The Burial Chamber

Under armed Kushan escort, the brahmins drive Guts through the dark wilds, prodding him onward with blades and chanted sutras. Isidro, now joined by Azan alongside Puck, marvels that the monks can even find their footing in the blackness. Word reaches Silat that the destination is forbidden ground open only to the highest monks. Warned this is his last chance to withdraw, the young master instead springs forward and lands beside Azan's group. Daiba, spotting them, is struck by how doggedly they follow a route none of them can name, the edge of the world the Emperor decreed.

The path ends in a waste of shattered ruins and towering dead trees, some cradling corpses among their roots. At its heart stands a domed structure swallowed by a great withered tree. Daiba names it a stupa, a sacred grave lost to memory, and his incantations peel the roots aside to bare a door that the tapasa wrench open at Silat's command. As the soldiers seize Guts, a rattled Isidro demands to know their intent, while Silat privately sneers at the fate of being walled up to rot. Guts steps within, and when the guards remark on his gait, Daiba corrects them: the man is passing on. Alarmed, Puck darts toward the tomb.

Belonging to the Eastern Exile Chapter of the Fantasia Arc, the chapter appeared in Young Animal issue 13 on June 27, 2025, across twenty-two pages. Its Japanese title points to a genshitsu, a stone dark room that Chinese influence reshaped into a place of burial, while the stupa itself nods to the real relic-housing mounds of Buddhist tradition.