Cherry Orchard

Waking after her collapse, Casca rests under the care of Schierke, Farnese, and Danan, and admits that anything recalling her past, above all Guts' face and voice, drags the horrors of the Eclipse vividly back before her eyes. Danan lulls her to sleep, then turns the two younger women toward their magical training, presenting Farnese with her own petaled robes as a mark of her arrival as a true mage.

Far away on a cliff overlooking the sea at Skellig, Guts works out his frustration through heavy swings of the Dragon Slayer. Brooding over where he now stands with the healed Casca, he is met by the Skull Knight, who cautions that whatever waits at the close of his journey will be no lovely sight.

Before the assembled sorcerers of Elfhelm, Farnese calls up the Formation of the Four with neither staff nor drawn square, astonishing the youngest onlookers who marvel at three months of growth. Schierke then draws a shadow spirit from a hollow tree without any ritual markings, unnerving the children who cannot even see it. She explains that the group's hard road left no time to carve runes, so she taught herself to work magic through intuition and mental links, sensing and borrowing from whatever spirits stood nearby.

The archmage Gedfring praises their display and urges his students to learn from such practical craft. When Farnese asks to study healing magic for the mind, Danan steps forward to mentor her. Gedfring then invites Schierke to commune with daimons, deep-dwelling guides who were once mortal heroes and mages, Flora among them, and Schierke gladly accepts his teaching.

The chapter followed a gap of roughly eight months since the previous release and ran in the combined ninth and tenth issue of Young Animal. It continues the Elf Island Chapter of the Fantasia Arc.