Soon, I reached the operating theatre and kicked the door in. To one side, the balura was cowering in terror. In the centre of the room was Horseface: he was shaking, trembling, mouth froaming, trying to free himself from the grip, but there was little he could do at the moment.

“He's falling! You have to kill him now!” shouted Mint.

I took the axe from my belt and approached the stretcher. The Horseface body was swelling and his skin was darkening, the wound on his forehead was gaping open and teeth were growing at the edges.

“I'm sorry,” I said.

I raised the axe above my head and struck him a good blow across the neck: a stream of blood shot out and hit me full in the face. I hit him again with all my might and his head fell to the ground. At the door they were all looking at me: Rodolfo, Laura, who threw up on the floor, and Melinda, who pointed to something at my feet and shouted:

“Shiiiiiiiiit!”

For a few moments I thought she needed to go to the bathroom, but when I looked down I discovered that strange things were happening to the horse-faced head: his mouth was opening and closing without forming words, his eyes were going one way and the other the other way and he was blinking randomly.

“Fireball!” shouted Melinda.

The flames came straight to me, but I dodged out of the way in time and only felt an unbearable heat. The head had no trouble dodging the attack either, as it leapt to the ceiling thanks to spider legs growing from its severed neck.

“This can't be happening... this can't be happening... this can't be happening...” Mintsobbed.

She approached the window, not taking her eyes off the severed head in the corner of the roof, and kept growling and growling.

“Well, but... it could have been worse...” I said to lighten the mood.

Mint looked at me with her mouth open and I think she was going to say something, but a gigantic hand broke the window pane and grabbed the balura, then a huge mouth appeared and that's where the balura ended. She thrashed around, screamed, cried, but it was all useless and none of us could do anything.

Her mouth opens wide, drool drips from her teeth and Mint is trapped on its tongue with her hand sticking out, waiting for a hand to save her from this hell. But there is nothing more that can be done for the poor thing.

The mouth closes and cuts off her arm, which flies into the room and, falling on the floor, slides around and splashes blood all the way round. The last scream of the balura is cut off by the giant's chewing.

The giant's hand re-entered the room and struck the floor hard, he was groping without seeing, searching for a new victim to put in his mouth. Suddenly, the Fallen bloodshot eye appeared over the edge of the window and stared at me.

My axe began to throb with such force that it was now impossible to tell that it was only imagination, and in the blade opened an eye that swung from side to side. I felt that my weapon had great strength within it and that I could use it to charge the fallen giant.

I raised my axe in the direction of the big cretin and prepared to launch an attack that would make history. Fear gave way to an excitement that made me tremble; I was going to do something worthy of a real heroine.

“Stop being silly, you dummy! Darn!” howled a childish voice, Melinda, behind me.

“Fireball!”

The flames shot out, passed too close to me and I felt that insufferable heat again. They crashed into the face of the Fallen giant, and he cried out in pain and turned away from the window. The eye went from the axe and I no longer felt any of the power pulsing within. Unfortunately, I was not about to launch any impressive attack.

“PUUUEEEEHHH!!!”

The severed head of Horseface was coming straight at my face! It had its mouth open and showed teeth all pointed, as if it had a saw instead of teeth. I put my arm in front of my face and it bit me all over my flesh.

“Danm!” I howled in pain,

I wiggled my arm, but Horseface was securely fastened as it wrapped its spidery legs around my forearm. I went to the door to leave the operating theatre and Rodolfo hurried to close the door.

Then he looked at me, with a pitying face, like someone watching from the safe distance of a beach as some unfortunate people drowned in the sea. To top it all, he ran off.

“But...Where are you going, where are you going?! I shouted at him.

I turned to Laura to see if she would help, but as soon as she saw the head she fainted.

“I'll help you, Sabela!” shouted Melinda, who was coming in my direction with a broom and prepared to give a good broom to the horse's face.

She was running to me very surely, with his eyes full of tears and his teeth clenched in fury. Then she attacked with that dirty broom.

The failure was that it hit me in all the face.

“Oh, no! Sorry!” Melinda tried again to shoo the horse-faced head away, but she hit me again. The brat frowned and the broom shook in her hands.

“Gosh! I'm not doing it on purpose!” she groaned and tried one more time, failing again and hitting me full in the face.

“It looks like I'm doing it on purpose, but I'm not!” she squeaks, again on the verge of tears.

I snatched up the broom and threw it well away; I had enough of the taste of dust and rubbish in my mouth. It's funny that, with a bug biting my arm so hard, it was those three blows with the broom the brat gave me that bothered me the most.

“Gee, why didn't I think of that before?” said Melinda, slapping her forehead, and then she put her hand in my direction, "Fire....!”

Of course, I didn't give her time to finish the sentence: I slammed my fist into her stomach and she dropped to her knees on the floor, struggling to catch her breath. Then I turned my head in the direction of the horse's face:

“I tried to save you! I tried to save you, you stupid thing! I may have tried to kill you, but I still tried to save you! And this is how you repay me, you ungrateful bastard?” I shouted at him, as I made a fist with the hand of my free arm.

I punched him with all my might and after the first, came a second. And another one and another one and another one and another one, horse face took the blows like a champion, not stopping biting me, but I had energy to give and give away so I kept punching, shattering my knuckles.

A loud CRACK sounded and his nose snapped off and stood to one side like a scarecrow after a storm, but he wouldn't leave me alone even with that. The axe wound in his forehead opened up, revealing an interesting interior: there was the gem of the heart. I put my hand in and it closed over my wrist, teeth protruding from the edges of the wound and digging into my flesh.

“Why don't you die?” I shouted at him.

He was biting me so hard it was only a matter of time before he crippled me. I felt my fingers grip something hard and sharp: it was the gem, the thing that kept him alive. I squeezed with all my might: I had to shatter it before it cut my hand. Suddenly, the gem broke and I felt a great joy.

The head fell to the ground, not moving a bit: horse face died and this time, forever and ever and ever. But it left me a wreck: I had the mark of its bite on my wrist and arm and it bled and hurt too.

“Are you all right, Melinda?” I asked her because she was still on the floor on all fours trying to catch her breath.

“Nooo...” she answered and I felt sick.

Rodolfo opened and closed the door and went into the operating room.

“Hey, nice of you to get away while I'm being chewed....”

He gave me one of his charming smiles, but the truth is that it seemed to me more worthy of a punch than anything else.

“Sorry, but I had to make sure of a matter of vital importance,” he said as he healed my wounds with his faith.

“What is it?” I asked, watching as the bite marks closed and almost disappeared: I would have a mark, but I didn't care about that.

“I wanted to make sure that none of those creatures got in.... Fortunately, all the windows are closed. For the moment, we're safe... but...” He swallowed his words.

“What?” I asked.

“You'd better see for yourself....”

Rodolfo led me up a flight of stairs to the roof of the building. As we stepped outside, we were greeted by a day of grey clouds that hid the sun. But the bad day was not the worst: the Nightmare Nation ate up much of the city and was only a few streets away. It was a darkness that danced between black and purple, with veins of reddish hues and stretched from the earth to the grey sky infecting it like cancerous tentacles. To my left, to my right... the Nightmare Nation also stretched out like a wolf's mouth wanting to devour all of Nebula in one bite. And it was so big; it made me feel as small as a grain of sand.

“How is this possible...? The city... should be protected, right? The King's Barrier... Why doesn't it work?” I asked, and next to me, Rodolfo answered:

“I don't know... This area should be protected, but... Maybe the city has been abandoned? It wouldn't be the first time that a barony has been abandoned, Sabela. It happened many years ago with Bruma. Nebula is finished,” Rodolfo said and smiled; the smile of a condemned man with the rope already tied around his neck.

“But there are still people in the street!” I said.

From the roof of the Healing House you could see the street in front of the building very well and there were people walking from one side to the other. That relieved me, the situation couldn't be that bad if people were walking from one side to the other as if nothing was happening.

When I looked down I discovered that I was wrong: what was roaming around below were not people but monsters. In the middle of the street stood the giant who had devoured Mint, his face burnt all over and he was looking at us with a blood-stained smile. On the roof of a nearby house was Gustavo, lying like a cat sleeping in the sun, he looked at me for a few moments, but only yawned and closed his eyes.

Seeing him calmed me down, because he was not as terrible as the giant. I turned to Rudolph: I wanted to believe that he knew how to save us, but in the end he was just a wretch who was as lost as I was.

“What are those monsters? Well, I know they used to be human, right? But... why do they turn into those things? Why? They're called... Fallen, aren't they?” I asked, but before the healer had time to answer, a laugh sounded behind me:

“How do you not know, Sabelita?” -Melinda asked; a smirk on her face.

“Perhaps do you know it?”

With a gesture of superiority, Melinda put on her glasses:

“Of course I know! They're Fallen! They're monsters that used to be people, but... let me see... How can I explain it so that you understand it properly? It's the Curse, the one that has eaten what's outside the King's Barrier. Out there, you must have a very strong mind so that you don't lose your mind and find yourself overwhelmed by these feelings as dark as pitch. You feel bad, bad, bad, bad, very bad... Depressed, terrified, furious... All kinds of negative feelings and, in the end, you fall down and become... how should I put it? A dark reflection of your heart, and the stronger those feelings are, the more terrifying the Fallen will be.

“I more or less knew that already...” I said.

“Well, why do you ask, then?” the brat protested.

“Melinda. Why aren't you worried? You're too... happy. Don't you realise where we are and what is happening?”

“Well, I'm terribly lucky, Sabela. Ever since I was a little girl, bad things have happened around me, but I've always been safe. For example, the village where I was born burnt down, but I came out unscathed,” she said with a smile too big to talk about such a thing.

“And what about people who are not you?” I asked him and the smile fell off his face.

“Oh, jeez... Don't think they're so lucky... I'm sorry...”

I dug my hand into my beautiful hair, but it didn't help me to calm down.

“What are we going to do now? Well, the basic thing would be to get out of town as soon as possible, wouldn't it?” I said.

Rodolfo let out a sad laugh and said:

“Sabela, the Fallen are everywhere? What do you think will happen if we set foot outside the building?”

“Well, maybe we'll be lucky and nothing will happen to us, won't we? Look, the big guy is looking at us and he's standing still,” I said, pointing to the giant who was standing in the same place and smiling at us.

Melinda looked at me in disbelief:

“Come on, come on! Do you really believe that? They're really eating us alive, and in the end, we're going to be monster poo,” she said, putting on her glasses that were running down her nose.

“You can't be so sure of that...” I said and then we heard a cry of pure despair coming from the street.

A person running with a sword in his hand and behind him a pack of Fallen: crazed eyes, mouths with sharp teeth, slimy tongues, slashing claws, tails like whips.... The man, who must have been one of the Children of the Sun, ran to the giant's side, and the giant grabbed him with one hand and put him in his mouth. Well, seeing that, it was pretty clear to me that going outside was a bad idea, but...

“If we stay here the border is going to come and... I don't think it will do us any good to be inside it....”I said.

“True, but if we try to flee we'll end up dead,” replied Rodolfo.

“But that doesn't mean that I was wrong! If we just stay here we're going to end up in a bad way!” I shouted.

“And what do you think will happen if we go outside? How many monsters do you think walk the streets? Sooner or later, they'll finish us off! We're safer in here!”

“But what’s that we are safer in here! Look at the way Mint ended up!”

Melinda stood in front of us and started stomping the floor.

“Stop it! Stop it, right now! Oh, for fuck's sake... You guys are such doomsayers! What if we're going to die, what if we're going to I don't know what! Are we going to solve anything here by arguing? That's it, I'm going with Laura, I'm sure it's not so depressing to be with her!” Melinda shrieked and left, leaving me alone with Rodolfo.

We said nothing to each other; we stood in silence looking at the Nightmare Nation. Its dark surface moved like a pond and made me feel like I was standing on the edge of a dark hole with voices whispering to you to jump. I didn't want to stay on the roof any longer.

“Well, I'm going to take a shower; I'm pretty dirty with blood... Are you coming down or not?” I asked Rodolfo.

He shook his head; he kept looking at the Nightmare Nation.

“No... No... I'm going to stay a bit longer... looking at the...”

I was a bit worried, but I didn't think anything bad was going to happen. Besides, I wanted to take a shower because I was pretty stained with the blood of Horseface. I was sure that after I had a shower I would feel much better.