A Crescent Moon Shines on the Exile's Back

With the qliphoth gone from the capital, the survivors take stock. Farnese, dagger still in hand, earns Serpico's praise, yet Silat warns that the slaughter claimed key Kushan commanders and left the ranks primed for revolt, a dangerous state should Griffith's killers return. A column of sutra-chanting monks passes with Guts among them. Roderick demands his release, but Silat refuses, noting these are brahmin, holy men whom even the crown approaches with caution. When Isidro loudly insists the Emperor free the swordsman, the ruler simply orders the boy detained, and still Isidro presses to know what awaits Guts.

Granted leave to conduct funeral rites and cremations, Daiba is questioned by the Emperor about the stranger. The general paints Guts as a karma-cursed sinner whose brand draws calamity, pinning the massacre and the preta-like trolls on him. He proposes decapitation, though he cannot predict the man's reaction; the Emperor instead commands that Guts be dragged in chains to the world's edge, and the nobles agree. Privately writing Guts off as useless in war, Silat recalls the man-made beherit and dispatches a tapasa to shadow the pair. Nearby, the gurus keep watch over the near-catatonic Schierke while Ivalera and Molda look on, and Ginnar's request for dinner draws only a flustered rebuff. After dark, Isidro and Puck slip after Daiba's group as it guides Guts into the surrounding forest.

Part of the Eastern Exile Chapter of the Fantasia Arc, the chapter appeared in Young Animal issue 12 on June 13, 2025, over twenty-two pages. In the original text the Kushan nobles call the trolls gaki, or preta, a Buddhist term for spirits condemned to unending hunger and thirst by their former deeds; the creatures' gaunt, maned design echoes that traditional imagery.