The fog was thick.
Visibility was less than a meter.
Everything had vanished — the sky, the ground, all landmarks.
Only that white sea remained: suffocating, silent… almost alive.
Rem and Guts had been separated from the main force.
They moved slowly, each step cautious.
Their silhouettes dissolved in the mist.
The sound of their footsteps — muffled. As if swallowed by something greater.
Then, suddenly…
Screams.
Distant. Torn.
Ripped from unseen throats.
One scream.
Then another.
And then… silence.
No clash. No blood.
Only the void left behind by those who would never be heard again.
The Whale was hunting.
Not head-on. Not like a beast.
But like a specter.
It appeared. Swallowed. Disappeared.
The squads fell one by one.
Only their last breaths still floated in the air.
It wasn't a battlefield anymore.
Just a suspended grave.
Rem, tense, scanned the emptiness.
Her breathing trembled.
She no longer knew what to look for — or where the next attack would come from.
Then, minutes later…
A light pierced the veil.
A dense, vibrant wave of magic dispelled part of the fog in a wide radius around the camp.
Crusch Karsten stood in the center of it all, hand raised.
She had broken — for now — the fog's grip.
Just enough to breathe.
Just enough to count the living…
…and the missing.
She took stock.
About twenty soldiers unaccounted for.
Not wounded.
Not found.
Gone.
Erased.
But the worst part wasn't the number.
It was the forgetting.
Some looked around, confused, lost, faces frozen.
They knew someone was missing.
That there was a gap in the formation.
But they couldn't put a name, a face, a memory to it.
It was as if the world itself…
…had erased their existence.
— "There were more of us… weren't there?"
— "Who… was standing here? I could've sworn…"
Doubt crept in like a disease.
A fear worse than death: the fear of never having existed.
Guts frowned.
He didn't understand.
It was absurd.
Even the dead leave traces.
A smell. A wound. A bloodstain.
But here?
Nothing.
Even in war, he had never seen this.
Not like this.
Not this kind of forgetting.
He stared into the thick fog all around.
And he understood.
This wasn't a battle.
It was an eradication.
Crusch (voice loud, almost fractured by the mist):
"Don't stay together! Spread out! It's too dangerous!"
Orders rippled like echoes in the fog.
The soldiers obeyed reluctantly, legs trembling, fear already coiled deep inside.
They scattered… but without conviction.
They advanced… as if death had already been accepted.
Then suddenly—
A vibration. One that drilled into the flesh, into the nerves, into the soul.
The weaker ones broke immediately.
Some fell from their mounts, eyes blank, muscles frozen.
Others screamed without understanding, trapped in formless terror.
Guts…
He didn't understand.
But he endured.
As if he were… immune.
As if this world, corrupted as it was, had nothing left to teach him.
The worst horrors… he had already seen them.
He turned his head toward Rem.
Even she was trembling. Even she struggled to stay on her mount, her breath ragged.
Guts (calmly):
"Hang in there. I'm here."
Rem (voice shaking):
"You… you're bleeding, Guts… Your neck…"
He brought his hand to his neck.
His fingers touched blood.
The Brand.
The Brand of Sacrifice.
The Eclipse.
It was oozing.
It was reacting.
A warning.
He understood.
This world couldn't kill him.
Not truly.
Not unless they came for him.
Only the God Hand could reap him.
Here, he was… out of reach.
Cursed, but protected.
An intruder death didn't yet know how to claim.
And in that moment, he understood.
He could no longer be a spectator.
He had to take the lead.
Like before.
When he led not with words, but with the weight of his presence.
So he moved forward.
Alone in the mist.
Weapon already in hand, heavy and alive.
Each step echoed like a death sentence.
He didn't call for anyone.
He didn't wait for anyone.
In that white sea, there was only him…
…and her.
He almost pitied her.
She didn't know what was coming.
She floated, immense, invincible.
But her path would end here.
It wasn't Guts she was facing.
It was the Brand.
It was the twisted fate she had just awakened.
Blood trickled down his neck.
The curse screamed in silence.
He was ready.
Not to survive.
But to bring her down.
The fog thickened around him.
Everything turned white. Suffocating.
A world with no sky. No ground. No bearings.
A shiver.
A flare in his neck.
The Brand.
It bled again.
And then… he saw her.
The Whale.
Not a copy.
Not an illusion.
The real one.
Her eye locked onto him.
Just for a second.
But it was enough.
Something passed between them.
An instinct.
A broken ancient pact.
Or maybe a hatred too old to name.
He saw the opening.
A chasm. An abyss.
The Whale's gaping maw, ready to swallow the world.
But she didn't know what she was about to consume.
And he, in that chaos, didn't think.
He acted.
Guts leapt.
Not at the beast.
Into the beast.
He aimed for her throat.
Her breath.
Her heart — if she had one.
His sword was already in his hands.
Roaring with silence.