Ravine

On the Skellig cliffs, Guts presses the Skull Knight about his reason for coming, and the knight replies that causality itself steered him there, adding a warning to stay alert since that causality has not yet come together. Their talk breaks off when Gedfring arrives, first hailing the knight as royalty before switching to his current title. Recognizing the mage as the son of a man named Vidd, the knight learns that Gedfring, granted audiences in his youth, now leads a village on the island, his true age irrelevant given how differently time treats the knight.

Gedfring asks the Skull Knight to join them in seeking the dwarf smith Hanarr, who shaped both the Berserker Armor and the knight's own plate, and the knight agrees, wanting his armor mended. Together the three make their way toward the grimmer depths of Skellig.

In Elfhelm, Schierke fumbles at her first broom flight until Molda offers to carry her, and from the air the pair spot Gedfring, the knight, and Guts heading below. Trailing them, they meet Molda's teacher Volvaba, an elder skilled in curses and the handling of dead souls. Learning that Schierke studied under Flora, Volvaba points them onward and reflects that the arrival of Flora's student alongside the Skull Knight suggests the island seers' predictions are being fulfilled.

Reaching the dwarves' stone forest, the sorceresses find the group already speaking with Hanarr, who welcomes the knight as king yet compares his supposed good health to the rattling of a corpse. Struck by the sight of the Berserker Armor once more, Hanarr warns Guts that wearing it long does not equal taming it, then abruptly hammers the plate, triggering it to seize and start devouring him.

Both Volvaba and Hanarr make their first appearances in this chapter. It ran in issue fifteen of Young Animal as part of the Elf Island Chapter of the Fantasia Arc.