Curse City.
Ruins stretched as far as the eye could see.
Wreckage left by Leviathan's fall littered the landscape. The city that had once stood here had now been almost completely razed.
At that moment, inside a huge, dust-filled crater, Black String Moon stood in a black dress, her eyes narrowed as she manipulated her threads, holding the human boy in the center firmly in place.
On the other side.
Alice, cracks shifting across her body, shielded the trembling Miao Miao behind her, her gaze fixed warily on the human as well.
Or rather, calling him human was no longer entirely accurate.
There in the center, the boy knelt stark naked with his head lowered. His muscles constantly sank and bulged, black energy billowing around him, as though countless evil spirits were shrieking inside his body. Terrifying faces kept emerging across his skin.
"Miao Miao, don't go near him."
Black String Moon's gaze was icy as she issued her warning.
She could clearly sense the countless savage evil spirits that had awakened within the body before them.
That cold, twisted presence sent chills down their spines.
After saying goodbye to Lynn, they had not actually gone into hiding. Instead, they had returned to Curse City, where they happened to sense this twisted presence and discovered the body Lynn had gone to such lengths to rescue from that Plague Doctor.
He was also... Miao Miao's former older brother.
"Do you... still remember me, meow?"
Miao Miao clasped both paws before her chest, staring at the familiar figure from her memories, her eyes trembling with a faint shimmer of tears.
Compared with her mother and father, this son of her adoptive mother and adoptive father had never really interacted with her all that much.
Because in her memories.
Back then, he had