Hino leaves Akki standing there, looking out over the mountains. He squats down over the earth, his eyebrows furrowed in his strenuous attempt to grasp his situation. Is it time to let Zaniel go? Why should he?

“What kind of an idiot would go and screw with somethin’ that’s always worked for him?” Akki asks himself. “Take this valley. What would it be if it gave in to change? If it tried to fit in with the rest of the country?” No one answers. “It would disappear, that’s what. Everythin’ that made it interestin’ would die along with it. Where would the old ones go then? Where would I go then?”

Although he can feel he is being watched, again no voices respond to his queries. He suppresses a deep shudder. It is something he has always wondered but dreads to think about. He clambers up to a standing position and, still facing the valley, relieves himself in the underbrush. Hino was right about one thing: it has been a few years.

Akki walks back through the woods toward his home in time to hear a gut-wrenching scream. It can’t be. Bitch should’ve been gone long ago. He prays his most recent visitor is not dreaming about being able to walk through fire, or he is in for another earful.

“Where is it?!” a high-pitched shriek echoes through the night. “What have you done with it?!”

“Talk, demon child!” screams a second voice.

It is followed by a third, sharper and more distinct than the others. “She let it go, you fools, can’t you tell?!”

“Maybe she didn’t,” a voice of reason interjects. “She can’t be that stupid. Maybe she ate it herself!”

“Then let’s get it out of her!” snarls the first voice. “Quickly, before she digests! Get her robe off!” Her next words are cut off by another high-pitched scream.

Akki finds himself intrigued. He follows the sounds of scuffling and struggle to a house he barely recognizes. It is his own home, but larger, labyrinth-like. Down one particularly wide hall, he recognizes four squid demons in the guise of bald women wrestling something in their arms. It is a human. What happened to the yokai they wanted to bring? Curious, Akki positions himself behind a large display of samurai armour he does not recall ever owning (but somehow, here it is). He cannot help but marvel at how they could entice a human all the way here, up into these mountains. They are not exactly what Akki would call hypnotists. No, he pauses. That is no human. The skin, it’s all wrong. It is a creature he has never seen before.

“Help!” the Yokai screams. Her eyes are aimed right at Akki. “Help me!” She can see him.