It's a brand new place she never knew. Two moons, huge fortress walls, a city covered in iron bars "as if they existed within a cage" (17.8).
Karou thinks she's high up in a tower, and now from way up here, it's crystal clear, that she's in a whole new world... alone. And it's kind of creepy, what with the winged creatures flying around.
Voices travel down the hallway: Brimstone and Twiga. Karou hides, and they don't see her.
She follows them down a long spiral staircase into a cathedral.
Instead of people kneeling in prayer, however, it is filled with stone slabs, and on each one, there's a dead chimaera.
Karou sneaks over to investigate one of them: a muscular white wolf man.
As if this wasn't strange enough, she notices that his palms have the same eye tattoos as hers do.
She holds her hand next to the wolfman's. "His hand […] it was warm. It was not dead. He was not dead" (17.5-17.53).
Before you can say eep, the wolfman wakes up and grabs Karou.