not a shadow of doubt crossed his face.
“There was no such girl, I’m telling you.”
“You want me to think harder?” Nathan frowned. “Not ‘I don’t remember’ or ‘I’m not sure,’ but ‘think harder’?”
Nathan scratched the back of his head, signaling Benny. Standing behind the child, she quickly pressed the button attached to the back of the sofa. A metallic click. The armchair Somby sat in jolted. Discarded furniture from the slums’ criminal syndicates often came with curious features—such as manacles that sprang from the armrests to restrain a guest.
The moment the brass cuffs snapped around his wrists, Somby panicked. Etched into the metal with an awl were lines Nathan had carved one by one:
‘The chicken, the duck, and the goose welcomed the goose’s return. So the goose was happy. In the end, it had only been special enough—neither more nor less.’
The instant the child’s eyes followed the words, his lips twisted and his clenched teeth showed. Only for a moment. But Nathan saw it clearly.
“You were relieved when you saw the footprints earlier. You thought that since everyone else had left safely, you would too. Solid reasoning, I’ll give you that. Just as you guessed, they all went back to bed after a short talk.”
The child’s smile faded with every word.
“But you weren’t worried about being kept awake. You checked carefully for signs of resistance. You were the only one concerned I might attack. Benny, flip it. And brace yourself.”
Benny swallowed hard and took the calendar off the wall, turning it over. It was the only dust-free object in the warehouse. A small mirror was fixed to the back. The elf’s face flushed crimson—not from shame or anger, but from holding back a scream so the other children sleeping soundly nearby would not wake.
Reflected in the mirror, the room contained only Nathan and Benny. In that inverted world, the satyr boy Somby was nowhere to be seen.
----------
Somby’s eyes twitched. Realizing he had been exposed, strength gathered in his bound hands. Yet trapped in the chair, he could neither flee nor smash the mirror and its witnesses. Something that merely looked like a child trembled where it sat and roared.
“I’m going back to sleep! Let me go right now—!”
Nathan calmly took out the notebook Benny had lent him and read the words he had written from memory.
“Humanity Scripture, Sibyl Chapter, verse 31.”
The child’s face twisted further.
“Dare say one more word.”
Nathan did not stop. He declared it with the solemnity of a judge pronouncing a death sentence.
“The princess’s statue was happy.”
A sudden fairy tale. Benny felt her temples throb. How many times today would she have to endure such absurdity? The subject Nathan recited had no place in this grim atmosphere.
“But the wicked crow grew spiteful. So it followed the scattered gold leaf and jewels of the princess, pecking at the crowns of villagers who laughed and cried over their unexpected windfall. Enraged, the people tried to catch the crow, but the bird always fled to the shoulders of the princess’s statue—onto the statue whose every ornament had been stripped away, leaving only a shabby iron frame. At last the people understood what was wrong.”
He was merely reciting an old story. Yet the child writhed as though he had heard something unbearable. If he could, he would have torn off his own ears. Twisting in the chair, the child wept, begged, and cried out for the adults’ help. The warehouse, however, was well soundproofed. Even when a few patients stirred at the faint noise, the giant lizardman Tuzetey seated by the door firmly shook his head.
“Doctor’s orders: if you want to stay healthy, mind your own business.”
Tuzetey clacked his massive jaws. Patients who valued sleep over curiosity decided to ignore the warehouse. Thanks to them, Nathan continued reading undisturbed. He occasionally corrected or stumbled over passages he had not memorized perfectly, but Benny found every line warm-hearted and beautiful…
“...Instead of gold leaf it was covered in paint, and instead of bronze its body was shaped from clay. The goats who had bought enough hide to cover it used the leftover scraps to weave a coat for it. The crow grumbled as it crawled into that pocket. That winter, no one felt the cold.”
In short, the sort of tale one might read to children at bedtime or to set a romantic mood on a date—utterly unsuited to an exorcism. Nevertheless, the demon could not endure it.
The eyes that had once sat in the child’s eye sockets now hung from its mouth. The teeth that had lined its mouth now filled its eye sockets. The satyr’s form was gone. Its appearance was that of pale gray dough stretched into a human shape—eerie, and its edges blurred like a ghost’s. The creature had revealed its true form.
Faced with the horror of beholding something from beyond reality, Benny steadied her breathing and asked, “Nathan, what is that?”
“A Changeling. A lesser demon. Dangerous for three reasons. First, it abducts a child, hides them, and mimics their appearance. Second, it infiltrates the child’s group and abducts more members. Third, to cover its crimes, it uses black magic to bewitch those nearby… so that everyone forgets who disappeared.”
Nathan ground his teeth at the situation he had only suspected. ‘The Heavens are safe from what, exactly, Andau Peres? When demons born of the Abyss walk openly among us?’ If he could, he would drag the man here and kick him.
Safety was an illusion when real danger existed. No matter where one fled, escape from the war with the Abyss was impossible.
While Nathan swallowed his anger, Benny barely regained her composure.
“If they’re taken… what happens?”
“A Changeling pulls out its digestive organ and keeps it outside. They call it a Nightmare Pocket. They stuff their victims inside and hide them as carefully as a squirrel burying acorns. The victims have their souls slowly drained while trapped within. Fortunately, it takes roughly a month to die. Which means Nilly and Somby are still likely alive.”
“I didn’t even know Changelings existed. And I certainly didn’t expect a pretty fairy tale to work on them.”
When Nathan had first explained the plan, Benny had suspected he was joking.
“The Humanity Scripture contains the warmest stories that embody hope. The selection criterion is simple: whether reciting them makes creatures of the Abyss like that one uncomfortable. The more they suffer, the deeper those stories have touched people’s hearts.”
Humanity, cast into a world without even a single god to worship, chose instead to trust and rely on one another. That is why the scripture of the Humanity Sect contains no complex taboos or commandments—only philosophy distilled from anguish and flowers that bloomed in the hearts of artists. To beings of the Abyss who had lost all genuine emotion, those words burned like naked flame against bare skin.
“Of course, reciting a few fairy-tale lines won’t kill a demon. If it did, the world would be far more peaceful than it is now. Still, we can drag a low-ranking demon like that into the physical world and strip away its disguise. Look at it.”
As if to refute Nathan, the Changeling spewed curses. It called writers people who masturbated in public and their sentences nothing but bodily fluids they spilled in sequence. Yet an unmistakable stench of burning rose from its body. It was screaming to hide the fact that it had grown weaker.
“Thanks to the princess and the crow, your sense of pain must have returned vividly after a long time. I know it’s hard to bear. So talk. I’ll make it as quick as I can. Where is Nilly?”
“Where did you hide the original satyr child?”
“Still full of fight. This is bad—I’m running out of stories.”
When Nathan sighed, the Changeling cackled with a sound like insects skittering.
Even with a knife at its throat, it would not reveal the child’s location. Demons could be reborn in the Abyss even after losing their physical form. Isolated children, however, would never return—unlike the demon. It would be perfectly satisfied.
Yet Nathan did not care in the slightest.
“There’s a knight in the Lion Wing Knights named Izelto.” Nathan leaned forward. The light above cast shadows across his face. “A descendant of a red-skinned hunting tribe. He’s a truly tenacious and wise hunter, perhaps because he takes after his ancestors. One day he caught a Changeling and showed me something rather interesting.”
Nathan pulled a metal spoon from his back pocket and began straightening the tip he had folded sharp.
“Less than thirty minutes after Izelto got to work, the Changeling spilled everything—where it had attacked, how many people it had killed, and where it had hidden the children in its Nightmare Pocket. All of it.”
The Changeling had meant to sneer, yet its mouth refused to cooperate.
“After tossing the leftover pieces of the Changeling onto a firewood fire, Izelto drew me a rough anatomical diagram of a Changeling. Then he made me copy it. He kept at it whenever I had time, until he decided I understood it well enough.”
Benny did not fully grasp the implication, yet she suddenly wanted to leave the room.
“Of course, the drawing wasn’t as precise as a medical textbook. It wasn’t meant for healing—it was meant for breaking.”
Nathan stood. The Changeling, whose expression had softened into something almost docile, pushed the chair back with its feet. Of course, that would not let it escape the room. Nathan disliked the movement all the same. He rose in an instant, seized the leg of the chair he had been sitting on, and snapped it off. The splintered end of the wooden fragment was sharp. He drove it straight down.
The freshly made stake pierced the Changeling’s knee cartilage, seeking the nerves buried deep within the mangled flesh. Pain arrived without warning. The Changeling’s breath caught—not from the agony itself, but from reflex.
“A human would have fainted from that much pain. But you’ll manage. Your body is nothing but a counterfeit mimicking living structure.”
“Among humans there’s something called sensory training. It helps patients whose sensation in a particular area has dulled by repeating exercises until it improves—whether hearing, touch, or the spinal nerves used for walking. We’re going to apply that in reverse.”
Nathan’s plan was simple: raise the level of sensation through repeated stimulation. It would not be gentle or gradual like rehabilitation therapy. The goal was to inflict pain.
“If you don’t understand, think of it this way. Sometimes civilians use the same principle to treat numbness. We’ll approach it step by step, like practice, and awaken your sense of pain—make it as sensitive as what a person feels when injured. As though arousing a lover’s numb senses with caresses.”
Only now grasping his meaning, the Changeling’s features contorted. Its posture radiated urgency, as though it sought any possible hiding place. Satisfied, Nathan suddenly noticed Benny at the edge of his vision. He realized what he had just said.
“Sorry.”
“No. It helped me understand.”
Benny, who had recoiled in shock when black blood splattered, forced a smile. Nathan, trying not to look awkward, simply sighed it away.
“Let’s see if I can manage even half of what Izelto does today. Benny, close the door on your way out. And make sure no one comes in.”
Benny did as he asked. The crocodile doctor waiting by the door quickly stepped aside. The mouth on the Changeling’s forehead opened in desperation.
The last thing visible through the narrowing doorway was Nathan’s back as he brought the spoon toward the Changeling’s eye. Benny slammed the door shut in horror.
“It’ll be over before dawn.”
----------
Nathan had failed. He had extracted every circumstance and truth from the Changeling’s throat, yet it had taken twice as long as Izelto’s demonstration, filled with trial and error. Izelto was truly an expert.
Thanks to the Changeling’s active cooperation, they found Somby. The hospital erupted when word spread that the boy had been buried in the backyard. Staff rushed out at dawn and tore into the yard with shovels and forepaws. Soon someone discovered the real Somby wrapped in something resembling an amniotic membrane beneath the soil. Once the black net-like membrane was peeled away, the satyr boy breathed healthily.
“Then where on earth is the child called Nilly?”
Benny flung her shovel aside, half relieved and half furious, struggling to control her ragged breathing.
“I checked the tablet just in case. There’s no record at all. Not a single image of a white-haired child. There should at least be a photo on some illegal streaming platform or channel.”
“I don’t know what a channel is, but wasn’t that also the Changeling’s doing?”
“A channel is… well, a plaza in the virtual world inside the tablet. A place where people gather to talk about a certain topic. So that’s not something a mere demon could manage. It would require someone who understands the technology to tear apart a mana-constructed network. Who exactly is backing it? Right—the Changeling confessed, didn’t it? Who did it say was behind everything, Nathan?”
Nathan did not answer the question.
“Thanks for giving me a place to rest. I should be going.”
“What are you talking about? Going where?”
“One more thing while I’m at it. Got anything at the hospital I could use as a weapon? A hammer from making prosthetics or whatever—anything… Never mind. I’ll just pick something up on the street.”
Benny understood what he meant. He intended to handle it alone. He meant to confront this unfamiliar world with his own body, just as he had in the arena. The image of Nathan, torn to rags during surgery, was still vivid in her mind. She did not want him to go through the same thing again.
“The ecology of the harbor slums is complicated. If you charge in with brute force you’ll regret it. I can help.”
“I’m not keeping quiet because I don’t need your help. It’s because the hospital might be in danger.”
“I’ve only been in the Heavens a few days and you’re already deciding that on your own? No one in the slums can touch our hospital. It’s the last stronghold people come to when they want to live, an unspoken neutral zone open to everyone. Anyone who breaks that agreement gets punished—by us or by the slum residents—without exception. Don’t wrestle with it alone. Tell me. If the price looks too high, I’ll pretend I never heard it.”
Nathan tilted his head. He did not know much about Heavenly society, but no matter how he thought about it, this did not seem like something a doctor or mechanic could solve.
“First of all, Nilly wasn’t hunted as prey. She was delivered somewhere. But it didn’t sound like the ones who commissioned the abduction were from the slums. Do you know what the ‘Winter King’ is? Or the Protector Lord succession struggle?”
“Hic.”
Benny clutched her spasming ribs and regretted telling him to speak freely.
Nathan did not regret it. He only felt a little sorry for having spoken so bluntly as instructed.
“...Looks like it’s a bit too big to handle? You can explain once the hiccups stop.”
“This son of a— hic.”
“Need water?”