Feast

The massive apostles tear through the armed mercenaries with ease, ripping them apart and devouring them before they can mount any defense. Guts can only watch from atop the giant hand. Void explains that the brand each victim bears means their deaths will feed Griffith as he is reborn into the new Child of Darkness. Guts looks to the clenched fist and, as though through a pane of glass, sees Griffith curled into a ball and slowly coming apart. He plants himself before the image and stabs at it again and again, frantic to cut Griffith free.

His blade does nothing against the faces forming the fist, and the God Hand remark that no human strength can matter now, adding that Griffith chose this fate of his own will. Enraged, Guts strikes once more and shatters his dagger in two. Refusing to believe Griffith would hand them over so willingly, he drops to his knees, then recalls old words of Griffith's that hinted at exactly this. The realization settles in: his sworn family and the woman he loved have all been offered up by the man he trusted most. Apostles begin scaling the arm to hunt him, and fury drives Guts to charge them wielding only his broken blade. Meanwhile, Rickert climbs the hill where the band had camped. Cresting it, he stares in terror at a towering, double-walled, inverted whirlwind churning where the camp should be. He runs toward it, unable to find anyone, until the ring of clashing steel turns his head and he sees two figures locked in combat: Zodd and the Skull Knight.

The apostles massacre the Band of the Falcon as Guts watches, powerless. Guts stabs uselessly at the fist holding Griffith and breaks his dagger. He finally accepts that Griffith deliberately sacrificed the band, then charges the apostles climbing after him. Rickert reaches the camp to find the Eclipse's vortex and witnesses Zodd battling the Skull Knight.

This chapter of the Golden Age Arc appeared in Young Animal issue 10 on May 10, 1996, across twenty-three pages. It introduces Rickert's outside view of the Eclipse and the first clash between Zodd and the Skull Knight during the ritual.