Determination and Departure

Azan guides the survivors, Jerome, Farnese, Serpico, Nina, Luca, and Isidro, away from the ruins, and it is Luca who first alerts the others that Guts and Casca are no longer with them. Isidro tries to double back for them and has to be wrestled still by Jerome. Their struggle stops when a Kushan host thousands strong, with cavalry and armored elephants, streams past toward Albion, unaware of the group sheltering along a sunken ridge. Everyone but Isidro accepts that the two must be left behind if the rest are to live.

A thunderous beating of wings turns their heads: Zodd has unfurled his wings and lifts off with the bare Griffith seated on his shoulder. None of them recognize the man or grasp his importance, marveling only that someone has apparently mastered the giant beast. Then hooves pound the ground as Guts, having seized a Kushan mount, carves his way free of Albion with Casca held before him. Serpico doubts he can survive the whole army, but Luca insists that where Casca is concerned, Guts far exceeds any ordinary man.

As distance grows between them and the danger, Jerome notes the bitter irony that many who abandoned their devotion outlived the faithful crushed inside the tower, and his own belief begins to crumble. Luca reads it differently, arguing that survival went to those willing to act, not to faith or its absence. She gathers wildflowers, binds their stems, and releases them off a cliff as an offering to the Egg-Shaped Apostle, honoring the suffering of a creature that was never human. Guts, Casca, and Puck have already ridden off, and Isidro too collects his things and departs alone for unknown roads.

Farnese sheds her armor and declares she will follow the Black Swordsman rather than return to the holy city, charging Azan to inform the Holy See and her father that she is quitting the Order; the darkness she carried since childhood had taken shape that night, and only Guts had stood against it. Serpico leaves with her. Nina, meanwhile, reunites with Joachim by a river, and his confession of cowardice lets her finally see herself in him. She chooses to go with him rather than stay with Luca, who quietly accepts the parting.

The chapter scatters the cast down separate paths and lets several of them weigh what the night cost. Azan admits, ashamed, that he lived only because his upright quarterstaff braced the falling rubble, and he grieves that the refugees barred Albion's gate against his knights, dooming most of the order. Overlooking the wreckage, the Skull Knight considers the future and concludes that Griffith's return to the living world will remake the very nature of reality.