Episode 88: Escape

Trading only a glance with Void, the Skull Knight drives his mount down the enormous arm of the Hand, scattering the apostles who move to block him with whirling strokes of his blade. As he bears toward Femto, Guts, and Casca, the newly reborn demon tests one of his fresh gifts, clenching his fist to trigger a telekinetic pull. An unseen well of crushing gravity forms where the rider stood an instant earlier, wringing the surrounding apostles into a single spinning orb of flesh, but the Skull Knight has already slipped clear.

Sweeping past Griffith, the knight scoops Guts and Casca onto his horse and bolts back up the arm, vanishing through the rift he tore in the sky before Femto can react. The God Hand watch, captivated by the unforeseen turn. Slan likens the disruption to a fish breaking the surface of a river, startling yet unable to alter the current of fate. Griffith's ascension ushers in the coming age of shadow.

Beyond the vast inverted storm, Zodd refastens the limbs he lost fighting the Skull Knight, unaware of Rickert crouched behind a boulder. A bolt of lightning spits the knight and his two passengers out of the Eclipse, and he lands before the horrified boy, who cries out at the ruined bodies of his companions. Dismounting, the Skull Knight lays the unconscious Guts and the unclothed Casca in Rickert's care, insisting their time has not yet come.

Zodd looms up behind the knight, who calmly asks that their duel be deferred. Spotting the living Guts, Zodd laughs at the sheer impossibility of it and agrees, warning them to flee before the storm collapses and looses the apostles trapped within. The Skull Knight gathers the pair once more and, keeping Griffith's guilt to himself, tells Rickert that none of the others survived. When the boy asks to remain with his friends, the knight lifts him by the shirt and carries him along.

This twenty-page installment appeared in Young Animal issue 19 on September 27, 1996, ending the Eclipse proper within the Golden Age Arc. Zodd departs wondering how Guts will endure a world now overrun by demons, a question that frames the story to follow.