Well, since I had a hole in my hand I had no other choice but to go back inside the place where I got my belly fixed. Since we jumped out the back, we had to go around the building and discovered that it was on a not very long street, but wide enough to say it wasn't narrow. Again the sun was hidden behind the clouds and it smelled like the storm of the century was about to hit.

Well, we were in front of the building where I was healed and it didn't differ much from the other gray buildings in Nebula, only that it had a sign above the open doors: Happy Little Heart Healing House. And the drawing of a heart so smiling that I found it a little too cheesy.

“Hey! Do you know that hearts aren't really like that? I saw a real one and they're, I don't know, like veiny balls of flesh. Did you know they weren't like that, like that?” said Melinda.

“Of course I know... I think everybody knows,” I said.

“Are you sure about that?” she asked with a raised eyebrow.

We entered the reception and it smelled like cookies, I liked and disliked that aroma at the same time, because the truth is that as pleasant as that smell was, I was hungry as a horse and I was tortured by smelling something so tasty and not being able to take even half a bite.

Behind the reception desk there was no one and hanging on the wall was a picture of a clown that reminded me of the one at the hostel, only more terrifying: it looked as if the guy was leaning his face against a shop window and that gave me the feeling that it was real, that between me and the clown there was only a thin layer of glass that could break at any moment and...

“But what happens with people and clowns? First, at the hostel there was one and now here?” I said, thinking out loud more than anything else, but Melinda heard me and gave me a funny look.

“What are you talking about?” At once, she lost all interest and showed it with a horse snort. “Bah! Never mind, you have to get that fixed before it gets infected and they have to cut it off.” Melinda ran to the reception desk and began to pound on the doorbell. “Is there anybody here? Is there anybody here?” the brat shouted and I felt embarrassed.

“I'm coming! I'm coming! Where did Amanda go? She should be at the reception desk...” a woman's voice lamented and, in no time, she appeared and when I saw the green tone of her skin and how big her eyes were and the fact that she had no nose I said she was not human, but a balura. When she saw me, she was quite surprised...

“You? But what are you doing here? Weren't you on the stretcher...?”

I, who am not a liar, told him the truth:

“I was in a hurry, I jumped out of the window and was shot in my hand.”

“That's not true! You weren't shot in your hand; you tried to catch the bullet with it!” Then she turned in the direction of the balura. “She's just a brute, poor thing.”

“Once a knife fell off the table and I picked it up on the fly. I still have the mark,” I said and showed the palm of my left hand, where you could still see the scar from the knife that had gone through it.

Melinda looked at me with a pitying face.

“Poor thing... When you were little, people must have bullying you a lot, didn't they?” And, in less than a second, she changed her mind radically, “But what am I saying? As big as you are, I bet you were the one who bullied people! You must have been a real bully!”

I took off that idiotic-looking wizard's hat, which had an embroidered smile and plastic eyes with a ball in them, and ruffled his hair. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that it was soft to the touch, quite voluminous, and shared a similar colour to my own. If nothing else, I began to like the little brat. Seeing how I gave her hair a thousand revolutions, she turned redder than a carrot and, with one swipe, snatched the hat.

“Hey! Don't muss my hair!” Melinda moaned, giving me looks that pricked me like pins.

“Well, can you fix me up then? I know it doesn't look like it, but I'm hurting quite a lot,” I asked the balura, and she nodded.

“Well... yes... come with me.”

“I'll wait for you here, I don't want to see your hand anymore, it makes me cringe,” said Melinda and, jumping up, she sat down on the reception table and started mumbling a song without lyrics.

The balura led me down a short corridor and, opening the door on the right, I found myself in the room where minutes before I jumped out of the window. Now, she told me to sit on the same stretcher where I had been lying.

“Show me your hand.”

She examined it with a worried expression and then began to speak in a distracted tone:

“My name is Mint, I know your name is Sabela. .... I have a confession to make... she said and from her hand a white light came out and covered my wounded hand and soon I felt a pleasant warmth.

“What?” I asked her.

“About your healing yesterday... you were pretty bad... so I had to use means... uh... how to say? Not properly tested...” said Mint to me.

“I see... but it went well, didn't it?”

“What I used was an injection created by the VHX... which among its qualities is the ability to heal serious wounds... quite quickly...” said Mint.

“It worked,” I said, and I didn't see why that should be a problem.

“Yes... but the injection is created with... little things that were taken from the Fallen... and as a side effect is that... well... you are now more susceptible to becoming one of them,” she said and that didn't sound so good to me.

“What?!”

Tears fell from his big catlike eyes and he stopped healing me, but only because the wound on my hand was already closed.

“The Fallen that attacked you in the dungeon... was one of my patients. He turned into that thing...” she confessed, and I didn't know how to feel.

“Is that why you were doing the experiments there?” I asked her and she nodded her head.

“As you can see, it wouldn't be too safe to do them in the middle of the city,” he said, smiling sadly. “I injected you with the substance in the dungeon, too... but you didn't convert. But now you are... now... But it doesn't matter... Now nothing matters anymore.”

I didn't like at all the way he said that.

“Nothing matters...?”

“The city of Nebula is lost.”

“What are you talking about?”

“It's true, you were unconscious all day yesterday... You weren't aware of it, were you? You didn't find out, did you? You couldn't possibly have known...”

“Knew about what?”

I didn't much like this kind of dribbling conversation, but I held my nerve and let her continue, hoping that she would make herself clearer.

“The city of Huertomuro... this... is now part of the Nightmare Nation... Now... now even... you can see it from the walls of the north gate... the...” I heard no more of what he said and understood at once the gravity of the letter howling in my pocket.

My hometown, devoured by the Curse, my family, my friend... would they all be all right? Would they escape in time? How could this happen? The walls. The thought embedded itself in my mind and I could think of nothing else: I had to go to the walls to see the Nightmare Nation with my own eyes.

I jumped off the stretcher and ran outside, heard voices behind me, but thought nothing of it and was soon running through the silent streets of the city. Perhaps it would be best to leave the city as soon as possible, but I couldn't leave Nebula without taking a look at the Nightmare Nation.

From the House of Healing I quickly reached the square where the headquarters of the Children were located, I stopped for a short moment to look at the statue of the first hero Xoan de Ningures and I felt bitter in my mouth. If only there was someone like him in the Kingdom who could save us from the threat that was coming upon us!

Well, then I went to the main street which is where I entered the city and I ran, there were still people around, all these ashen people dressed in dark colours and with faces wrinkled with worry. Some were going in the direction of the walls, but others were running in the opposite direction. Those were the smart ones.

When I reached the end of the street I found myself at the city gates, but I couldn't get out of them because they were locked. But there were towers on either side of it, and inside them spiral staircases leading up to the promenade just inside the city walls.

I wasted no time: I had to see the border of the Nightmare Nation with my own eyes. I climbed up at full speed and soon arrived at the top to discover that there were more people, more of those people who were dressed in clothes that were all shades of grey. All in a tense silence, all watching in fear at something rising from a short distance above the city.

Where the Teeth Forest should have been, there now stood the border with the Nightmare Nation, the new frontier.... My hands closed on the stone of the railing so tightly that I even hurt myself, but I didn't care, none of it mattered... because the Nation was so close that, if I wanted to, I could even go there and touch it.

The Nightmare Nation looked like a wall of darkness that prevented us from seeing what lay behind it. They were like water flowing upwards in an overflow that, as I said before, did not allow us to see what was hidden in the belly of those territories plagued by monsters.

And it was huge, stretching sideways, bending over Nebula like the jaws of a wolf about to close on a sheep, and also rising upwards, eating into the grey of the sky with cracks that embedded themselves in the firmament like deep wounds.

I felt as small as a flea, what could I do against such a thing? How could I fight against something that didn't bleed? Was my strength completely useless against that thing? I felt as if I was one step away from a bottomless pit, about to fall into darkness, a feeling of vertigo in my stomach and exaltation in my brain. Although the border was a truly horrendous thing, one could also say that it was wonderful, a breathtaking spectacle.

I remembered the injection Mint gave me: at that moment I was in danger of falling and becoming a monster more easily. So I couldn't let myself get carried away by despair, I had to keep my mind cool and my feet on the ground.

I heard the sound of drums and, for a few seconds, I thought they were coming from the border, but I soon discovered that they were not. Guys were coming out of the gates; they were the city guards heading in the direction of the Nightmare Nation.

“But what are these crazy people doing?” I asked myself.

They marched out of the gates in military step, the ones at the front beating the rhythm with drums, then others carrying banners with the Luzo family symbol: a fish pierced by spears. Although they advanced with determination, I didn't know if they could do much against the monsters that the Nightmare Nation would spew forth.

A few metres from the gate they stopped and one of the guards, who must have been the leader because he was wearing a more elaborately designed suit of armour, stood in front of the others and began to make a speech. From up there, I couldn't make out more than a few words: "honour, heroism, bravery, stomach". It was a pity I couldn't understand a word the chief said because it was quite motivating as the other guards began to raise their guns to the sky and bawl like newborn children.

“What are those imbeciles doing? Why are they outside and not inside the city? They should protect us... they should protect us... they should...”

It wasn't me who said that, but a girl standing next to me who was paler than an ass that never saw the sun. He was answered by a man who was smiling, even though he saw no reason to do so.

“What do you think they're doing out there? They're going to fight the monsters on their territory. They're Baron Mher's men! Do you think it's their style to stand idly by while the city is in danger?”

She looked at him, not seeming to understand anything, really.

“Whose guards...?”

“Where did you come from? The guards of the city of Nebula, you know? What you see every day in the streets?” Said the man, giving the pale-haired woman a hard look.

“Nebula?” the woman whispered.

Could the city guards do anything against the monsters in their own territory? A spice of hope stirred my heart, they had good weapons and better armour... and there were twenty or more of them!

They might be able to keep the monsters at bay, take a few of them out, make them see that humanity had courage a dime a dozen. So when I saw the guards heading in the direction of the border, I was fully with them.

“You can do it!”

“Teach the monsters a lesson!”

“Long live the guards of Baron Mher!”

Enthusiastic voices came from the mouths of the people up there on the wall. And I was surprised, for I had not expected that from the citizens of Nebula, who had given me the impression of being pessimistic and bitter.

But now, in their eyes, in the expressions on their faces, in their movements... now I saw another side of the coin, now I saw that behind the façade there was a background that was still capable of feeling something.

Hope! There was still hope in them! And in me too! How beautiful is hope! The guards were approaching the border and with each step they seemed to get smaller and smaller and in the end they were no more than ants against giants.

And then there wasn't much hope left, even my companions on the wall who had shouted so enthusiastically now didn't say a peep. The guards went deeper into the Nightmare Nation.

A heavy silence ruined what little joy was left on the wall.

“They will be victorious... They will be victorious...” said the man with the smile, but I don't think even he was capable of believing such nonsense.

It was impossible, those guys were idiots! Bravery? Was it brave to throw yourself into the lion's den knowing beforehand that it was going to devour you? They were going to die, they were all going to die, each and every one of them, and... What was the point of it? What was the point of such a sacrifice?

“They're coming out! Can't you see I was right, you idiot?” said the man next to me, but he had spoken too soon: only one of the guards was coming out and he was moving slowly, it took a good long few minutes to get a good picture of him.

His clothes were covered in blood from head to toe and he was missing an arm. It was a miracle that he was walking so much when he was so badly hurt. Suddenly, he stopped and fell to his knees on the ground.

I had a feeling that going to the Nation to fight wasn't such a good idea after all. The man raised his head to the sky and let out a bestial roar that could not possibly have come from a human throat.

A dark thing emerged from his severed arm: it was a new one, much larger than the old one and ending in a claw. At that moment, I realised that the guard was no longer human, but a monster.