With the cane she pushes aside some bushes. The grove opens its thicket to shelter a dirt road formed by the steps of many years, which climbs up a hill to a rustic wooden cabin, with only gloom peeking from the windows.

"Your house?" Ivy asks. Camui nods and clings even closer to the witch's body.

Ivy reaches to the door and opens it with a flick of her cane. The inside of the hut is filled with the stench of a latrine and rotting food. The witch crosses the threshold without flinching, and finds a cluttered, dusty room. Every corner of the place is permeated with a thick layer of evil.

Camui recognizes his quiver and bow lying by the stove, but does not retrieve them, instead he silently points to grandfather's room, and the prodigious one takes that path.

"Stay alert, Camui. Danger is around"

They stand in front of Rod's door, cradle of stench and bad vibes. Ivy pushes the door gently using the staff. Camui covers his mouth and nose with the hand, he doesn't want to see, but has to.

The curtains are half drawn, and the scant sunlight that filters through seems gray and lacking in warmth. The bed is covered with stained skins that are twisted downward by the weight of the bloated figure that occupies it. The entity's arms are bone beneath its skin, and its head is twisted back with blank eyes. Remnants of food, urine and feces combined slip from the nest. For a moment Camui thought it was dead, but Rod's neck creaks and his head straightens to look at it.

"You brat! How could you abandon your old man?" The words came out more loosely, it was his grandfather's usual voice, and that makes Camui shudder, "I'm burning to kill you for being ungrateful, to rip off that silly head of yours. But I won't, I'm not inconsiderate like you. Look for food! I'm hungry! And look for wine! And a young girl from the village!"

Camui stares open-eyed and open-mouthed, wishing to wake up from the nightmare. Ivy covers the boy with her body, and moves forward until she is close to the bed, leaving just enough space to avoid getting stained by the dripping filth.

"Only a lord of disguise with a brand as rotten as yours would be able to do this" she says and taps the bottom of her cane on the floor.

The wooden woman's eyes flare red and she opens her mouth, from her gnarled throat blooms a breath of fire that sets the old man's furs and belly. Rod trembles, and from his cracked lips comes a high-pitched shriek, the elegy of a wounded abomination.

"Grandpa!" Camui reflexively tries to jump in and save him, but Ivy pushes him back with her elbow.

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"Calm down, Camui. He is not your family. He's an imposter"

The words freeze the boy, who now stares at what lies on the bed looking for the seams.

The clothes burn. The old man's swollen belly is exposed, stretched and full of stretch marks, as if he were suffering from some kind of twisted pregnancy. Something tears, it is the navel. Small fingers with grimy fingernails make way for hands. The occupant pushes and sits up.

"Annihilator! H-How...?" He shrieks and coughs. "How did you find me?"

He is as small as a child, smaller than Camui, with flabby arms and legs, a prominent belly, a twisted face as if he had been punched and never recovered from, crowned by a bald head surrounded by white dandruff. He is naked. In the center of his hairless chest throbs a mark that originally looked like a mask, and is now traced by wide, scarlet furrows that bruise the skin and make him look like a spider, a mark dressed in evil.

"The fire loosens even the most infamous and stubborn tongues" Ivy says. "You're the last of your gang, Humber. The penultimate told me where you planned to hide. In the shadows of an unimportant village like the cockroach you are"

The annihilator tilts her staff at the little man. Humber, pale with fright, raises his hands.

"Wait! If you kill me, you'll kill this old man too"

Such words bring Camui out of his stupor. He looks at the witch, hopeful, but Ivy dashes that fantasy.

"Do you think I'm stupid? That man is already dead"

"No! His heart is still beating! Look" In an attempt to preserve his life, the little man plunges his arm toward his chest. He reaches in, feels around, and pulls out a beating heart with a hand wrapped in a glove of blood. He holds it carefully so as not to tear the blood vessels. "I have improved my art. Now I can occupy a body without killing it. It's more comfortable that way, it lasts longer"

Such a bizarre vision makes Camui dizzy with disgust, who has to hold on to Ivy's arm to keep from collapsing. Tears wet the boy's eyes. He keeps his teeth clenched, and a trembling hand close to the knife resting at his waist.

The witch continues to glare at the master of disguise.

"We can make a deal. Let him escape and I'll return him as he was" Humber plunges the gleaming purple-red organ back into the body and leaves it in the first space he can find. "It's simple for me. Yes, very simple. Just as it is easy for you to take off and put on that cloak you wear. My methods may be repulsive to softies, but I'm still a humble tailor"

"Can none of your kind accept death with dignity?"

Humber's response is to look sideways with vicious eyes, indifferent to the atrocities he committed.

Ivy sighs, and turns her gaze to Camui to apologize for what she is about to do. It was in that fleeting second that the little man stands up and leaps from his belly, an ivory dagger in his hand. Camui also reacts.

The blade pierces the skin of the stomach and sinks to the hilt. The rib flails in front of Ivy's face, but all it manages to do is rip the base of the wide hat. Humber's body hits the ground, lying on the puddle of dirt, the craftsman's knife stuck in his gut.

Camui remains with his arm outstretched, his mouth trembles but he doesn't mutter a word, and beyond the dying man on the floor, his gaze is focused on Grandfather. Ivy, surprise overcome, blinks, brings a hand to her chest and lets out an exhalation of relief.

Rod slowly closes his eyes. Would have liked to say goodbye to the boy, but at last his longed-for rest arrives. He leaves in peace, because according to the last thing he sees, it seems that Camui is in good hands.