She smiled. “The Hundred-Man Slayer. I was told you’d pass this way.”

The Dragonslayer came off his shoulder in a smooth, terrible arc. “Come take it.”

And in the darkness between worlds, the beast inside Guts opened its red eyes and laughed.

That forest again.

Guts stopped.

Or what was left of it. The steeple had been punched inward, as though by a giant’s fist. Inside, the pews were stacked into a crude throne, and on that throne sat a woman whose beauty was a blade—pale hair, lips the color of a fresh scar, and eyes that held the same hungry patience as a spider at the center of its web.

Puck zoomed ahead, became a faint glow against the gray. He returned quickly, face uncharacteristically grim. “Standing, but… you should see it.”

Griffith.

It only carried the stench of rust and old blood across the hill where Guts stood, the Dragonslayer resting across his shoulders like a crucifix of iron. Below, the remnants of a mercenary camp smoldered—burned tents, broken pikes, and the twisted shapes of men who had laughed at breakfast. Apostles had done this. He’d arrived too late to save anyone, only in time to count the dead.

“That village three miles east. Still standing?”

For a long moment, the only sound was the creak of his leather glove tightening around the sword’s hilt. Then he lowered the blade. Not because he couldn’t swing—he’d cut through worse than puppets. But because their eyes reminded him of someone else’s. Judeau’s. Casca’s. His own , once, before he learned that some monsters wear human faces and some humans wear monster’s armor.

Guts turned away.

The countess rose, her form beginning to twist, flesh bubbling into chitin. “I think you’ll hesitate. And hesitation is a wound I can open.”

“Puck,” he said.