Promised Time

A traveling troupe of entertainers takes Rickert in and, at his request, carries him to Midland's border where the rest of the band has stationed itself. Still shattered by his encounter with the monsters and the Skull Knight, he needs the caravan leader's repeated efforts to draw him out of his daze. Before parting from the performers, he receives elf dust that comes from a friendly caravan elf named Puck. Puck stops by the troupe's fortuneteller, who reads an evil omen in Rickert's future, and the others watch him walk off toward the solar eclipse, weighed down by a feeling that something terrible is happening to the mercenaries.

Within the other dimension, the band members scream at surroundings they cannot begin to comprehend. The only break in the spectral sky is filled by the solar eclipse, while the ground consists of colossal faces made up of smaller faces in turn, which the horses trample as they run. Casca seizes command at once, ordering the men to stay calm and form up. Guts carries Griffith back to them and sets him safely on a horse, correctly reasoning that the beherit conjured this place; he sees its rearranged features weeping tears of blood, then notices the same blood leaking from Griffith's own eyes.

The band realizes the strange naked figures who had stood in the river were also drawn into the dimension, now gathered together atop one of the enormous faces that form the landscape. Taking turns to speak, they explain that this is the Eclipse, an event that recurs once every 216 years, and that God's four angels will soon join them. At that moment, one of the giant faces raises itself from the rest, plainly alive. The chapter belongs to the Golden Age Arc and first appeared in Young Animal issue 5.