Gabe is lost, and Guts is forfeit, having surrendered himself to something which Solange had heard whispers of in the text which had been sent to him not long before their arrival—"but I don't care, it's like I'm used to this"—and havoc had been let loose upon them not in the form of Shadow, but in remembrance. In the way tears had streaked down Sion's cheeks when Solange (what could have been) diminished, and the Hero King had stepped forward, inhuman in precisely all the ways needed to calm the hellhound which Guts had become.

"Focalor," Sion calls, and suddenly the scene shifts, a distraction coming into play during battle. Where Guts lunges in for the attack, Sion evades seamlessly as the apple grove and the sound of combat fades away, replaced by the warmth of sunlight and the rolling hills of meadowland, all darkness gone and leaving only the tranquility of a warm, early summer's day.

"My friend..." Sion pins Guts beneath a pervasive, too-fathomless stare. Would the man attack again? Would frenzy consume him? "Where have you gone? This is not you."