The Immortal, Again

The band recoils as the towering Zodd looms over the crawling Wyald, who barely manages a few words before the horned beast impales him and hoists him high into the air, his grip on Griffith never loosening. Drawn close to Zodd's face, Griffith locks eyes with him while the fading Wyald asks whether Zodd acts on the God Hand's orders and recites the single rule handed down to apostles, to do as one wills. Gesturing toward Griffith, Wyald insists the God Hand would not mind whether the leader lives or dies, even branding him the "fifth one," a phrase that mystifies everyone present except Zodd.

Zodd replies that Wyald will die regardless, whether from his wounds or by Zodd's own hand, then grips both ends of the ruined body and wrenches it downward until the stomach splits open and life leaves it. Griffith plunges from a great height but Guts snatches him from the air before the corpse slides off the horns and drops to the ground. Zodd surveys the mercenaries and tells Griffith that the beherit will find its way back into his grasp because that is simply the way of things, then spreads his wings and flies off. When Guts shouts up to ask whether the Eclipse and inescapable death Zodd once foretold have arrived as Wyald's assault, the beast refuses to answer, saying only that everything will soon be revealed.

A mercenary directs Casca's attention to Wyald's body, out of which a squirming, tentacled mass of deformed people spills, seizing the limbs and dragging them back inward. Guts realizes the giant is imploding, folding in on itself as the tentacles haul it together, and he watches the vortex Wyald had feared swallow the entire form into a single point in a flash of light. Once the steam clears, all that remains is the man Wyald had been before his transformation: a small, frail old man with Guts' sword still in his neck and his intestines spilling out from Zodd's attack. The chapter belongs to the Golden Age Arc and first ran in Young Animal issue 23.