Nightmare Fuel / The Ancient Magus' Bride

Main Series

"Friendly neighbors" indeed...

• Chapter 1: When Aerial first beckons Chise to come to the land of fae, there is a very sinister shot of all of the fairies, complete with Glowing Eyes of Doom and The Darkness Gazes Back. As Chise uses her willpower to resist, she's gripping her arm so tightly that her nails are cutting into her skin.
  • Making things worse is that around this point, several human-like beings sprout from the ground and hold Chise in place.
  • Even before then, there were sinister vibes coming from Aerial as she asks Chise personal questions about her home and family. Showing a Psychotic Smirk after Chise answers that she wasn't loved doesn't help matters.
  • There are some glimpses to Chise's past, set soon after her mother died. A disembodied arm is shown trying to draw little Chise to it, while her unaware relatives are shown discussing about what a burden she is, and calling her a freak.
• Chapter 3: For a brief moment, it looked like Paulina (the dragon Lindel was riding) was about to take a huge bite out of Chise's body.
• Chapter 4: Molly tells Chise about the man who once spent his days ruthlessly slaughtering the cats of Ulthar. A panel is shown of said man looking upon several corpses of cats, all hanged, and some of which are mutilated.
  • The man's own fate may have been more deserved, but it was no less gruesome. The first King of Cats lead the surviving cats to attack the man. They successfully killed him, and then proceeded to devour every last bit of him, after which the King of Cats sacrificed several of his lives to bound the man's soul to an island in the middle of a lake. Now, hundreds of years later, his soul is trying to escape, which is why the cats needed help from Elias and Chise.
• Chapter 6: As Renfred and Alice are holding Aerial and Chise hostage, Renfred tells Chise the truth about what being a Slay Vega entails. She is destined to die young, because her body is constantly absorbing and producing magical energy, but it will eventually buckle under the strain and break down.
  • He also claims that Elias only sees her as an experiment to satisfy his curiosity. He wasn't entirely wrong, at least at the time.
  • Its revealed that Joseph was the one who convinced Matthew to slaughter the cats, as it was the only way to create a cure to save Mina, who would otherwise die in a few short years. Eventually, Mina walks into Matthew while he was "working", and discovers a nightmarish scene: a candle-lit cottage littered with cat corpses, some impaled in hooks coming from the ceiling, some stabbed with stakes on the ground. There were barrels and buckets full of cat guts, and in the middle of it all stood Matthew, Mina's own husband, with an unnerving smile on his face.
• Chapter 7: As Mina confronts Matthew about what he has done, he calmly explains that he used the cats as ingredients, and when she claims he wouldn't so such a thing, Matthew gets her face closer until their noses meet, and claims that for her, he would do anything. Mina realizes he is not himself anymore, which Joseph seemingly confirms when he enters the room, and implies he did something to make Matthew more susceptible to suggestion.
  • Joseph also makes Mina unable to move, then holds her mouth open so Matthew can force her to drink the elixir he created using the cats. Mina writhes in pain on the ground, with Matthew trying to reassure her that she will be healthy soon. However, the elixir eventually causes Mina to lose her form and melt, right in Matthew's arms. As Mina is left as a stain on the floor Joseph just leaves, mildly disappointed that his experiment didn't work, while Matthew experiences a Freak Out.
  • Matthew then convinces himself that he only needs to gather more cat lives and everything will be fine, so he goes out and finds Tim, his and Mina's cat. He picks up his axe in order to kill him, but Tim jumps and bites his throat. As Matthew lies dying, while being surrounded by the other cats, he can only think of how lonely he is without Mina.
• Chapter 9: When they reach the church, Elias and Chise are greeted by the sight of a crime scene, centered around a dead, mutilated woman whose arm is not covered by the blanket the police threw over her. Chise can't help but be reminded of her mother, and makes an effort to look away from it.
  • The creature that chases Chise while she's exploring the cemetery and who would clearly have killed her if it wasn't for Ulysses' intervention.
• Chapter 10: Alice explaining how Cartaphilus is the one forcing them to collect parts for his experiments, and describing him as being blurry somehow, as if there were many things in the same space as him.
  • Fans of Fullmetal Alchemist very likely had mental alarms going off at Alice's mention of chimeras; and sure enough, by the end of the chapter Cartaphilus appears with his praying mantis/human woman chimera, which had been glimpsed when he was threatening Renfred the previous chapter. He attempts to kill Alice before anyone realizes he is there, but Chise pushes her out of the way and gets stabbed herself. As Cartaphilus dismisses it as no big deal, thorns start sprouting from Elias' body...
• Chapter 11: Elias transforms into a clawed, horned, tailed monster, loses his self-control and starts savagely attacking Cartaphilus and his chimera, gruesomely crushing the neck of the latter with his jaws. But then he presses Cartaphilus' Berserk Button, causing Cartaphilus to morph his own arm into a monstrous, clawed appendage.
  • Isabelle's death. She is hit by a carriage as she was running away from some ruffians. We don't even get to see it happen, we only see Chise's reaction to the scene.
  • Cartaphilus is just full of this, really. His reaction to being shot in the head is to get up a moment later and sprout tentacles from the damaged area to fix it.
  • He is then joined by another one of his chimeras, this one created with Ruth's former master Isabelle. This one is no less horrifying than the last one. It has a giant spider's thorax, but instead of legs it has human arms stitched together (including Renfred's), and it has a human torso made from the body parts of several corpses, with Isabelle's head stitched to it.
• Chapter 12: Cartaphilus's chimera has a seriously disturbing case of Vagina Dentata.
• Chapter 13: The direct aftermath of Chise's mother's suicide. We see little Chise silently looking at an open, empty balcony, from which her mother just threw herself from. On her neck, there are choking marks, from her mother's attempt to strangle her just beforehand.
  • The transformations from the incident with Cartaphilus took their toll on Elias' body, who has spent the last few days in a monstrous form, incapable of turning back to normal. Near the end of the chapter, he traps Chise inside his room, and makes her spend the night sleeping in his bed with him. It would be much worse if it wasn't shown that Chise really has no problem with it, and that Ruth and Silver Lady were just outside in case something bad happened.
• Chapter 14: The chapter opens with Elias looming over a sleeping Chise while drooling. He then opens his jaws and appears to be about to bite Chise's face off. The slumbering Chise, meanwhile, has a nightmare from the time her mother tried to strangle her, while telling her that she should never have been born.
• Chapter 16: Some of Elias' darker tendencies regarding Chise start showing. Namely, his possessiveness, and desire to keep her all to himself.
  • Elias's past is as mysterious as it is unnerving: Lindel found him in a forest, where his earliest memory was just walking. Since they had no idea what he was, Lindel took him to Rahab, his master, and even she had no idea. When asked, he tells them that all he remembered before walking was one thing: red.
  • A mob chased Lindel after a little girl was able to see Elias. After one managed to hit Lindel and seriously injure him with a rock, Elias emerges from his shadow and attacks the mob with his thorns. Lindel is forced to use a teleportation spell before a massacre could take place.
    • To be fair to the little girl, Elias' silhouette in Lindel's shadow looked absolutely terrifying.
  • Elias' confession at the end of the chapter: he is pretty sure that he has eaten people in the past.
    • Notice that during their first meeting, Elias can't stop looking at Lindel's neck.
• Chapter 17: Several of the creatures young Chise saw in Japan were positively nightmarish.
• Chapter 19: The black, slimy thing with way too many eyes, staring at Chise and her family from an alley.
  • The snow fly that saps away Chise's body heat, and then graphically lays an egg.
  • Elias attempting to erase Chise's memories of him almost eating her in her sleep.
  • The chilling implication that Elias killed the messenger bird and buried it in the garden, all to prevent Chise from getting any ideas that might draw her away from him. Its clearer in the anime, where Elias is shown standing over the dead bird, and Silky is seen picking it up. Its later clarified that the bird was already dead, and the alchemists were just controlling its corpse, but still.
• Chapter 20: The goat person that visited was disturbing enough, but when Chise looks at him through the hole of her adder stone, she sees a black mass with multiple eyes, which somehow reaches one hand through the stone, despite being several feet of distance away.
  • Ashen Eyes, one of the best examples of The Fair Folk in a series full of them, appears and transforms Chise into a fox with a cursed pelt. Chise gets a glimpse of his three eyes and Slasher Smile while he is doing it, thanks to the aforementioned stone.
• Chapter 21: As Elias so callously points out, it is a leanan sídhe's nature to drain away the life of the men they love, even if they don't mean to. Now, after years of staying with him, Joel is on the brink of death, and even Redcurrant leaving won't save him.
• Chapter 22: While a heartwarming moment for the most part, there is something disturbing about seeing Joel turn to dust when he offers Redcurrant his remaining life.
  • Chise's ring breaks, and she suddenly starts vomiting blood.
• Chapter 23: After overexerting her body while body while creating the faerie salve, Chise's body starts literally breaking down.
  • Shannon suddenly attempting to drown/strangle Chise in the lake in the Anthill. Chise even starts going limp, and imagining her mother in Shannon's place. Thankfully, it was a Secret Test of Character on Shannon's part.
• Chapter 25: The Winter Goddess and the Deer From Beyond. They had been built from the beginning of the chapter as gods who hold power over death and winter, with their heralds warning everyone of their coming and Elias noting how terrifying they are. When they finally appear, they don't disappoint. The Deer is a huge centaur with the lower body of a deer, a muscular upper body, and antlers on his head. Not only is it taller than Elias, but it wears what appears to be a deer mask. The Black Goddess meanwhile, looks more human, but is clearly not. She is huge, has very long hair and is heavily pregnant. Neither of them utter a single word.
  • Elias' first reaction when they are approaching is to take Chise and hide, hoping they don't see them.
• Chapter 26: A drug dealer from Alice's past comes across her and Chise hanging out. He tries to give her some drugs and is uncomfortably pushy about it.
• Chapter 27: Whatever the heck comes out of Renfred’s book in Alice’s flashback. Imagine you just open up a random book, only for a monster with a giant eyeball, two mouths and sharp claws to jump out and attack you.
  • Its not really focused on much, but Chise clearly wasn't comfortable with Elias casually confessing that he had been spying on her all day.
• Chapter 28: Stella's younger brother, Ethan, just disappears without leaving a trace after a fight with Stella, and for some reason everyone seems to have forgotten about him, except for Stella herself.
  • When Stella asks for Chise's help in finding her brother, Elias takes temporary control of Chise's body to demand payment for their services. The anime adds even more creepiness to the scene. Chise's face goes blank, her voice drops, her intonation goes flat, her eyes turn silver, and prehensile inky black shadows creep up her neck. Fortunately, he settles for sweets almost immediately.
  • When Elias tries to use a Tracking Spell to locate Ethan, the branch he is using catches fire and burns, because a powerful being was blocking it.
  • While looking for Ethan through the forest, Chise runs out of crystal flowers to pay the neighbors with for their help. That's when a Horned Humanoid, with Creepily Long Arms, very lengthy hair, fangs and a giant centipede wrapped around it appears, and asks for some blood. Chise uncovers her arm, instructs the creature to take "no more than half a teacup's worth," and allows it to chomp its gnarled teeth directly into her arm to drain her blood. It's even worse for Stella, who can't even see what Chise is talking to or why she spontaneously starts gushing blood.
    • Elias laps up the leftover blood on her arm with his long tongue, not unlike the time he did something similar in Ulthar, a chilling reminder of his inhuman nature.
• Chapter 29: The entire premise, as unfurled by Ashen Eyes, who's behind the day's events: a little girl, in a fit of frustration, snaps at her younger brother for a trivial slight and tells him that she doesn't need him. A fae nearby takes her at her word and abducts the brother for his own amusement, causing him to slowly be Ret-Gone from even his family's memories.
  • Stella starting to slowly forget her brother is particularly disturbing, specially as she loses the ability to even hear his name.
  • Ashen Eyes warns everyone that there are things hidden in the shadows of the world watching them.
• Chapter 30: In a fit of jealousy, Elias traps Chise inside himself, and restricts her movements with his tentacles. He absolutely refuses to let her out, even as she attempts to reason with him.
  • Ashen Eyes tells Cartaphilus about Stella. Cartaphilus walks by her and her family, and then uses one of his tentacles to prick her. Its later revealed that he injected her with something that lets him take control of her body.
• Chapter 31: Chise realizes how dire her situation truly is, and starts panicking once she becomes unable to see anything around her. She even starts fearing that Elias might eat her whole.
  • Poachers capture two dragon whelps, restraining their every movement and using tranquilizer guns on them. However, before they are taken away, Lindel stabs one In the Back. As the one he stabbed evaporates, Lindel addresses the other poachers, calling them out for their foolishness as he is joined by a dragon and Merituuli showing his Game Face.
  • But before he can do anything else, tentacles sprout from the necks of the poachers and cover their faces. Cartaphilus takes over their bodies and mocks Lindel, before teleporting them, and the dragons, away.
  • A small flashback panel shows Renfred on the ground with a distraught Alice beside him, while Cartaphilus holds Renfred's severed arm.
• Chapter 33: The chapter opens with Joseph walking by the corpses of the poachers, as a substance drips from his bandaged new arm. Realizing that it is rotting, Joseph disconnects it from his body, causing the arm to fall to the ground and decompose into some sort of fleshy sludge. Realizing that Renfred's magic bullets are responsible for this suffering, Joseph can only complain about the immense pain he is going through.
  • Chise finds herself inside Joseph's Dream Land, where she runs into an amnesic, hurting Joseph. As they talk, Joseph starts letting out Tears of Blood, and shows increasingly erratic behavior, specially as he tries to remember his past, and even more when Chise keeps calling him Cartaphilus.
    • As he attempts to recall his past, he remembers digging, and digging and digging and digging... until he eventually found someone down there, someone who didn't look too different from a decomposing corpse: the original Cartaphilus.
• Chapter 35: The dragon whelp remembers its friend being hacked into pieces by Cartaphilus (its later revealed that he only took one limb, and the dragon is still alive), preventing it from ever returning to the earth. The dragon whelp fears the same fate will soon befall it, so it absorbs the magic of its surroundings to transform into a fully grown dragon. As if that wasn't enough, it gains fire breath and starts rampaging, eventually making its way outside and into London's skyline, forcing Chise to discard her bracelet and absorb the dragon's power into herself.
  • The aftermath of Chise's actions also count. As Elias and co. reach her, Ruth is pulling Chise out of the water, along with this.
• Chapter 36: While they managed to get Chise's arm back to an almost proportional size, its still a huge scaly arm, which has to be heavily bandaged and constricted in order to keep it manageable.
  • It's soon clarified to be the result of a dragon's curse, which not only morphed her arm into a a grotesque claw, but also cut into her already meager life expectancy as a sleigh beggy to less than a year.
• Chapter 37: Cartaphilus is visited by what seems to be an apparition of himself, who claims he wants to save him.
  • The dragon's curse in Chise's arm is so powerful that it initially repels Mariel's touch, and when Mariel manages to properly examine it with a spell, plants seem to form around the arm with her magic, but soon enough inhuman eyes start sprouting from them too. Mariel lampshades how terrifying that was.
  • Its revealed that Cartaphilus can now take over Stella's body at will, and is using her to spy on Chise and Elias. This leads to him finding out about Chise's curse, and wondering if he might be able to make use of it himself.
• Chapter 38: There is a rather creepy atmosphere when Chise, Elias and Ruth enter a different layer of reality, and a desolate forest at that, to meet the witches, who are dressed in black with veils covering their faces and sitting around a table in front of a huge tree. It's subverted soon enough when it turns out they are all good-natured and personable though.
• Chapter 39: Elias runs into Stella, the very person he intends to transfer Chise's curse to. The way he is shown as a dark silhouette as he looms over her serves to drive the point home.
• Chapter 40: The chapter really serves to show the darker aspects of Elias. His relationship with Chise is sweet enough that it can be easy to forget that he's a Humanoid Abomination that doesn't think like a human, and initially only bought her as a curiosity. His Becoming the Mask sometimes creates even more problems, because as Elias gets wracked by emotions he had never felt before, doesn't understand and has no idea how to deal with, he can lash out in unpredictable ways. Even Chise is not always entirely safe from him.
  • Elias forcefully tries to make Chise fall sleep, but his attempt leaves Chise seeing distorted shapes and struggling to stay awake.
  • While thankfully not carried out, the Candlelit Ritual Elias was about to perform on Stella involved several knives.
  • Cartaphilus revealing his possession of Stella's body, all the while calling Elias a hypocrite for calling him a monster, when his own actions aren't much better.
  • As if trying to sacrifice someone in order to save her wasn't bad enough, Chise is even more horrified when Elias confesses that the reason he chose Stella was because he was jealous.
  • To force Chise to come to his lair, Cartaphilus has tentacles gruesomely sprout from Stella's neck, with the clear intention of killing her if Chise refuses.
  • One of the arguments Cartaphilus uses to make Chise come to him is the very real possibility that Elias will erase her memories for real this time.
• Chapter 41: Chise is Alone with the Psycho in his own lair. She is at his mercy when he decides to exchange eyes with her. We see Cartaphilus casually taking out his own eye, before pining Chise under him and putting his hand over her eye. We don't see what happens next, but both had the other's left eye in their eye socket after that.
  • And before that, as Cartaphilus is caressing her face with a bandaged arm (the limb he stole from the dragon, incidentally), said arm melts into sludge and falls to the floor.
• Chapter 42: The cat-like figure staring into the Hatoris' apartment. The sight of it is what causes Yuuki to pack up and leave, for some reason.
  • The creatures that start harassing Chika and Chise after Yuuki leaves are the stuff of nightmares, specially the one that tries to eat Chise in the middle of the night.
  • Chika starts having some very dark thoughts regarding Chise after something plants the idea into her mind to get rid of her. Soon she snaps, and attempts to strangle her own daughter, while cursing the fact that she was born.
  • Fortunately she comes to her senses, but she has a massive My God, What Have I Done? moment, and decides to kill herself right there and then, right in front of Chise. One moment she is standing right there in the balcony, the other she wasn't.
• Chapter 43: A Living Memory of her mother tries to strangle Chise, while throwing words of abuse at her.
  • The glimpses of Cartaphilus' body when not covered under the bandages show just how damaged and rotten it is.
  • Due to the state of his body, Cartaphilus is Forced to Watch as some villagers break into Joseph's home and beat him bloody.
• Chapter 44: Joseph/Cartaphilus is a very messed up individual, but its obvious he didn't get that way for no reason. It's made abundantly clear his endless life has been a curse for him, not a blessing. His body is constantly falling apart and the process apparently causes him immense pain. His limbs occasionally just fall off and turn into a wretched purple sludge. In at least one close-up, you can see an exposed bone in his rotting finger, and that's probably only the early stages of the deterioration. At the same time, he is immortal, so it's entirely possible that if he were to fall apart completely, that would not end his suffering, but just leave him an inert, yet fully conscious pile of sludge. Forever. Catching a glimpse of his past is enough to make Chise throw up.
  • Joseph murders the first person to show him kindness after he fused with Cartaphilus, and takes her limbs.
  • The chimeras Cartaphilus releases just look plain wrong.
• Chapter 45: Chise's arm just keeps mutating further while fighting Cartaphilus and Ashen Eyes, gaining size and scales.
  • When Elias uses Aerial's power, he transforms into a huge creature reminiscing of a thistle, with countless arms protruding from both sides of his body.
  • Joseph pierces Chise's stomach with his arm, and Ruth rips Chise's eye from his eye socket.
• Chapter 46: Joseph telling Chise can no longer escape from her curse, while blood drips from his eyeless eye socket.
• Chapter 47: Elias casually mentioning that he doesn't think he needs to kill Renfred. Adolf is appropriately unnerved.
• Chapter 48: We see exactly why experienced mages adamantly insist on never pushing anything when it comes to a fairy's whims, as a cute little salamander being pestered and insulted by May over refusing him suddenly gains a blood-red eye with a dark spiky pupil, grows bigger than the student, and tries to scorch him to cinders, with it only by Elias intervening in his true form that it wasn't a deadly disaster.
• Chapter 50: The sudden appearance of a Mysterious Mist, which causes Ruth and Chise to disappear, and leaves Stella alone with Ashen Eyes.
• Chapter 51: The creature that the auditor unleashes from his bamboo container: a fox-like spirit with an Eyeless Face and jagged teeth.
  • Gabriella is more Creepy Awesome, but can be rather scary at times, as she enjoys drinking blood and her face is occasionally covered in shadows.
  • Simon's jinx. All of Simon's family die in gruesome ways because they ate his sweets. When Simon loses his girlfriend thanks to the jinx, he tries to slit his own throat right in front of his girlfriend's grave.
• Chapter 52: Ashen Eyes turning into some sort of Scorpion People as he decides to make a contract with Stella.
  • There is something disturbing about the treatment the auditor receives this chapter. His recent memories are erased by Elias, and Simon decides to send him to his boss to reeducate him and turn him over to their side, after being put on a trance by Gabriella so he can't object. That's right, Simon sent the auditor, a kid, to be subjected to Brainwashing for the Greater Good.
• Chapter 53: The "back paths" that Hazel shows Chise and Elias are guarded by sentinels. These hunting hounds, as Hazel calls them, are vaguely dog-like creatures with Absurdly Sharp Claws; overly long, prehensile tongues; spines sprouting from their backs, and ranging from having an Eyeless Face, to having just one eye, to having Extra Eyes. To all who would enter their realm without a proper offering, or who would break anything in it, they would chase to the ends of the Earth.
  • At one point, Chise's left eye (the one that used to be Cartaphilus') appears to change back to its original coloration, and Chise somehow gains the ability to understand what the hunting hounds are saying. She even ends up unintentionally speaking aloud what they are saying, much to her own shock.
• Chapter 54: After Lucy takes away Zoey's earmuffs, he starts freaking out, and his hair turns into snakes.
• Chapter 55: Gorgons are often hunted down so their body parts, specially their eyes, can be used for alchemy. Zoey later confirms that in the past, human hunters have gone to his village for that exact purpose.
• Chapter 56: Alice witnessing Renfred losing his arm right in front of her...
• Chapter 57: The former is elaborated upon, and the details of how Renfred lost his arm are finally revealed:
  • Cartaphilus showed up in their doorstep one night, telling Renfred that he is gonna be helping him with something. As Renfred attempts to decline, Cartaphilus summons his mantis-like chimera and attacks Alice. Renfred pushes her out of the way, but the attack instead severs his arm right off.
  • As Renfred lies bleeding out on his knees, a raging Alice attempts to cut Cartaphilus' neck, but he is protected by his chimera, which knocks Alice against a wall.
  • Cartaphilus then takes Renfred's arm, and uses Alice's own knife to take some of his hair and reopen his scars. As the blood runs down Renfred's face, Cartaphilus gets close, and promises to return his arm once they are done.
• Chapter 59: When Philomela returns home, she is greeted by a couple of creepy hooded sentinels, which tell Philomela her grandmother is waiting for her.
  • Then there is Philomela's grandmother. An old lady with Black Eyes of Crazy, she initially doesn't seem so bad, wondering about Philomela's health and telling her she meant to send her a gift, but as soon as Philomela "dares" to raise her head without permission, she smacks her face with her staff]]. That, coupled with her cousins disparaging her as soon as she appeared, indicate that Philomela's upbringing wasn't exactly the best.
  • The décor of the manor should also be mentioned. The walls are covered by framed spiders and butterflies used as decoration.
  • Whoopi's experiments resulted in his current appearance. His flesh dissolved and his body became entirely liquid. He is now a Blob Monster incapable of interacting with normal people again.
• Chapter 60: Ashen Eyes' words about Scotland being home to dark and terrifying creatures are fittingly accompanied by a panel showing dark, nondescript beings.
  • The each-uisge's appearance is rather disturbing. At a single glance it is merely a horse, but upon a closer look it becomes clear that it is standing on water, that its mouth is filled with jagged teeth, and that its cheeks are also closed jaws themselves.
  • The book, which seemed to have been used to drain the life of a garden of flowers last chapter, is used again, this time on Lucy. When Chise finds her she is at death's door, with most of her Life Energy having being drained away.
  • The chapter ends with the appearance of a giant centaur-like Cyclops looking down on Chise.
• Chapter 61: The monster from last chapter is revealed not to be a centaur, but rather a nuckelavee. Something much, much worse.
  • This particular nuckelavee is a one-eyed centaur-like monster, with Prehensile Hair, Creepily Long Arms, capable of producing poisonous mist, and utterly determined to kill Chise, and anyone else in the way.
  • When the each-uisge causes both Chise and the nuckelavee to fall into fresh water, which is lethal for the nuckelavee, the later drags Chise down with him, fully intending to taking her down with him.
  • Its at this point that some sort of entity, apparently created from the curses inside Chise, whispers into her ear while inside her mind, telling her that scary things should be destroyed. This causes Chise's arm to once again warp into a huge thing of scales and claws, which she then uses to tear the nuckelavee apart. Chise can barely comprehend what happened afterwards.
• Chapter 62: Not knowing anyone else that could provide advice about the topic, Chise consults Cartaphilus about the curses and the voice she heard. While he can't give her a clear answer, he tells her that, whatever it was, it came from inside her. As Chise is leaving, he thinks to himself about the things Chise has gone through, and about her Gaining the Will to Kill. He finds dark amusement in the fact the she can never return to innocence now.
  • Chise ends up accidentally entering Lucy's dream, where she sees a young Lucy kneeling in front of her dead family, with blood and body parts everywhere. She is then grabbed by the arm by another Lucy, one begging for their spiders to be returned.
• Chapter 63: The Testament of Carnamagos, the book Elias read back in Chapter 39, is revealed to be a Tome of Eldritch Lore, full with information regarding the stealing of life force from people, bringing the people Back from the Dead, and the creation of immortals. The copy the College had in store has been stolen, and it was the book used to steal Lucy's energy before, and is used again on Simeon near the end.
  • Seth's bodyguard is attacked by a wolfman, who covers his mouth to prevent screaming, and runs his hand through his back. He is then thrown off a bridge, while the wolfman and his partner wait for Seth to return.
• Chapter 64: Seth, Ruth and Chise are all injured by the wolfmen's Absurdly Sharp Claws. When Chise realizes that the wolfmen are not taking pleasure in what they are doing, and are just trying to kill them to get it over with, she pictures herself about to be killed by one.
  • The entity that whispered to Chise's ear appears once again, and while last time its hand was a grotesque combination of teeth, scales and eyes, this time it just looks discolored and with black nails, and doesn't seem to match the face of the entity.
  • As Chise and Co. enter the Extra-Dimensional Shortcut, the eyes of the hunting hounds are seen looking at them from the darkness.

Those Awaiting a Star

• Part 1:
  • The black slimey...thing with teeth that is implied to consistently show up and eat Chise's food when she was a kid, and it would do so at daylight.

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