Episode 91: Vow of Retaliation

Guts places the Skull Knight as the stranger he met once before, on the night he first walked away from the band. When the grass stirs behind him, the knight throws him an ornate, spike-hilted blade, and though its grip cuts into his hand, Guts turns it on the shapes rising from the field. The Skull Knight names them the dead, spirits lured by Guts' Brand and hungry for a living body to inhabit.

The specters latch onto Guts' ankles and pour into him, but he expels them through raw will, swinging the sword while his stumped left arm mirrors the motion out of habit. The Skull Knight warns him to stay sharp, since such creatures will hound him for the rest of his days, visible to him alone because the Brand seats him in the Interstice between the living and the dead.

Cutting the last of the spirits down, Guts shouts over the knight's talk of destiny and sacrifice, framing his new life as simple war, a fight to be the last one standing. He declares war on the apostles who slaughtered his friends, on the God Hand who command them, and on Griffith. Remembering that Casca also walks the Interstice, he turns toward the knight, who pulls him up onto his massive horse and rides in her direction.

Printed in Young Animal issue 22 on November 8, 1996, this twenty-page Golden Age Arc chapter crystallizes Guts' lifelong vendetta and his acceptance of a one-armed, sword-bound existence stalked by the dead.