Volume 7 is a cover for Chloé and Jean–Jacques, the couple at the center of the Beast of Gévaudan incident. Unlike what we learned from Dante and Roland at the beginning of the arc, there never was a beast to begin with. Instead, the beast was a fabrication of the church to hide an illegal vampire hunt. From this event, a series of misfortunes befall Chloé. When the Marquis decides to investigate the deaths, the d’Apchier family is murdered. Things go from bad to worse when the villagers believe that Chloé is the beast killing them. Jean–Jacques, in an effort to protect Chloé, gives Naenia his true name to become the giant wolf monster the villagers want there to be. Chloé, after seeing Jean–Jacques wounded on her behalf and witnessing Jeanne’s unwillingness to kill her, gives into her despair and tries to fall to her death.
While she is falling, however, Naenia tries to get Chloé’s name by convincing her she should take revenge. Chloé agrees with this. But not in the way Naenia intended. Chloé lives to complete the world alteration device and uses it to make Naenia flesh and blood. Her revenge will be on Naenia, who dared warp Jean–Jacques true name.
This cover’s frame is made of punch cards encircling a snowy sky through which shines a shaft of light. Punch cards are a storage medium for digital information and are used to control automatic machinery. In the case of this arc, the machinery in question are self–playing instruments, whether it’s Chloé’s automatons or the world alteration device. In the story we learn that world formula research needs a medium through which to interfere with the world formula, and that the d’Apchiers’ chose sound as that medium.
The sky within the frame is speckled with snowflakes that drift down upon Chloé and Jean-Jacques. Perhaps the light is shining through the broken storm clouds onto the pair, reflecting how they both escape their respective curses by the end. Jean-Jacques is covered in a lot of red. The red eyes are the sign that he’s a vampire, which was revealed at the end of his conversation with Noé. The blood on his face and the red splotches on his coat probably refer to how he is the red-furred beast.
Chloé’s dress has roses on it. So far, we have seen roses appear with characters who tend to be constricted by something in their pasts (Vanitas in volume 1, Jeanne in volume 4, and Domi in volume 8). Chloé was entrapped by the orders her father gave her as a child, and was unable to escape being the d’Apchier’s hidden vampire. With the broken curse, the castle she was caged in was finally destroyed.
