Charles

Charles stands apart from most of his kind, showing no craving for human flesh and keeping to himself, withdrawn even from the reality of his own past. Rather than face what happened, he leans on his gift for illusion to raise the burned manor again and to conjure the sister he insists escaped the fire, hoping to slip back into the life he once knew. The clues suggest he surrendered that very sister to gain his demon nature, doing so without grasping what he had offered, which would mark him the first apostle to sacrifice in ignorance; alternatively, he has simply walled the memory away, a reading his fierce denial before Guts appears to support.

In combat Charles relies on illusion above all, throwing up phantom Band of the Falcon soldiers to swamp any intruder instead of confronting them himself. The same power lets him raise a convincing double of his lost mansion and a living likeness of his dead sister. Only when those deceptions crumble does he reveal his true apostle shape and strike in the flesh.

Charles grows up in a noble household beside a younger sister, their days untroubled until a blaze sweeps the house and claims both parents. Injured amid the ruin, he grabs a nearby beherit and hears that a sacrifice will be required of him. Back in the waking world he finds the mansion standing whole again, though he cannot say what he has given up; the voice, taken to be the God Hand, promises the answer will come before long.

Long after, when Guts turns back toward Godot's cottage having freed Casca from Albion, a shout warning him off leads him to a solitary manor deep among the trees. Casca hammers on its doors and Guts follows her in, rousing Charles, who rages at the breach of his solitude and hurls illusions at the swordsman, summoning the Band of the Falcon to war against him. Guts cuts through every phantom and forces him to fight in person, and when Charles protests that his sister was the only one left to him, Guts reads the truth: she was the price. Unable to accept it, Charles takes his apostle form and lunges, only to be cut down.