The scene was filled with indistinct phantoms, the whole world shifting amid tangled lines into something profoundly unreal.
And that scene was clearly the beginning of all Miss Doll's memories, the starting point of the new life she had begun after falling into Hell, the very beginning of everything.
On the shattered sea cliffs, Lynn stared blankly at the girl staggering alone out of the waves along the shore.
Black Mist churned eternally.
It also proved that this was Hell at some moment in the past.
Rain struck her broken cheeks, dripping from her chin onto the muddy shore. She raised her head, staggering as she gazed toward the distant edge of the continent. And the moment she stepped onto that gloomy land, this pitch-black Hell placed a curse upon her.
Black threads rose from beneath the ground, slowly climbing her legs and spreading over her body.
Thunder rumbled, as though the sky were weeping.
"This is the Doll Curse. It curses every suffering soul compatible with it. Once you put on these shackles, you will never be able to return to a body of flesh and blood. You will live forever as a puppet, but in exchange, you will also forget those painful memories forever..."
On the shore beneath the relentless rain.
She lifted her head and saw several figures on the cliff, as though they had been waiting there for her long before she arrived. Beneath a black raincoat, a pair of wooden puppet hands pulled back a hood, revealing lifelike eyes that were utterly inhuman.
The figure looked at her and said:
"And in a sense, this should count as the most merciful curse in Hell. Welcome to Doll Manor, child."
"The Female Host sent me here to wait for you."
There, on that windswept shore, she