Winter Journey (2)

Another night finds Guts battling malicious spirits while Casca and Puck shelter in a gap between two boulders. The elf notices dawn drawing near and senses that Guts is swinging with unusual rage, his mind clearly fixed on the dream in which the Beast of Darkness tore out Casca's throat. He has told no one. Distracted by a scurrying rat, Casca wanders from cover, and Puck's shout sends Guts racing to intercept the spirits streaming toward her. Unable to cut them all, he takes the last of their blows on his own body.

The contact possesses him at once. After a heartbeat of resistance he yields to the Beast, its pull sharpened by the surrounding spirits, and lays his hand on Casca's throat. He squeezes, staring down as he chokes the life from the woman he loves, while Puck watches on in helpless terror. At the final moment Guts reclaims himself through sheer will, banishing the influence and hurling the spirits into the morning light, where they vanish. He drops to his knees, then remembers Casca lying breathless beside him and holds her until she coughs back to life.

The first thing Casca sees on waking is Guts, and she screams and scrambles away from him. She bolts, he catches her arm, and she fights free, so he settles for letting her walk ahead while never losing sight of her. Puck mourns that the trust she had slowly built is now shattered but refuses to blame Guts, insisting the possession was not his doing. Guts is unconvinced, staring at his hand and thinking of the Beast that had been pushing him toward this all along.

Realizing he cannot let her stray so far once dusk returns, Guts binds her wrists with a length of rope and leads her like a tether, a method neither he nor Puck likes but both accept as the safest. That night he camps beneath a small bridge and, worn out, begins to doze on watch. Casca reaches for the dagger still strapped to him, and his reflexes send her sprawling with a slight wound. Her hostility hardens, and the closeness they once shared is gone even as she stays within arm's reach.

Chapter 188 closes the Winter Journey pair within the Millennium Falcon Arc across nineteen pages, published in Young Animal issue 19 on September 28, 2001. It marks the turning point where Casca's hard-won trust in Guts is destroyed, reframing their journey as one of resentment rather than reunion.