Conviction Arc

Preceded by the Golden Age Arc in publication and the Black Swordsman Arc within the story's timeline, the Conviction Arc is the manga's third major stretch, running across 82 episodes and leading into the Millennium Falcon Arc. It carries Guts from an isolated village haunted by false elves to the doomed refugee city of Albion, ending with the incarnation that reshapes the entire series.

In the Lost Children chapter, Guts and Puck free a captive girl named Jill and follow her to a village terrorized by the elf-like raiders of the Misty Valley. When the swarm attacks, Puck reveals that the creatures are actually the district's abducted children, transformed under the apostle Rosine. After Rosine withdraws, the villagers blame Guts for their ruin, so he takes Jill hostage to slip past the walls before setting out to destroy the false elf. He pursues Rosine to the valley, defeats her converted bandit guardians, torches the breeding grounds, and lands a mortal blow using Jill as bait. Just as he moves to finish her, Jill's father Zepek shoots him from alongside the Holy Iron Chain Knights, forcing a retreat.

The Binding Chain chapter sees those knights hunt Guts as the prophesied Falcon of Darkness. Wounded and outmatched by their vice commander Azan, he flees with their young commander Farnese as a hostage, only to be reminded of Casca's violation during the Eclipse when a possessed horse menaces the girl. After Serpico retrieves Farnese, a vision from Guts' demon child warns that Casca is in danger, and he learns she has vanished from Godot's and may be among the plague refugees flocking to Albion.

The Birth Ceremony chapter carries Guts to Albion, where the Skull Knight warns of an impending false Eclipse. He tracks Casca to a cultist den, cuts down the Great Goat pseudo-apostle, and briefly reunites with her after two years apart, though Isidro loses her again to the knights. Guts then destroys the inquisitor Mozgus as a tidal wave of the city's collective anguish sweeps over the refugees.

The swarm of tormented souls engulfs and collapses the Tower of Conviction, and the sudden break of dawn scatters the darkness, granting the living and dead a fleeting salvation. In the calm, Zodd and the Skull Knight draw the survivors' eyes to a distant glow: a reconstituted Griffith, incarnated at last in flesh, whom Zodd carries away moments later. The arc flows directly into the Millennium Falcon Arc. Miura cited the film The Name of the Rose as inspiration and described the arc's structure as following a sekaikei flow. Its total page count reaches 1,715, and the 2016 anime adaptation drops the Lost Children chapter entirely.