Coming By Flight

Guts stirs to find an incubus, a tiny demon that sours a sleeper's dreams, creeping down the wall beside him, and he flattens it with his iron hand without a second look. He then realizes Jill has crept into the windmill and dozed off against his leg. Rather than disturb her, he simply looks away and lets her rest. A second incubus torments Puck up in the rafters until the elf tumbles down onto Jill's head and jolts her awake.

Once she is up, Guts questions her about the Misty Valley the villagers fear. Jill describes it as a fog-shrouded place to the east, populated by elves. After the region's crops and animals were ravaged and elves were named as the culprits, the horror deepened when the creatures reportedly began devouring people and carrying off their children.

The exchange ends abruptly as Guts' Brand starts to bleed. Outside, he spots a long ribbon of faintly luminous beings streaming toward the village. Jill calls them elves, but a wild grin spreads across Guts' face as he insists they are something else entirely.

In the village, families bolt their doors while every animal left outdoors is consumed in moments. A cluster of the creatures breaks into one house, eating the adults but sparing the child within. Zepek, meanwhile, strikes his wife for proposing they go out to look for Jill, though his continued drinking masks what seems like real worry.

The orphaned boy, Thomas, flees his home as the creatures coo to him, only to run straight into the legs of a towering figure in black. Guts orders him to keep low, then sweeps the massive Dragon Slayer through the swarm, splattering dozens of them across the flat of the blade.

Guts wakes to find Jill asleep against him and dispatches the dream-feeding incubi. Jill recounts the legend of the Misty Valley and its elves that raid crops, eat villagers, and abduct children. Guts' Brand bleeds as a glowing swarm reaches the settlement, and he declares the beings are not true elves. The creatures massacre livestock and townsfolk while sparing children, and Guts intervenes to shield the newly orphaned Thomas, slaughtering a wave of the attackers with the Dragon Slayer.

The episode plants the mystery of the Misty Valley's false elves, which Guts privately identifies as pseudo-apostles rather than the harmless spirits Puck represents. Thomas is introduced as a survivor whose parents are killed in the raid, tying him to Guts for the battle that follows.