Prologue
A small butterfly landed on a pile of leaves, swaying gently in the autumn breeze. It remained motionless, unmoved. Its stillness brought a strange sense of calm to a boy who was not yet ten years old.
The wind stirred the leaves into a chaotic dance, as though trying to convey something it couldn’t articulate. Engel watched, unsure if the movement held an answer or if it was just empty—like the butterfly, which seemed unaffected by the cold.
How was it possible, Engel wondered, that such a delicate creature didn’t feel the chill? Shouldn’t it? And if it didn’t, why did humans? Why didn’t insects need coats, hats, or scarves like people did? Or perhaps... perhaps itwascold, but it didn’t show it in the same way humans did. Maybe it simply didn’t know what clothing was, let alone how to use it. Or maybe the question wasn’t worth pondering—after all, how could a human ever truly understand a butterfly or any other insect?
For a fleeting moment, the boy felt envious of it. It was such a free and carefree creature. Engel wished he could be like that white butterfly, unburdened by chores, hygiene, or any of the trivial worries that plagued a seven-year-old.
He imagined himself soaring over forests, buildings, even rivers. He felt certain he’d enjoy looking down from heights of several meters—maybe dozens—at people, cats, dogs, and other creatures bound to the ground. Surely, they’d envy him!
And then it struck him.
He was the one envious of the butterfly.
A normal child his age wouldn’t have given it much thought. But Engel, raised in the church since birth, knew that envy was a sin he had to avoid at all costs. He’d been taught to work hard to escape accusations of laziness. He tried to appreciate what he had to avoid being called greedy. His fear of sin sometimes bordered on paranoia.
Every day, he asked the priest if his actions were good. Yet even reassurance wasn’t always enough to soothe him. This fear extended beyond his behavior to something as fundamental as his name. Engel didn’t know if it had been given to him before he was born or afterward—or if it was even his true name at all. He only knew that his name was Engel Morgenstern.
“Does a butterfly have a soul?” he asked softly, as though the answer might change the world.
When he repeated the question in his mind, the words felt hollow—like a soul was a privilege, not a natural right.
“That’s a difficult question, Engel,” the priest replied, glancing at the cross behind them as if searching for words. “Butterflies are different from humans, but perhaps they have their own form of life.”
Engel suppressed his envy of the butterfly again. “Why does it have one, and I don’t?” he thought, though he didn’t know where this strange, unspoken feeling of lack came from.
An uncomfortable silence settled between them. The priest seemed to understand what Engel was thinking.
“Listen...” The priest crouched down beside him, unsure where to begin. “You’re special, yes. But look—it doesn’t mean you’re not human, right?” he said, though his voice betrayed uncertainty in his own words.
For a moment, he was silent, lost in thought. He looked at Engel, who sat still, wide-eyed, as though awaiting a verdict.
“You feel emotions. You avoid sin...” the priest paused, his voice faltering on the last word. “You live without a soul.”
For a moment, he avoided Engel’s gaze, as though he couldn’t believe what he’d just said.
“But that doesn’t mean God doesn’t see you,” he added, though his voice sounded more like a prayer than an assurance.
The priest’s voice may have seemed calm, but he remembered the sleepless nights he’d spent pondering,How is this possible?He couldn’t understand how Engel, born without a soul, lived and functioned like any other human. The boy with white hair was the only being known to have been born without such a vital part of themselves.
No one in the church could comprehend it. Most discussions about Engel ended with the assumption that if God had allowed him to be born without a soul, there must be a plan for him. And in the worst-case scenario, if it wasn’t God who had a vision, then someone else surely did—something Engel himself wouldn’t understand for a long time.
Engel studied the priest’s face, weighing every word. After a moment of silence, he asked in a trembling whisper, “What if... I’m not human? Does God love me even if I don’t have a soul?”
The priest’s heart stopped for a fraction of a second. How was he supposed to answer that when he wasn’t sure himself? He lowered his head, avoiding Engel’s gaze, and stared at the cross on the wall, seeking answers no one had ever given him in seminary.
“Engel...” he began, but his voice was quiet. “It’s not that simple.”
Again, silence.
“Sometimes... we have to trust that even when we don’t understand, God has a plan for us. Even for those who...” He hesitated, unable to finish the sentence.Even for those who are different.
The boy fell into a deep, suspiciously long contemplation.
“Will He forgive me?” he asked softly, lowering his gaze as if too ashamed to meet the priest’s eyes.
It was a question that unsettled the priest.Will He forgive me?Such a simple phrase, yet it hid something deeper—something that filled the priest with vague dread.
“Why...” The priest glanced at him with concern. “Have you sinned?” His body tensed with apprehension. Engel, who so obsessively avoided sin? What could he mean?
“I have sinned!” Engel squeaked in pure panic, as though his world was crumbling around him. The priest’s confusion grew with each word, his eyes widening at the seven-year-old’s confession.
“I’m still jealous of the butterfly!” Engel cried out, dramatically raising his arms to the heavens as if pleading for forgiveness for this grave offense against divine order.
“Leviathan will eat meeeee!” he wailed, on the verge of tears.
Young Engel, a seven-year-old boy, had rather unusual hobbies—if one could even call them that. He surprised everyone without exception. Out of fear of the seven deadly sins (and more), he had memorized the names of the demons representing them. Why? Who knows? Perhaps it comforted him to know the name of the one who might devour him. Did it matter to him whether Leviathan or someone else was the one to catch him? Nobody could understand his reasoning.
The priest’s eyes widened in shock, nearly robbing him of speech. For a moment, he didn’t know how to react. The seven-year-old boy before him—so innocent, so pure in his fears—was shouting as though his small world had just ended in apocalypse. Leviathan? Did he truly believe a demon would come for him over envy of a butterfly?
“Engel...” the priest stammered in astonishment. “No, Leviathan... he won’t eat you.” He tried to calm the boy, though he couldn’t shake the growing feeling that something was deeply wrong. Deep in his heart, he felt that this wasn’t just childish imagination. Something about Engel was profoundlyoff.
“But I sinned!” Engel cried in even greater panic. His previously calm demeanor evaporated, leaving behind a terrified ball of chaos convinced that even the smallest offense against God would summon the most powerful and fearsome demons to punish him.
The priest’s attempts to soothe him proved futile once Engel started believing he was in real danger. He imagined the worst creatures lurking in the shadows, waiting for a moment of carelessness to devour him alive.
There were nights when Engel would sit up in bed clutching a flashlight, determined to stay vigilant and outrun Leviathan if need be. Eventually, exhaustion would overcome him, and he’d fall asleep—still holding the flashlight, drained not only from lack of rest but from his own overly paranoid fear.
“Engel, believe me...” the priest said with a soft smile. “Leviathan certainly has more important matters to attend to than eating children jealous of... butterflies. He probably didn’t even notice. Think of it this way: Leviathan, that fearsome Demon of Envy, must receive so many reports and messages about sinners every day that he only picks the worst of the worst to punish. Someone who gets an endless flood of information focuses only on what’s most important. Your... well, ‘sin of envy for a butterfly’ doesn’t seem to make the cut. And if you want to be absolutely sure, you know, you could always confess it, right?”
The priest barely held back a chuckle, thinking about the absurdity of his own words. He never would have imagined himself explaining an overwhelmed demon swamped with sin reports. What next? A demonic senator? A demonic general? A demonic bank director? The thought was, well, funny—maybe even silly. But who was to say it couldn’t be true? Humans had no right to claim they fully understood beings like demons or angels. Who knew? Maybe they really did deal with mundane matters like bureaucracy.
The priest struggled to stifle his laughter. Was he really trying to explain to a young boy that Leviathan might not be lurking in the depths of Hell but rather sorting reports on sins? His imagination began to wander: a demon bureaucrat, maybe even a demon minister, with a notebook full of sinners’ names...
“Am I really saying this?” He felt his lips curl into a smile but quickly tried to hide it. “I can’t believe this...”
Engel imagined a mighty Leviathan sitting behind a massive desk, sifting through piles of reports on sinners. Surely, every sin—even something as small as envy over a butterfly—had its own document.
“There’s no way he’d ignore it,” Engel thought. “He’d definitely spare a moment... to devour me!”
“See,” the priest continued with a chuckle, “last week you said—no, cried—that Asmodeus would punish you for... not brushing your teeth?” The sheer absurdity of the statement was almost incomprehensible to him.
Engel furrowed his brow, recalling that day with clear fear.
“But Asmodeus...” he began in a whisper, as if the name alone inspired terror. “You said he’s the demon of impurity, so... since I didn’t brush my teeth...” His voice trembled, and his hands shook slightly at the memory of this “sin.”
“Engel,” the priest laughed softly, “that’s not what impurity means... not at all.”
“Whether it is or not,” Engel raised his voice, “I’m damned!” He refused to believe that demons weren’t waiting in the shadows to devour him for the smallest transgression.
“Look, Engel...” The priest tried to regain composure, though his amusement was evident. “I think the demon of envy has bigger problems than children who want to be butterflies. Do you really think Leviathan, the Demon of Envy, wastes time on butterflies? He probably has an entire list of kings, directors, politicians... whose sins of envy are far more, let’s say, spectacular. Nowthosewould be real challenges for a demon!”
“You don’t understand, Father!” Engel nearly screamed, desperation in his voice. “My sins are different! Maybe it’s just a butterfly, but it’s still envy! And envy is one of the seven deadly sins! Leviathan will eat me! And Asmodeus too, for my teeth! They’re all waiting, hiding in the shadows, just waiting to get me!”
His voice trembled with fear, his eyes filled with unshed tears.
The priest barely held back a loud laugh, though his shoulders shook slightly as he stifled it at the last moment. He knew any open reaction might completely break Engel, who looked more and more convinced with each passing moment that a horde of demons was right around the corner, ready to devour him.
“Demonic bureaucrats... am I really having this conversation?” the priest thought, quickly shifting his expression back to seriousness as he looked at Engel again.
“Engel, really...” he said quietly, now with no trace of humor in his tone. “God forgives us these small mistakes. Demons... well, I think they don’t have you on their priority list.”
“For... sure?” Engel’s eyes sparkled as though his death sentence had just been rescinded.
“For sure,” the priest nodded, convinced that this peculiar conversation had reached its conclusion. The boy seemed to be deeply considering something, as if the fate of his entire world hung in the balance. Silence fell, broken only by the rustling of leaves behind them.
Engel, as always, surprised him.
“Can I send a letter to Leviathan apologizing, so he knows I’m sorry and definitely, absolutely won’t eat me?”
The priest paused, analyzing the absurdity of the statement.
“Do you know his address?” he joked, amused by the confused expression on the boy’s face.
“Address...?” Engel squeaked, as though he had just stumbled upon the most profound truth, flipping his entire understanding of the world upside down. “Demons have addresses like people?!”
“Demons have addresses like people?!” Engel’s voice trembled, his mind racing to imagine these terrifying beings living in houses. Or perhaps not houses as humans knew them—surely their homes must be different, something utterly alien. For a seven-year-old, this idea made far more sense than envisioning normal cottages or skyscrapers in, well, Hell.
His curiosity began to shift toward how beings like demons might live. If they had homes and addresses, surely they also had jobs? The thought was... at least mildly amusing. Engel stared off into space, trying to picture Leviathan behind a giant desk, flipping through an enormous black ledger filled with names of sinners.
And what if Leviathan had his own office, draped in ominous symbols, where he reviewed reports on sins like envy over a butterfly? That would be... terrifyingly normal.
“Maybe,” the priest shrugged. “We don’t know. Honestly, our knowledge about such beings is, let’s say, rather limited.”Yet,he added in his thoughts.
“Why’s that?” Engel asked, his fear slowly giving way to genuine curiosity.
“We don’t have a way to contact or communicate with them. They’re beings... far beyond us. Who knows? Maybe they don’t even speak the way we do, Engel. Worse for us if, you know, they don’t speak Latin, as people tend to assume, but instead in some unknown demonic tongue. Besides, they probably wouldn’t even think of talking to humans. They must have far more important matters to attend to. It’s like if something as small as a butterfly asked a human to reveal their deepest secrets. But maybe, someday—far, far in the future—we’ll get the chance to exchange even a single word with them. Would you... let’s say, like to have that conversation?” The priest glanced at the increasingly bewildered boy.
“Maybe,” he added, “because of your lack of a soul, you could be a candidate for the first-ever conversation between a human and a demon—or an angel.” He meant it as reassurance, but deep down, the thought lingered: what if it wasn’t just encouragement? What if it was prophecy?
“Would they eat me?” Engel blurted, still clinging to his theory that he was a potential target for malicious demons.
“If both sides agreed to a peaceful, you know, non-violent meeting, I see no reason why they’d do that. It wouldn’t make sense for them or bring any benefit,” the priest said calmly, though he couldn’t help but wonder if he was truly right. A strange chill ran through his heart.
This all sounded silly—addresses, apologies, demonic offices—and yet, with Engel, silliness took on a different tone. The priest couldn’t shake the feeling that this boy might one day truly stand before a being greater than anything a human mind could comprehend. Sometimes, the future was more terrifying than the wild imagination of a child.
Engel assumed the most contemplative pose a seven-year-old could muster. In his mind, he pictured himself surrounded by an army of bodyguards—massive, muscular knights in shining armor, encircling him on all sides.
“If I had them, I could talk to Leviathan,” he mused aloud, a faint smile on his lips as if he were already an adult boldly confronting demons.
The priest wondered if his own words—that Engel’s “soullessness” might make him the perfect candidate for the first human-demon conversation—were simply a comforting notion or a foretelling of something inevitable.What if that’s exactly what dooms him?The thought sent a cold shiver down his spine.
Neither of them knew the decision had already been made.
