Jill

Draped in Guts' borrowed cape after her dress was slashed open, Jill guides him and Puck into her home village, a listless place that feels all but abandoned as its people peer out from behind shut doors. She slips away to peek into one house, and her tearful mother steps out, having fretted through the night unaware her daughter had been seized by bandits. The commotion draws out Zepek, Jill's father, drunk and clutching a bottle while wearing an old soldier's helmet he had donned to reminisce with fellow veterans of the Hundred-Year War.

When Jill mocks the helmet and later snaps that he should stop clinging to the past, Zepek cracks his cane across her face, the same cane he leans on because of a wartime leg wound. He knocks her mother aside and beats the fallen girl in a rage while the onlookers do nothing.

A flung chestnut shell strikes Zepek's brow, and Guts reveals the true culprit: Puck. Panic spreads at the elf's presence, and villagers pour out armed with farm tools, demanding the creature be surrendered. Guts trips a charging assailant, an old woman, and the crowd reads it as an attack. He hoists the Dragon Slayer overhead to freeze them, but Puck begs him to spare the mob.

Instead of killing, Guts smashes a cart of water barrels, sprints past the stunned crowd, vaults the perimeter wall, and disappears. Jill catches up along the rampart, apologizes for the ambush, and points them toward a derelict windmill where they can shelter. She offers to bring food, but Guts tells her to wait until daybreak, saying nothing of the spirits that hunt him after dark.

That night Jill watches her mother be beaten again, then barricades her own door against a leering war buddy who tries to force his way in. She huddles in Guts' cloak until his footsteps retreat. At dawn she carries the cloak and food to the windmill, glimpsing spirits burn away in the morning light. Finding Guts asleep, she heeds Puck's whisper to leave him be, drapes the cloak over his shoulders, and sits studying the mysterious man in black.

Jill brings Guts and Puck to her decaying village and reunites with her frightened parents. Zepek beats her publicly, exposing the household's cycle of abuse. Puck's chestnut prank exposes the elf, igniting a hostile mob. Guts wields the Dragon Slayer to intimidate the crowd but chooses escape over slaughter at Puck's urging, leaping the village wall. Jill directs the pair to an abandoned windmill and, after a terrifying night at home, returns at dawn to watch over the sleeping swordsman.

The chapter opens the Lost Children storyline within the Conviction Arc, introducing Jill and her father Zepek. It also establishes that Guts conceals the nightly spirit attacks from those around him, and that Puck's very existence is enough to terrify ordinary villagers who regard elves with dread.