We’ve departed from the elegant gold frames of the previous volumes with this action-packed cover. The boys are fighting for their lives as they enter the mystery of the Beast of Gévaudan incident.
Vanitas and Noé are back to back with snow flurrying around them. Vanitas is facing the audience, although more accurately he’s facing Astolfo. The shadow of Astolfo’s spear falls upon Vanitas’s body; while Vanitas brandishes his dagger in his left hand he stretches out his right, as if to keep himself between Astolfo and Noé. This is a reference to Vanitas separating Noé from Astolfo in the story, when the former was losing the fight against the latter. Behind Vanitas Noé is facing the Beast of Gévaudan in the picture frame, disturbing its surface with his hand. It’s shimmering like water, a reference to how his memory reading is like diving into a pool of water with memories contained in its depths. In the Gévaudan arc Noé is made to read Jean-Jacques memories and through this discovers the true identity of the monster they’ve been fighting in the present day.
Our protagonists have entered Chloé’s theater of ice and snow, and are witnessing her endlessly repeated performance of being hated by the villagers, the church, and her own family. The frame is made of the cracked stone of the castle she resides in. Behind it is a structure which may be the castle in question. The last remaining details of note are the cut on Noé’s face received from his fight with Astolfo, and the broken chain from when Vanitas lost the book. The meanings in this cover are more straightforward than previous covers. It reflects the straightforward nature of the arc. It is only the epilogue that casts doubt on the significance of these events being as straightforward as they appear.
