Shadow of Idea (1)

High above Albion, the storm clouds crowning the Tower of Conviction tear open and let daylight spill through. Pepe, Fouquet, and Lucie register the change, and Pepe bolts toward the structure out of worry for Luca before the other two restrain him. Screams then carry over from the shanty district beyond the outer walls, though the trio cannot make out the atrocities unfolding there.

Vengeful spirits have seized the bodies of numerous refugees. Wearing borrowed flesh, they turn the camp into a butchery: parents cut down their children, the mad feast on the sound, shelters blaze, and families are driven into the open. The handful still lucid and unclaimed assume heretics are to blame and run for the Tower.

Guts drags himself upright from a heap of bricks, marooned in the hand-shaped mound the toppled Tower has formed. Distant cries reach him, and once he is fully on his feet he grasps the horror: the burning tents have been kindled in a shape that spreads a Brand of Sacrifice across hundreds of feet of ground. Spirits climb toward him from the Tower's base, and the parallels to the Eclipse settle over him.

Azan steers the Holy Iron Chain Knights clear of the fractured Tower, hauling the wounded to safety while fretting over the missing Farnese. He notices refugees sprinting toward the Tower rather than from it, then sees they are being torn apart by their own kind, a repeat of the carnage in the heretics' cavern. Vast dark hills of starved corpses heave up from the earth and slide forward, only for a falling ball of fire to swallow the foremost mass and scatter the spirits. A second fireball answers the possessed.

The source of the flame is Mozgus, who drops from the sky bearing Isidro and Casca, his twin disciples flanking him. He flings Isidro into the ruined Tower, then hovers above the crowd and swears they will be delivered. Pointing to his own wings as proof of divine favor, he promises another miracle for the faithful, and hoists Casca overhead, announcing that her burning will banish the monsters.

The cloud cover over the Tower of Conviction parts and admits sunlight. Possessed refugees massacre the living throughout the slums. Guts recognizes the fires as a deliberate Brand of Sacrifice and senses the Eclipse repeating. Mozgus arrives by air, hurls fireballs at the spirit masses, and declares his intent to execute Casca at the stake to end the chaos.

This installment opens the three-part Shadow of Idea sequence within the Conviction Arc, first printed in Young Animal issue 13 on June 23, 2000, and running twenty-one pages. It threads together the separated cast, Pepe's group, Guts atop the rubble, Azan's knights, and Mozgus, as the Albion catastrophe reaches its peak and openly mirrors the Eclipse.