Tthor arrived almost breathless at the third floor landing. He was still coughing a lot and had a hard time breathing. He had swallowed a lot of smoke and his mouth felt hot. But he felt worse when he saw the attic door wide open.

   "Asmodeus!" Tthor shouted as he rushed in.

   The small room was empty. The old demon was not there, nor were his things, much less the small jade green plate that he used to eat from.

  "Why didn't I take it when he offered it to me so many times?" Tthor asked himself as he observed the erased line of salt on the floor.

   " Tthor!!! Are you here!"

   Noel's voice startled him.

   "Have you seen Asmodeus? He has left."

   "We have another problem, Tthor," said the girl with tears in her eyes. "They took Lee-Won!"

   "What?! Who?"

   "I don't know who, " said Noel, trembling from head to toe. "but I do know where..."

   As they stumbled up a spiral staircase, Noel told Tthor, in a somewhat haphazard manner, what had happened:

   "We were in the stables, looking for you, when someone... he appeared. He had his face covered... and he was carrying a lit torch. He asked about you and when I told him that we didn't know where you were... he started laughing. He took Lee-Won by the arm and dragged him to the patio, while he kept telling me to tell you that I would be waiting for you... I didn't know what to do and I started screaming, asking for help."

   Noel shuddered as he remembered all that. He took a deep breath and continued:

   "Lee-Won tried to hit him with a box he had in his hand. But the stranger snatched her away and took them both..."

   "A box?"

   "Yes, Tthor, your “treasure” box! I followed them here but by the time I managed to climb the stairs they were gone. This hallway only has one exit but they didn't retrace their steps, I don't know how but they disappeared..."

   At this point the girl could no longer control herself and she began to cry desperately. Tthor took her hands, which were cold and trembling, and forced her to look at him.

   "I promise you that nothing is going to happen to him. You have to calm down. Do you trust me?"

   "Yes...," the girl whispered in a weak voice.

   Tthor then looked at the hallway that stretched out in front of him. She knew him very well. Many nights of sleepwalking had led him to that place, inexplicably. When he woke up at dawn, he always found himself standing in front of the three paintings, humming Wilgenyna's favorite verses and not knowing how or why he had gotten there.

   But now, for some strange reason, Tthor knew what he had to do. There must have been a secret or hidden door somewhere. The boy looked at the paintings intently and without knowing why, he began to hum that old song that his cousin sang to him on rainy afternoons or on stormy nights or when his skin burned so much from the sun that the pain wouldn't let him breathe. :

   "Not even the deepest deserts,

Not even the most terrifying storms,

Not a thousand lashes of strong winds,

will make me stay away from you.”

   "Here is the desert...and in that is the storm," Noel said surprised and ecstatic by the sweet voice of Tthor. "And in this painting are the strong winds..."

   Tthor touched the worked frames of the paintings with his fingers and continued the song:

   “And I will take your hand

And I will take you to that place

Where it all once began

And where our chimeras

will be able to be reborn.”

   "What is a chimera?" Tthor asked himself.

   " Is it...an impossible wish?"

   Tthor looked at the paintings again and stopped at the animals represented there and then he knew. In a nervous outburst, he took down the frames and carefully lowered them.

   "A chimera, according to Wilgenyna, has the head of a lion," said Tthor while hanging the painting that was previously in the middle, now on the far left. "The body of a goat…," he added, placing the painting on the nail in the middle - "and… the tail of a goat. dragon…," and ended up hanging the third painting on the far right.

   He took a step back to observe the new order. He didn't have time to contemplate too much because a loud sound coming from a small door on the side startled them. The two approached suspiciously to see that what had previously been just a hole in the wall was now an entrance that grew to the sides and upwards, with a kind of black smoke that seemed to silently devour the bricks.

   Tthor looked at Noel and smiled. Without wasting time he entered through an entrance of more than two meters but stopped suddenly.

   " You stay! And look for help. Tell them where I am..."

   "No! I'm not going anywhere!" Noel crossed his arms and looked at him stubbornly.

   Tthor felt that he would only waste valuable time if he tried to convince her so he reluctantly agreed.

   They entered through the dense smoke, which to Tthor's surprise, had no smell at all. Noel looked down the hallway one last time just as he saw that the paintings had been moved to their original places. He felt a knot in his stomach as he thought that behind him the entrance was closing. But he took several deep breaths and followed Tthor down what was now a narrowing hallway. The darkness was paralyzing.

   "Up ahead there is another door and it is open...," Tthor told him.

   "How do you know?" Noel whispered.

   "I can see in the dark," Tthor said, proud of himself.

   After several meters of advancing in the darkness, they reached the door that Tthor had seen. Upon entering it, they found themselves in a circular room with three tall black doors.

   Following his instinct, Tthor opened the one on the left and saw, with amazement, a stone staircase illuminated with torches on each side, which descended without being able to see where they led. Tthor asked Noel to stay there, but the girl held on to her arm with both hands, as if in response, and they began the descent.

   In the first ten minutes the path was straight but then the steps became narrower and every now and then a fairly sharp curve appeared.

   The floor was slippery from the moisture coming from the granite walls. The further they walked, the hotter it seemed to get. Tthor felt like the shirt he was wearing had stuck to his body and his hair was soaked.

   Before a new curve, and just when Tthor was wondering how much further they should go, voices put them on alert and they stopped their march in their tracks. He instinctively pressed himself against the wall and tried to peer around a sharp angle of brick. He saw a large, semicircular room with stone walls and a white sandstone floor. Four large columns stood in the center, touching the vaulted red limestone ceiling. The pillars seemed to surround a raised platform from which protruded a majestic, extremely oval mirror framed in emerald green stone. It was almost three meters high and half as wide. Two golden torches on each side made it deep and mysterious.

   Faced with a new sound of voices, this time somewhat clearer, Noel could not resist any longer and looked out to see what was happening. Looking into the mirror, the girl started. She saw Lee-Won reflected, with incredible clarity. And without thinking twice, she came out of her hiding place and ran there. Tthor tried to stop her but just as he grabbed her arm, a cold voice startled them both, leaving them petrified in fear just a few steps from the mirror.

   Tthor was the first to react and turned to see who had spoken to them. The stranger spoke another sentence in a cold and slow voice:

   " I was waiting for you, Tthor Prayer."

    The young man had a hard time seeing who was there even when the place was dark. He only made out a tall, upright figure and noticed that he was holding something in his right hand. Tthor tried to look closely but couldn't see anything.

   "Don't try hard, Tthor, your power to see in the dark doesn't work in this place," said the stranger in a mocking tone.

  "Where we are?"

   "In… Incaniclon, the center of power of Meaghdose," Noel answered in amazement.

   " Very good, Miss Douval. Do you see the mirror? That mirror neutralizes any magic and any spell..."

   "I don't need magic to know who you are..." Tthor said suddenly, surprised by his strong and determined voice.

   Noel had begun to sob and clung to Tthor's hand with all his might.

   The stranger let out a chilling laugh that echoed through the chamber, seeming louder and deeper than he had actually been.

   "You will never have what you are looking for: the paila. Because that's what you want, isn't it, Professor Evans?"

  Another laugh, with discordant notes, came to them from the same dark corner.

   "I know he betrayed my father and wants to do the same to me. I always knew it, my mother told me everything and I verified it when I arrived at Warghost, with his unpleasant and hostile treatment," It seemed that Tthor had been keeping all that to himself for a long time and now he was spitting it out in anger.

   Now that the time had come, he was glad to be able to say everything he thought.

   "Continue…," the stranger seemed anxious.

   "He has been waiting for the right moment to get me out of the way. He thought that because of how clumsy and useless I am it would be easy to get rid of me. He was waiting for the moment when the paila would come to me and then get me out of the way and give it to Domtrov."

   " The paila?"

   "Yes, but I will never give it to her!" Tthor shouted. "Has she heard Me?" He'll have to kill me and he still won't get her.

   " It will not be necessary to kill you, for now, my dear Tthor. Because...I already have the paila," The stranger took a few short steps towards the weak light of a torch.

   Tthor was speechless. First by seeing the shiny pan in the hands of his interlocutor. But his surprise was greater when he realized who he had been talking to.

   " Equs Lileproof?!" both children said in surprise. "The guardian of...stables!?"