Berserk Theory: "I Want to Become a Sword" — The Cruel, Desperate Salvation That Wish Leads To (Prediction / Spoiler Warning)

Scope of this record: One reader's prediction of how Berserk will end

• This article is one reader's prediction and interpretation, based on the story up through the latest chapter. It is not confirmed information. It also touches on the Golden Age Arc, the Conviction Arc, the Fantasia Arc, and the latest developments, so please be aware of spoilers if you have not read them.

First, just one thing.

This is a record of one reader who loves Berserk, having thought, in earnest, about how Casca and Guts might reach their ending.

To be honest, it is long. It runs over fifty thousand characters, and the argument steps into fine detail. So it may put you on your guard.

But what lies at the root is not a difficult thing. That Casca, who was hurt so deeply, might somehow be saved. That Guts' sword might, at the last, come to hold meaning. Just that. To keep that wish from ending as mere wishful thinking, I checked, one by one, whether the story's own accumulation could truly carry it there — and that is what made this length.

I have placed the conclusion at the beginning, and a summary at the end. Even if you lose your way midway, you can find your way back. For the more intricate parts, I have gathered them, simply, into diagrams at the end — please refer to them if you like.

Without bracing yourself, even if only the parts that catch your eye — I would be glad if you read them.

If I could share this view with someone who loves the same work, there would be nothing more.

Then, let me begin.

■ Introduction

This note is one reader's attempt to predict the ending of Berserk. It is not a reading built on quoting lines of dialogue, but a record that works backward toward the ending from "placement" — the psychology of the characters, the rules established within the work, and the wishes and precedents laid down in the past.

■ The Conclusion of This Article (The Map, Laid Out First)

Since this gets long, let me start with the conclusion. And let me hand you a map of where this article is headed, first.

Here it is. At the final Eclipse, Casca offers up her own life. And through Schierke's forbidden art, her soul comes to dwell in the Dragon Slayer. In other words — Casca becomes a sword.

Read just that, and you might think, "So they're sacrificing Casca again?" But it's the opposite. This is the story of a Casca who was taken from, again and again, finally — for the first time — choosing for herself.

Why can it be read that way? Let me tell you the core, just three points, up front.

One. The inversion of the sacrifice.

The Eclipse in Berserk has always been a rite that takes. Griffith offered up his comrades in the Band of the Hawk and became a god. The Egg of the Perfect World swallowed the world itself. The Count offered up his beloved wife. Everyone — "takes, in order to become."

But Casca alone is different. What she offers is not another. It is her own life. She offers herself, to save the one she loves. For the first time, a sacrifice that "takes" flips into a sacrifice that "gives." This is the central thrust of this article.

Two. The true nature of "I want to become a sword."

Casca once wished, "I want to become a sword." Back then, it was faith in Griffith. But at a certain point, she realizes: "Griffith was not a god. And I am a single woman." There, the quality of the wish changes. From faith in a god, to the wish, as a single woman, to be beside the man she loves. And — that "man she loves" is no longer Griffith. It's Guts.

And Guts is a man who has lived by the sword. That sword did not reach Griffith, and broke. His heart broke too. So at the last, that sword needs to regain its meaning. And there, Casca dwells. The one he could not protect becomes the sword itself, and brings the broken sword back to life. It's cruel — but it locks together, perfectly.

Three. Not a circle, but a spiral.

In fact, nearly the same thing happened once, a thousand years ago. The witch Flora committed a forbidden art and kept a dead soul in the living world — and the result was the Skull Knight. But back then, there was no vessel. So the soul could only wander a thousand years as a wraith of bone, alone.

This time is different. There is a vessel (the Dragon Slayer). There is a disciple who inherits the forbidden art (Schierke). There is one who breaks the God Hand's rule (the Skull Knight). The same composition, traced again. But the ending alone shifts, one notch. Not a wraith of bone, but a sword remaining in the hand of the one she loves. Tracing the same circle, never returning to the same place. This is not a circle, but a spiral.

And finally.

Casca becomes a sword, Guts grips that sword and settles things with Griffith. The world returns to what it was. In time, Guts too meets his lifespan, the last Brand vanishes, and everything ends. Salvation, and ending, overlap at the same single point.

Was Guts rewarded? — No. Not rewarded. Not that it was cruel, either. He carried it through. That, I think, is the most accurate.

…And that is the conclusion.

But with just this, it might look like mere wishful thinking — "wouldn't it be great if it went this way." So what comes from here is the real thing.

This article builds the case for what I've just said, one piece at a time, using only the precedents within the work. Not by wish, but by backward deduction from placement. It proceeds through five major stages.

First, it establishes who holds the key at the final Eclipse (the one who triggers it). Next, it reads what that person offers, and how (the inversion of the sacrifice, and salvation). Then, it works out — by the rules within the work — how the offered soul comes to dwell in the sword, and how it reaches Griffith on the side of the divine (the vessel, and the reckoning). Further, it shows that nearly this same thing happened once, a thousand years ago (from circle to spiral). And finally, it sees through to how the world closes after the reckoning (the finality).

It is a long road, but I proceed one step at a time, with only precedent and narrative placement as footholds. Take it easy, start wherever catches your eye.

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■ The Misdirection: That Guts Will Use the Behelit

The vast majority of readers assume that "Guts will use the Behelit." Because he is its owner, because he has such a powerful motive in revenge — these assumptions arise naturally, because we are reading this as the protagonist's story.

But when you read the board again, the one who holds the key is, in all likelihood, not Guts, but Casca. Let me write out, step by step, why it can be read that way.

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■ Casca's "Placement"

What we should look at in a prediction is not who holds what, but the psychological state each character is now placed in — their narrative placement.

Casca has not yet fully digested that catastrophe. Her memories have returned, but she is not in a state of having fully accepted the whole of it.

And what is decisive is this: Casca has still not sorted out, within herself, the existence of Griffith. Even knowing the truth, she remains in an unstable state — fear and confusion and former adoration all mixed together — much like Rickert, whom Guts refused to bring along, saying, "You can't bring yourself to hate Griffith." But she has not come to see him, as Guts has, as a completely "enemy to be struck down."

On the other hand, Casca's feelings toward Guts are not love alone. While she had closed off her heart, Guts wore himself down, even putting his revenge aside, to keep protecting her. Knowing that path he walked, covered in wounds, what is largest within Casca is immeasurable gratitude and guilt, awe, and the fear that comes from the trauma of the Eclipse.

To have made the man she loves carry so much. And yet, because of her own trauma, she cannot even face him. The total sum of her feelings cannot be measured by looking at romantic love alone.

This twist — where love and fear overlap upon the same person — is not Casca's alone. Berserk has depicted this structure again and again.

Take Farnese and Serpico. A relationship like twin trees, where two warped people cannot stand unless they are intertwined. Holding an uncrossable line between themselves and the one closest to them, and yet unable to part.

Casca's feelings toward Guts belong to this same lineage. Because she loves him, she pulls away. She loves him, yet she fears him. She fears him, yet she cannot part from him.

And this is not Casca alone. Guts, too, is within the same twist. Because he loves her, he does not show his face. He loves her, yet he fears he might break her. He fears it, yet because he loves her, he cannot part from her.

The two of them hold the same twist, from both sides. Drawn to each other, yet fearing they will wound each other, they cannot move straight toward one another. And still, at the root, they cannot part. Twin trees, exactly. And that is why the feelings of these two cannot be measured by simple love.

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■ The Owner of the Behelit Is Not Guts

Here, let me confirm one thing about who triggers it. The Behelit responds to the despair of its owner by causal fate — and the grounds that this owner is not Guts have already been shown within the work.

On the island of the elves, Guts' sword did not land a single blow on Griffith; before his very eyes, Casca was carried away, and he fell into despair deep enough to close off his heart. It was the moment when the heart that had never broken, no matter how shattered his body became, broke for the first time.

And still, the Behelit did not activate.

Even in that deepest despair of Guts' life, the Behelit remained silent.

Here, one counterargument is possible. Perhaps it did not activate simply because the "appointed time" had not yet come — and so this is not proof that the owner is not Guts.

But even if that were so, the conclusion does not change much. Since the Behelit responds to the despair of its owner, the fact that Guts fell into the deepest despair of his life and it still remained silent shows, at the very least, that "the one who triggers it at present is not Guts."

Even granting the counterargument that it will activate once the time is ripe, the question of who it responds to at that time must still be asked separately.

And the one who still holds an unignited, true despair is — as we will see — Casca.

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■ Then, Is It Someone Else in the Group?

If Guts is not the one who triggers it, then is it not someone else in the group? That is a natural thought. But going through them one by one, each turns out to be a thin candidate.

First, Schierke. She does hold feelings for Guts. But she is a sorceress, and within the work her role is made explicit as "one on the interfering side, outside the story, who can touch the Hawk." She is not on the side that transcends itself by offering up a sacrifice, but on the operating side that reaches in from without. To place her as a sacrifice who offers her beloved makes no sense within the structure of roles.

Farnese is the same. She understands the relationship between Guts and Casca, and after her faith was broken, she has stood back up on the side that supports and guides. Guts trusts her in that role. She is not on the side that ascends by offering up her beloved, but on the side that walks together from without.

Serpico fits least of all. He is a man devoted above all to Farnese, and to protect her he has crossed swords with Guts twice. For that Serpico to offer up Farnese and ascend himself does not hold together as a character. He is the person standing furthest from the direction of "offering up a beloved other."

Isidro is a boy fixated on rising by his own arm. Aiming at Guts as his goal, he tries to grow strong by his own power. The motive of vaulting to the top in one bound, by some external, transcendent power, is thin in him to begin with.

Going through the whole group like this, it is not Guts, and not anyone else. The one who remains is Casca. And as we have already seen, the one who still holds an unignited, true despair is, again, Casca.

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■ Where the "True Despair," the Behelit's Condition for Activation, Lies

The Behelit activates the moment its appointed owner is cast down into "true despair, beyond which there is none." For Casca, who has regained her sanity, what would that "despair" be? It would be this: that because of her, Guts loses his humanity and is reduced to a literal "beast," a "berserker."

Right now, Guts is having his soul devoured by the Berserker Armor and the "Beast of Darkness." When Casca witnesses the man who had always protected her lose his self and break completely, that could become, for her, a "true despair" beyond even losing her sanity.

And Casca's despair may not be a single one.

The Griffith of now uses the body of the "Moonlight Boy" — the child of Casca and Guts — as his vessel. That is: the most beloved child and the foe who broke her are one and the same existence. Watching Guts break, if she turns toward Griffith to stop it, she will be cutting down her own child. To watch the man she loves break, or to watch her own child be cut down — whichever she chooses, she loses something.

A double hell, with no escape. This compounded despair can be read as the very trigger that casts Casca down into "true despair, beyond which there is none."

In that moment, the flow in which the Behelit, inside Guts' luggage, responds to Casca, is utterly natural.

And the fact that the Behelit activates in response to the true despair of its owner means — that it could become the trigger for a new "Eclipse."

I will touch on this in detail later, but this ending can be read not as a mere one-on-one reckoning, but as a place where that ceremony occurs once more. On that premise, let us first look at what Casca could offer up.

Standing on this premise, what Casca could offer narrows to two.

One is Griffith — once worshipped as a god, and holding a body that shares her blood. The other is Casca herself.

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■ The First Possibility

Offering up the god, to regain the human

To Casca, Griffith was an existence equal to a god, one to whom she had offered the whole of her life. That faith, even now that he has transformed into a god, has not entirely vanished. While he is an object of fear, he is at the same time still the existence that occupies the largest place within her.

If so, then one of the "most precious things" Casca could offer is not the object of her hatred, but that very existence she once worshipped as a god. And as touched on earlier, that Griffith shares a body with the Moonlight Boy, her own child. The decision, as a "mother," to offer up "the existence once worshipped as a god" "together with her own son," is fully conceivable.

For Casca to offer up, for the sake of Guts who kept protecting her, the greatest existence she once worshipped as a god and who shares her own blood. This is not a sacrifice to destroy a hated foe. It is the act of giving up what was most precious, to save the one to whom she wishes to return an even deeper debt. It is a cruel choice that only Casca could bear.

This is the first possibility. But I myself consider the other possibility, which I raise next, to be the stronger one as a reversal of the story.

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■ The Sacrifice Is Not Limited to "Another"

A precedent within the work

Before moving on to the other possibility, let me confirm one important fact. What is offered up is not limited to a single beloved other. This is not conjecture; there is a precedent within the work.

The existence of the Egg of the Perfect World, who appeared in the Conviction Arc. When he transmigrated into an Apostle, what he offered was not a single beloved. He made a sacrifice of the very world around him — the people there and all — and accomplished his transmigration.

The Griffith of old, too, offered up not only Guts, the one existence who could make him forget his dream, but the whole of the Band of the Hawk.

So the work shows it clearly: a sacrifice is not limited to "a single, particular beloved." The range of what is offered, and its nature, can change according to the way of being of the one who offers.

A precedent of an offering beyond all measure already exists within the story. It is because of this precedent that the next possibility rises up not as a leap, but as a line in accord with the rules of the work.

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■ The Second Possibility

Offering up one's own life, to let the other live

For the Casca of now, the thing hardest to let go of is not only the existence of Guts, or of Griffith. It is the life of "Casca" herself, which she has only just regained.

The possibility of returning to the self she was before she was wounded. A future she might walk with Guts. And the Band of the Hawk, her feelings for Griffith, the totality of her memories including that hell — all of it forms "Casca, a single human being."

Here, let me confirm one rule within the work. In its magic system, the spirit, the Od, and the astral body are treated as separate from the flesh. That is: the death of the body and the death of the soul are different things. The great wound Guts took to the chest from Slan suggests exactly this. Even if the body perishes, the Od — that person's soul — can remain by a different principle.

This distinction comes to matter decisively.

If so, then the other "most precious thing" Casca could offer is not another, but Casca's own life. Casca does not offer up Griffith — she offers up her own life.

Her life as a human, the future she might have walked with Guts as a human. All of it, she gives up for the sake of Guts who kept saving her. Making her own life the offering, she hands Guts a way through.

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■ The Lineage of Sacrifice

The three directions of sacrifice

What makes this second possibility beautiful is that, within the lineage of sacrifice in the work, its vector completely inverts.

First, let me confirm a rule within the work. The sacrifice offered in the rite is not just anyone. It must be the most precious one, who could be called a part of oneself.

To offer up the most precious thing, to create a fracture in the heart, and to pour the supernatural into it, severing one's humanity — this is the method of transmigration into an Apostle or the God Hand.

The Griffith of old offered up his closest comrades — Guts, his peerless friend, and the whole of the Band of the Hawk — and transcended himself. The Egg of the Perfect World offered up the very world around him and became a perfect existence.

These two cases are both in the direction of "offering up the most precious thing, for one's own sake." Making a sacrifice of another, of the world, so that the self may ascend.

And in this lineage, there is one more existence not to be overlooked. The Count, from Volume 3.

The Count faced the Behelit twice. The first time, in the despair of being unable to bring down his sword upon his wife — a believer in a heretical cult — he offered her up as a sacrifice and transmigrated into an Apostle. He offered up his most precious spouse and gained inhuman power. Up to here, it is the same "take in order to ascend" lineage as Griffith and the Egg.

The problem is the second time. Struck down by Guts, his clinging to life — "I don't want to die" — at the brink of death resonated with the Behelit, and he summoned the God Hand once more. And the God Hand demanded the next sacrifice. This time, the "most precious one" was — his own daughter, Theresia.

Here, the Count could not offer. The man who could offer his wife, before his daughter, his hand stopped. The instant he saw his daughter's form in the gap between life and death, he regained his fatherly affection, refused the bargain, and was dragged down himself, into hell — into the whirlpool of reincarnation.

This is not merely a "failure to offer." The Count let go, by his own hand, of the path of offering up his daughter so that he might ascend. He left his daughter behind, and fell himself. It can be read that, as a result, he gave himself up so that his daughter would remain.

Here lies the first sign. Within the lineage of taking in order to ascend, the Count alone, at the very end, refused to "offer up the most precious one so that the self may ascend," and stepped one foot onto the side where the self vanishes and the other remains.

But it was not something chosen as salvation. As a result of a father's attachment, of being unable to offer up his daughter, it merely turned out that way. Not by will, but a reversal at the end of weakness. It is still no more than a sign.

And here, let me plant one seed in advance. This line that the Count, out of "weakness," could not cross — the line of letting go, by will, of the most precious thing — Casca does not cross for the first time in the final chapter.

She had already crossed it once, in the Golden Age Arc. That comes clearly into view later, in the section "Its destination has already been shown."

And in the Count's second time, there is one more important suggestion. The rite is not a merely mechanical transaction.

What the Behelit picks up is despair, and the wish that lies in its depths.

The Count opened the Behelit with the clinging of "I don't want to die." But in the end, he could not offer up his daughter, Theresia. Seen another way, this is the moment when a wish — "I do not want to offer up my daughter" — its very will, changed the result of the rite itself. The bargain that was presented did not come to pass.

If so, then in Casca's case too, what is asked is not only what she makes her offering. It is what she wishes, in offering it.

Here, let me lay it alongside another precedent. The Egg of the Perfect World.

As already touched on, the Egg made a sacrifice not of a single other, but of the world itself, including his own self. He is an existence who has already opened, within the work, the form of "what is offered is not limited to a single beloved other."

Place these two side by side.

The Egg opened the frame of "the self, too, can be an offering" — the object of the offering. The Count showed "the direction of the wish can change the result of the bargain itself" — the power of the will that drives the offering.

One widened the frame of what can be offered. The other showed that how one wishes, in offering, decides the result.

When these two come together, for the first time, a single point comes into view.

The form of an offering in which one makes a sacrifice of one's own self, while turning that wish not toward taking, but toward saving.

What the Egg opened was the frame of the object of the offering (the self, too, can be an offering). What the Count showed was the will that drives the offering (a wish changes the bargain). Casca inherits both. She offers up the sacrifice that is her own self, with the wish to save Guts.

As the object of the offering, the Egg made "the self" possible; as the driving will, the Count made "the direction of the wish" possible. Casca's self-offering cannot hold by either one alone. Only when the two precedents combine does it rise up, for the first time, upon the extension of the work's own rules.

Griffith and the Egg of the Perfect World offered up others, the world, and ascended for their own sake. The Count, by the wish not to offer up his daughter, fell himself. Casca, by the wish to save Guts, offers up herself.

It is not only the object of the offering that inverts. The direction of the wish that drives it inverts as well — from taking, to saving.

The "most precious one" that Casca offers is no longer another. Not a comrade, not the world, not a spouse, not a blood relative. The future she might have walked with the Guts she only just regained — Casca's own life.

The object of the offering, from the outer other, by way of the most beloved blood relative, drawn all the way to the innermost self — its very pole.

The Count could not offer up his single most beloved daughter, and fell himself. Casca offers up the last sacrifice that is her own life — not in hesitation, but by her own will, and moreover not so that she herself may be saved, but to save another. The line the Count could not cross, Casca crosses still further, choosing it herself.

In this story, for the first time, a sacrifice becomes not "taking" but "giving." There is a precedent of taking in order to ascend; that vector showed a faint sign of reversal in the Count; and in Casca, it completely inverts.

A sacrifice for the sake of taking, into a sacrifice for the sake of saving. At the very end of the lineage of offering, for the first time — and decisively — the direction inverts.

And this reversal, from "taking" to "giving," takes a visible form at Casca's Eclipse.

The Griffith of old, in order to ascend, offered up the comrades of the Band of the Hawk, every last one, as sacrifices. All who were present at the Eclipse were taken. That is the taking Eclipse.

But what Casca offers is her own single life. Not her comrades. If so, then the comrades present at that Eclipse of Casca's — they are spared from being taken.

Here, one boy comes to matter. Isidro. That boy who, aiming at Guts as his goal, tries to claw his way up by his own arm. He too will stand at the place of the Eclipse, as one of Guts' group.

Just as the Guts of old stood at the Eclipse as a member of the Band of the Hawk and could not stop his comrades from being sacrificed, every last one — Isidro, too, stands at that same place of the Eclipse.

But he does not become a sacrifice. Because Casca, by offering up her single self, does not let it hold as an Eclipse that takes her comrades.

At Griffith's Eclipse, the comrades were taken, every one. At Casca's Eclipse, not one comrade is taken. Standing at the same place of the Eclipse, where once all were lost, this time all remain.

That Isidro survives — that single fact, and nothing more — becomes the surest proof that Casca's offering was turned not toward "taking," but toward "protecting."

The taking Eclipse devoured everyone present. The giving Eclipse lets no one be devoured, save the single one who offers. What it means for the direction of an offering to invert — seen at the scale of human life and death — is exactly this.

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■ It Is Also, for Guts, the Cruelest Salvation

If the second possibility becomes real, then for Guts, it becomes the cruelest salvation. Guts has walked through hell, all to regain Casca. He has kept protecting her, even at the cost of becoming a berserker.

Before his very eyes, if the existence he had protected were to choose to throw away her own life in order to save him — then Guts, in the instant he is saved, loses the very one he was to save.

What was once taken from him, and which he had only just begun to regain, this time Casca offers up and lets go of, by her own will — a salvation hard to accept.

This is a form that symbolizes the work that is Berserk. Salvation and loss occurring on the same single page.

The man who swore "never to lose anyone again" is made, one last time, and in the cruelest form, to receive the greatest loss — as the other's own will. And still, he goes on. That is what kind of man he is.

What Godo once left behind, in his parting monologue with Guts for this life: each time you run toward something, another thing, unnoticed, spills away. Living or dying — none of it goes as you'd have it.

Go forward, and you lose something. Swear, and still you lose. And yet, without looking back, you run on. Knowing loss is woven in, you go on anyway.

That is why — having lost his five senses, his self, and at the last, Casca, the greatest existence — he still grips that sword, and moves forward.

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■ On Whether Becoming a Sword Is Salvation

Here is one problem I do not want to set aside.

The reading that Casca becomes a sword may, at first glance, look like the reader's own wish. Or it may look as though I am calling far too painful a self-sacrifice "salvation."

But what I want to ask in this prediction is not "is this development beautiful?"

The problem is this: how many other developments are left, in which Casca is truly saved?

Casca has already regained her memories. And yet, that alone did not save her. Even with her memories returned, she cannot bear the catastrophe of the Eclipse, and cannot even look at Guts' face.

That is: the work has already shown that "regaining memory equals salvation" is false.

Then what of an ending in which Casca survives and heals over time? Of course, that is one kind of salvation. But seen as the reckoning of the story that is Berserk, that alone does not become the inversion of what was taken at the Eclipse.

For Casca to be saved, merely surviving is not enough.

To return to the side that chooses, rather than the side that is taken from. To sever Griffith by her own will, rather than once again revering him as a god. Not only to be protected by Guts, but this time to protect Guts in return. As a mother, not to abandon the Moonlight Boy. And to invert the "sacrifice that was taken" at the Eclipse into a "sacrifice that gives and saves" at her own Eclipse.

When you line up these conditions one by one, an ending in which Casca merely survives and returns leaves, inevitably, something it cannot recover.

Of course, we should not casually call Casca becoming a sword "salvation." It is loss as well. It is a parting beyond recovery. It is the loss of a future she might have walked with Guts as a human.

And yet, what makes this ending different from "consumption" is that there is, within it, Casca's own will.

Griffith's Eclipse was a rite of taking others so that the self may ascend. The Egg of the Perfect World, too, tried to swallow the world and become something.

But in Casca's case, that direction reverses.

Not taking someone so that the self may ascend. Offering up her own life, to stop Guts, to save the Moonlight Boy, to sever Griffith's divinity.

This is not beautifying death. It is not making Casca, once more, an existence that is only taken from.

Rather, it is a reversal in which Casca — the one most deeply taken from at the Eclipse — at the final juncture, for the first time, chooses by her own will what she offers.

So the "Casca who becomes a sword" in this prediction is not a woman who is merely consumed for Guts' sake.

The girl who once wished to become a sword, who tried to stand beside Griffith, in the end stands beside Guts not as anyone's possession, but by her own will.

Even if that form is no longer a human body, but a soul dwelling in the Dragon Slayer.

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■ "Salvation" in Berserk

Here, I recall that Berserk itself has embedded one fairy tale within the work. "Pikaf the Outcast."

A boy with red eyes and pointed ears was saved, before he was old enough to remember, from the brink of death by the power of fairies. But that salvation came in exchange for his form being changed into something half like a fairy. He became one who, while human, was also unlike a human.

Believing, from his appearance, that his true parents must be fairies, the boy visits the fairy forest. But what he is told there is the truth: you are not a fairy; you are a human child.

Knowing he is human, he returns to his old village — but in the forest only a moment had passed, while in the village a hundred years had already gone by. His parents, and all who knew him, are gone.

And yet, being no fairy either, he cannot return to the forest. In the gap between the village and the fairy forest, the boy who was supposed to have been saved keeps weeping, alone, belonging nowhere.

This is a story Berserk placed within itself, in which salvation and loss are the same single event. That his life was saved was, in itself, to lose everything. A salvation without pain — this work does not prepare even one, not even in a fairy tale.

The fact that Guts, hearing it, muttered, "What a hopeless story," tells the whole of it.

And the place that boy arrives at — the "gap" — is not to be overlooked.

It is the same word by which this article has read Guts and Griffith as "those of the gap," and read Casca as dwelling in the sword in a way that is neither human nor wraith.

There is no changing that an ending in which Casca becomes a sword is painful. But in Berserk, can a "salvation without pain" truly exist?

Thought of that way, the reading that Casca becomes a sword is not mere tragic taste, nor the reader's wish alone, but a quite narrow path of salvation — one of the few left, so as not to end Casca as a victim and nothing more.

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■ And So, Casca Becomes a Sword

The true nature of the wish "I want to become a sword"

Here, I recall one wish laid down in the past. In the days of the Band of the Hawk, Casca wished: I want to become a sword. But within this wish, there is a turning that must not be overlooked.

At first, Casca saw Griffith as a "god." Her wish to become his sword was close to faith in a god. To be a sword that offers its all for the sake of the god's dream. But at a certain point, Casca realizes: "Griffith was not a god. And I am a single woman."

This realization is decisive. From a sword as service to a god, to a wish, as a single woman, to be beside a single man. The essence of "I want to become a sword," here, changes in quality — from faith to love.

The true structure of Casca's wish is this: not as a priestess worshipping a god, but as a single woman, to be beside the man she loves. And if that man is one who fights to carve open his own path, then to be at his side, even if it means becoming his sword.

This wish was betrayed and trampled at that Eclipse. But the wish itself, having lost its destination, has hung in the air ever since.

Here, the placement comes to matter. The one beside whom Casca, seeing through that Griffith was "not a god," wished to stand as a single woman — was no longer Griffith.

The one who offers his all, who simply fights and pushes forward, carving open his path, is Guts — the one who moves forward even while wearing the Berserker Armor.

Casca's wish need not change by a single character. The moment she cast off faith in a god and wished, as a single woman, to be beside a man, its destination was already fixed upon Guts.

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■ Its Destination Has Already Been Shown

And this is not interpretation. That she saw through Griffith was not a god, and wished — as a single woman, to be beside a man, to have been beside him — and that its destination is Guts: Casca herself referred to this long ago. It is the scene late in the Golden Age Arc, just before the Eclipse.

A year since Guts left the Band of the Hawk. Griffith has ruined himself, and the Band has become the hunted. For that year, the one who led the Band was none other than Casca.

She is not a woman who is merely protected. She is an unmistakable commander, who held together comrades who had lost the thing they clung to.

And Guts returns to lend his aid and rescues Griffith — but it becomes clear that Griffith is already beyond recovery. Here, there is a scene not to be overlooked.

Guts begins to say to Casca, "I'll stay, too." He tried to remain by Casca's side. But the one who stopped it was Casca herself.

With tears welling, she tells him: "You're going to fight your own fight, aren't you? You have to go." Here, the essence of the woman Casca is laid out in full. The thing she wanted most — for Guts to be at her side — in the very instant Guts himself offered it, she pushed back, by her own hand.

Why? To let Guts go on as Guts. If he became a man who bends his own path for someone's sake, that would no longer be the Guts she was drawn to. So she chose, over her own wish, that Guts be Guts. She let go of her own happiness, by her own will.

This is something that mere faint affection could never do. To shake off, weeping, the hand of the one who said he would stay. To put the other first to that degree is possible only because the feeling is that deep.

And into this scene, one more meaning is carved. The contrast with the Count, touched on earlier.

The Count could not let go of his most precious daughter. To offer her up, a father's affection refused. That "inability to let go," unbidden, dropped him onto the side of reversal. A reversal out of weakness, still no more than a sign.

But Casca is different. The thing she least wanted to let go of — the man she loves remaining at her side — in the very instant it was offered, she let go, by her own will.

The very same choice in the lineage that the Count, losing to affection, could not offer — Casca, at the point of the Golden Age Arc, had already carried out, by her own will. The line the Count could not cross, she had crossed long ago.

That is why, in the final chapter, there is nothing abrupt in Casca offering up her own life, the last sacrifice, by her will. That she is a human who can let go, by will, of what she does not want to let go of — she proved it long ago, in action. The woman who, just before the Eclipse, let go of "Guts being at her side," in the final chapter lets go of "the very life that is Casca." The object she lets go of has merely deepened, from the most beloved other to her own self, to the very limit. The line had already, back then, been crossed.

That Casca's "I want to become a sword" changed in quality from faith to love, and that its destination was fixed upon Guts — this is not my conjecture. She herself proves it, in action.

Precisely because he was the one she most wanted to be beside, she could push his back forward, by her own hand. The destination of the wish was, at this point, already Guts.

And the woman Casca was not an existence who is merely protected. She was a warrior who could guard Guts' back.

She crossed swords with Guts as an equal warrior, one who could say, "I want a scar that you gave me, too." And she was a woman who, when Guts headed to his own fight, could send him off with "go, even alone."

Not to be protected, but to fight together, to guard his back, to send him off. That is the true nature of the human being Casca. If so, then an ending in which she becomes a sword and supports Guts' fight is, for Casca, not an unwilling sacrifice. Rather, it is the very way of being she had always wished for.

The arrival point of this reading is that this wish is recovered in the final chapter.

Casca offers up her own life — her life as a human, the future she might have walked with Guts — all of it. And the Od that should return through the death of the body, Schierke holds in the Dragon Slayer by the forbidden art. In exchange for the offered life, the remaining soul comes to dwell in the sword.

As a single woman, to be beside the man she loves, to become his sword — that wish comes literally true. If she is not a human but a sword, then even unable to face him because of trauma, she can be at Guts' side.

Both her trauma toward Guts, and Guts' own trust in and dependence on his sword — both support this hypothesis.

(I should note: some who read this may feel that "for Casca to lose herself again is far too painful." I answer that head-on later, in the section "This is also Casca's own salvation." That becoming a sword is, for her, not a loss of dignity but a salvation she chose herself — I will explain later why it can be read that way.)

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■ The Nature of the Dragon Slayer, Which Could Become the Vessel

You may wonder whether such a thing is possible — but if we suppose that the content of the forbidden art Flora once committed was to remove Gaiseric from the cycle of death and fix him to the side of the living world, and that its result is the form of the Skull Knight, who lives on a thousand years later as a wraith in inhuman flesh, then the possibility that it can hold seems high.

That Schierke, Flora's disciple, comes to commit a forbidden art under the principle of reincarnation, I think is highly likely. It is also a re-enactment of the forbidden art her master Flora once performed upon the Skull Knight.

The Dragon Slayer that becomes the vessel has also, by cutting through existences from the side of the astral world, become a substance that acts upon spiritual existences.

This too was not so from the start; the long process of Guts cutting through has changed a mere slab of iron into a vessel able to house spirits.

There is in fact a precedent of Schierke housing the power of a fire spirit in the Dragon Slayer, so it can be said to contain a spiritual body or an existence of the astral world.

And the very fact that a weapon is taken into the realm of the supernatural and has its nature changed has a precedent within the work. When the Apostle Rochs took in his horse and armor and apostalized, his lance, too, changed its form along with him.

In the rite, what transforms is not the flesh alone. The weapon that one wields, too, is remade into a thing belonging to the supernatural.

The Dragon Slayer traveled the reverse road. Not taken into the supernatural in an instant, but a long process — Guts cutting through existences of the astral world — refined a mere slab of iron into a substance able to house spirits. Not bestowed, but a vessel gained through process.

To sum up: a situation arises in which Casca's life is offered up as a sacrifice through the Behelit, and the Od that should return through the death of the body, Schierke fixes to the Dragon Slayer by her forbidden art — that is my reading.

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■ Is It Truly Salvation for Casca?

So far, we have seen that Casca's wish "I want to become a sword" changed in quality from faith to love, and that its destination was fixed upon Guts. But knowing the destination of the wish alone is not yet enough.

The problem now shifts to this: is the form in which that wish comes true — the form of offering herself up and becoming a sword — truly salvation for Casca, or merely a painful sacrifice?

From here, I look head-on at what this ending means for Casca herself.

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■ This Is Also Casca's Own Salvation

Here, a natural emotional counterargument arises. To cast away one's own life and become a blade — is that not far too painful a self-sacrifice? Casca, who only just regained her self, loses herself again? Is that not, for her, not salvation but a second loss?

I want to answer this head-on. To state the conclusion: within this hypothesis, becoming a sword is, for Casca, not a mere sacrifice. It can be read as the most desperate salvation, for regaining what she lost — "being beside the one she loves."

The reason returns to Casca's oldest wish. The wish she had always held was: I want to be beside that person, I want to become his sword. "I want to be beside him" lay at the root, and "I want to become a sword" was the form for it.

But now, Casca cannot simply be beside Guts. The trauma of the Eclipse does not allow it. Though he is the very one who protected her so much, she cannot even look squarely at his face.

Gratitude, love, guilt — all of it is there, yet trauma has built a wall between the two of them. To be beside him as a human is no longer possible. This is the deepest pain Casca holds.

That is why — a sword. As a human, she can no longer be beside him. But as a sword, she can. Becoming a sword, she can be at Guts' side forever, without being torn apart by trauma. Gripped in his hand, fighting alongside him, protecting him. What she lost as a human — "being beside him" — she can regain as a sword.

And here, one more meaning overlaps. Once, Casca was a woman who could send off the Guts heading to his fight with "go, even alone." She had the strength to respect his fight and see his back off.

But to send off is also to part. Each time he went to the battlefield, Casca was the one left behind.

But becoming a sword, she no longer has to send him off. She is no longer left behind. Wherever Guts heads, to whatever battlefield, Casca is in his hand. Standing together on the battlefield, living together. Not guarding his back, but becoming a part of Guts and fighting as one with him. Literally, supporting Guts' very existence.

This is the final arrival point — from a love that sees off, to a love that is together.

This is not the act of casting herself away. It is the means by which Casca regains, in the most desperate form, a wish she could never again obtain as a human — to be beside the one she loves, and to fight together.

She does not lose. She regains.

And this is also an ending true to Casca. She was not a woman who is merely protected. She was a warrior who could guard Guts' back, a woman who could race across the battlefield together with him.

To support Guts' fight as a sword is the way of being she, in truth, most practiced. From the side that is protected, back to the side that fights together. Becoming a sword is also Casca returning to her own proudest form.

So within this hypothesis, this is no sacrifice. The wish that had been trampled and left hanging in the air comes true, at the last, beside the one she loved most deeply.

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■ But This Must Be a Decision Casca Herself Wished For

But here, let me place one reservation. Becoming a sword can be salvation only in the case where Casca herself chooses it, by her own will.

If she is made into a sword in a form where she is compelled by someone, her agency taken from her once more, then it is not salvation, but only a second trampling.

That is why the success or failure of this ending hangs entirely on whether Casca "chooses." It absolutely must not be a story in which Casca is merely consumed for Guts' sake alone.

The woman who once said she wanted the scar her beloved gave her, having taken up her own wish and her own pain with her own hands, chooses it herself.

Not merely made into a sword by someone. She chooses to become a sword. Only with that will, for the first time, does this become not sacrifice, but salvation.

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■ The Reckoning of the One Left Behind, Again and Again

So far, we have looked at the side of becoming a sword as Casca's "fulfillment of her wish." From here, we look at another side — that it is also the "reckoning of her own pain."

This wish is not for Guts' sake alone. Casca's own most desperate motive lies there.

What I want you to recall is the past in which Casca, with tears welling, sent off the Guts heading to his own fight with "you're going to fight your own fight, aren't you?"

She had the strength to respect his fight. But to send off is also to be left behind. She was the one who held back her tears and saw him off.

Godo left Guts these words: don't go throwing away what's truly precious to you. Turned around, that means Casca, too, was the one who kept sending off what was truly precious and kept being left behind.

And now, she cannot even look squarely at Guts' face. Though he is the very one who protected her so much, the trauma of the Eclipse does not even allow her to stand beside him.

To send off, and be left behind. Unable to see his face, unable even to stand beside him. This is, before it is Guts' pain, Casca's own pain.

If so, then becoming a sword is also a choice by which Casca ends that pain with her own hands. No longer must she send him off. No longer is she left behind. Even unable to see his face, she can be beside him. This is, before it is devotion to Guts, the choice of a single woman who had kept being left behind, to put an end to her own loneliness, herself.

Not to vanish for someone's sake. To choose her own wish, with her own hands, at the last. That is the other meaning of Casca becoming a sword.

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■ The Pain of the One Who Left Her Behind

So far, we have looked at the pain of "the time apart" from Casca's side. From here, we look at the same pain from Guts' side.

Guts, too, holds the same wound, from the opposite side. The two of them hold the same wound, from both sides.

The flame that burns Guts is not only the black flame seething toward Griffith. The wish to take back, once more, at his side, the days he lost — Casca — burns him too, with the same heat, like a signal fire. Guts is not a beast who advances on hatred alone. He is a single human being who mourns what he lost, and tries to take it back.

But when he took Casca back, Guts realizes. As long as she's alive, as long as she's unharmed, that's enough — that's what he wished, heading for the Tower of Conviction. When he had Casca in hand, he thought that was everything.

But he was naive. Merely having her in hand could not wipe away the years he left her behind. The time he left her alone in the dark could not return. For all the time he wandered alone, for all the time he left Casca alone, he had drifted away from her.

Casca sent him off and was left behind. Guts learned that even taking her back, the time he left her behind does not return. The two of them hold the same "time apart," from both sides. Merely having her in hand, merely taking her back beside him, does not fill that time. Time and trauma still pull the two of them apart.

That is why — a sword. Becoming a sword, they no longer part. Neither the time of being left behind, nor the time of leaving behind, is ever born again. The distance Guts ached over as "we've drifted apart" becomes, by her becoming a sword, zero.

Far more than having her in hand. To grip, to wield together, to become one. In a form that never again creates the time apart.

This is the salvation left to the two of them — far too cruel, and yet the most desperate.

Casca's "I don't want to be left behind" and Guts' "I don't want to part anymore" are satisfied at once, within the same single sword. This means not that the two are saved separately, but that the same wound of the two closes at once, in one sword.

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■ And This Is Also Salvation for Guts, and the Completion of the Story of the Sword

Becoming a sword is not Casca's salvation alone. It is also the completion of the story of the sword that is the man Guts.

Guts is a man who has lived with the sword as his everything. From the time he could remember, he gripped a sword; he could prove himself only by the sword; he carved open his path with the sword. His life was the sword itself.

And the beginning of that sword was not love. The one who picked up Guts — born fallen beneath his mother's corpse on a battlefield — was Gambino, who led a band of mercenaries.

Guts revered him as a father, but what was poured into him was not affection, but the technique of the sword, and the battlefield. With a child's body he was made to wield an adult's sword, and in time came to handle a weapon so massive it was hard to let go of.

At the beginning where Guts "gripped a sword from the time he could remember," there was only the sword, given by a father who did not love him.

This beginning surfaces later in the story, in an unexpected form. When Guts cut down, by his own hand, Adonis — the boy of royal blood who grew up unable to receive a father's affection — he was, without doubt, overlaying upon that figure the relationship of his own younger self and Gambino.

The child who was not loved had, within himself, carried Gambino all along.

A life that began with only the sword, given by a father without love.

But the greatest trait of this man was that, no matter how battered his body became, his heart never broke. For the long years since surviving the Eclipse, passing through every kind of hell, Guts' heart alone did not break.

The moment that heart of Guts' finally broke is in the story. On the island of the elves, escaping the fate of the Brand, Guts and Casca spent peaceful days. Casca's memories returned, and at last a faint hope had come into view.

At that peak, Griffith manifests. Guts wields the slab of iron and challenges Griffith. But that sword did not work at all. Against Griffith, who had reached the side of the divine, the blow of the man who had staked everything on the sword did not even graze.

And before his eyes, the Casca he had begun to take back was carried away. It was the perfect shattering of the hope only just glimpsed.

This finally broke Guts' heart. His sword landing not a single blow, unable to protect the most precious thing, he fell to the depths of despair and shut himself in the ship's hold. The heart that had not broken no matter how his body was shattered broke for the first time, when his sword did not reach and his hope was shattered.

To him — trembling hand reaching for the sword, vomiting, collapsing — the Berserker Armor tempts: shall I give you power? Surrender to rage, and you can fight again. But Guts refused it. He refused to flee into the power of the beast.

If so, then what the end of the story needs is for the meaning of that broken sword to revive.

To finally, at the last, make the sword reach that very opponent against whom it did not work at all. And for that sword to be Casca herself, whom it could not protect. The woman the sword could not reach, who was carried away, whom it could not protect — this time becomes the sword itself, and dwells in Guts' hand.

The person the sword could not protect, this time gripped as the sword, and with that sword finally reaching the opponent it once could not. At the very place where the sword was shown to be powerless, where hope was shattered, the meaning of the sword completely revives.

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■ Backed by Godo's Words

Here, Godo's words come to matter. A good sword, even if it rusts and turns dull, keeps at its core a good iron that never rusts. It is the philosophy of the sword, from the old smith who forged Guts' sword and kept gazing at the blade.

These words back the swords of the two, from both sides.

Casca was trampled at the Eclipse, lost her self, and long lay rusting. Her memory and her heart broken, she seemed to have turned dull. But at her core remained a good iron that never rusted — the wish to be beside the man she loves, to become his sword.

Through the Eclipse, her self broken, passing lonely years, holding trauma, that core alone did not rust. That is why Casca can become a sword. Because the good iron at her core still lives.

And it is the same for Guts' sword. Battered in every hell, not a single blow landing on Griffith, his heart broke along with it. It turned dull.

But the core of carving open his path with the sword never rusted. That he refused the armor's temptation in the hold, too, was because the good iron at his core had not rusted. That is why, at the last, that sword is rewarded by housing Casca.

Both of them, even turned dull, kept the good iron at their core from rusting. So the two swords, at the last, become one and are completed. The wish at the core of the rusted woman, and the will at the core of the broken man, remain together within one blade, at once, as iron that never rusts.

The existence he protected with his life becomes a sword. The sword he staked his life on becomes the person to protect. That one blade supports the broken heart once more. Without each aiming for a paradise, they can be together on the same battlefield.

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■ On the Doubt, "Already Branded, Can She Be Offered?"

Here, a natural counterargument first arises, I think. Casca is already a sacrifice branded at the Eclipse, and one who once became a sacrifice cannot be made an offering again — is that not so?

But this does not hold as a counterargument. Rather, it becomes reinforcement, in reverse.

To put it precisely, Casca does not become a sacrifice anew. Even surviving the Eclipse, the effect of the Brand has not vanished. Guts and Casca are, even now, still hunted by the supernatural as the Branded.

In fact, in the Conviction Arc, the Birth Ceremony Chapter, Puck considers that as long as there is one who holds the Brand, the supernatural is drawn to that place, and once the Branded one is gone, that supernatural too may vanish.

The Brand does not end with being carved once at the place of the Eclipse; it keeps functioning, ever after, as a connection that draws the supernatural. This is the direct proof, within the work, that the Brand is not a one-time mark but a continuing mark.

That is: the two have not ceased to be sacrifices; as surviving sacrifices, they remain connected to the side of fate and the supernatural.

And a precedent of that continuation being drawn into the scene once more also already exists within the work. Albion's rite, modeled on the Eclipse. The Branded Guts and Casca were drawn once more into that imitation-Eclipse's ritual structure, and even so, slipped free of the fate of death and survived.

So what is asked at Casca's Eclipse is not "can she be made an offering a second time." It is how the continuing state of a surviving sacrifice is inverted and used at the final singularity.

Casca is not made a sacrifice again. She, who has continued to be a sacrifice all along, inverts that sacrificial nature — not in the direction of being taken by the God Hand, but in the direction of giving, by her own will.

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■ On the Doubt That the Attack Will Not Reach

One more point of concern. Griffith has climbed the ladder of causality, an existence on the side of the divine. A physical blade cannot reach him. Even if Casca dwells in a sword, if it does not land, there is no meaning.

To this counterargument, the precedents within the work answer quite strongly.

Blades that can interfere with an existence on the side of the divine do exist within the work. The sword the Skull Knight holds, and the Dragon Slayer. To put it in order, it is this: Void, who is of the God Hand, once at the place of the Eclipse warped space to evade the Skull Knight's strike. And the Dragon Slayer — with the entrails of a Sea God as a medium, true — reached Slan of the God Hand.

That is: according to the rank and state of the opponent, the strike has reached an existence on the side of the divine. The premise that a physical attack cannot reach the side of the divine has already collapsed.

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■ Griffith "Could Not Receive" That Blade Head-On

Further, there is a decisive fact.

In the battle with Ganishka, Griffith did not receive that knight's Sword of Beckoning head-on. As with Void, he warped space and deflected that single blow toward Ganishka, and as a result made him change the very nature of the world.

On the flow of the story, this looks like "staging to make him cut Ganishka and change the world." But read as placement, more important information is there.

Griffith did not receive that blade head-on. It can also be read: he could not receive it.

He warped space, even, to evade the direct hit. This is a disclosure of weakness: "before a blade that has reached the side of the divine, even Griffith is forced to evade."

It is not that it does not reach. Because it could reach, he dodged.

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■ And the Rank "Wavers"

There is one more piece not to be overlooked. Griffith's rank is not absolutely fixed; it can waver by his own will and emotion. The grounds are three. That when he was reincarnated into the living world once more, that demon child became the catalyst. That he still shares a body with the Moonlight Boy now. That when Rickert struck him on the cheek, he received it. That in the final panel the original author drew, he was shedding tears.

The man who, at the graves of the comrades he had offered up, declared he was apparently free — why does his chest stir, why does he shed tears, before the very one he used and discarded? When struck on the cheek, he murmured, "It seems I have been rejected." It can be read that he received the chastisement deliberately.

What these show is that there are moments when his transcendence frays by will or emotion. That is: not only can a blade reached to the side of the divine "reach," but on Griffith's own side, too, there is an occasion for the rank to waver and a fissure to form. From the side of the sword, and from his side both, the line to the reckoning runs through.

(Apart from the matter of whether the blade physically reaches, the very intervention of Schierke, a sorceress, becomes the key. I touch on this in detail later, in the section "Flora's re-enactment.")

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■ Why the Final Blow Cannot Be Dodged

By this point, the line by which the blade could reach Griffith has run through threefold. Here, let me note one thing. Whereas the physical precedents and the sorceress's intervention I have stated rest on facts shown within the work, what I state from here — "why it cannot be dodged" — is a little different in nature.

What I state from here is not something that can be fixed by the rules of the work alone, but a strong inference, deduced from Griffith's psychology as a character and his placement up to now. Less a firm ground than a reading of "if it is this way, the line runs through." Please bear with me on those terms.

The physical precedent, the sorceress's intervention, the qualification of the one who wields. But that it could reach, and that it lands, are different.

Griffith did, in fact, warp space to dodge the Sword of Beckoning, which reaches the side of the divine. Even a blade that could reach, if dodged, is the end.

So why is it that only the final blow cannot be dodged?

The reason is that, in that instant, Griffith becomes unable to use the divine art of "dodging." What binds him is not a force from without. It is what he himself once cast away. There are three.

The first is the very figure of Guts and Casca become one. Griffith once cut these two off as sacrifices and made them the foundation of his own transcendence. Those two — having crossed the curse of the Eclipse, inverted causality — stand before him as one blade, and the swordsman who wields it. The very extreme of human will, which should lie outside the principle of the divine, appears in form. Onto the board of the man who saw through all, who governed all, something incalculable is inserted for the first time.

The second is the Moonlight Boy. The Griffith of now uses the body of the Moonlight Boy, the child of Guts and Casca, as his vessel. At the core of that boy's soul is an unconditional longing for his mother. The instant he senses the soul of his mother Casca within the descending sword, a resistance arises from within, over control of the body. The child's instinct — that his mother must not be harmed — binds the divine flesh for an instant, and throws off the interval he should dodge. This is not psychology, but a shackle inserted into the flesh.

The third is the man Guts himself. Griffith was a man who could advance, without moving a single brow, over the corpses of countless comrades. But Guts alone was different. The one exception — who alone made him forget his dream, held him back, and whom he fell into self-abandon over losing. To Griffith, Guts is human weakness itself, which throws his divine dream into disorder. That man, now, comes to cut him down. The figure of the two made one. The voice of his child crying from within. And the gaze of the man who made him forget his dream.

These three are inserted into Griffith at once, in the instant the slab of iron is brought down. At that moment, Griffith realizes: he is no longer a god, but has been drawn back into a single, imperfect human, who was there in that Golden Age, together with Guts and Casca.

The grace of a god is the power to manipulate causality. The art of dodging is one of them. But in the instant he falls to a human, that art cannot be used. The blade he could dodge while he remained a god, he can no longer dodge the instant he returns to human.

And what drops him to a human is not an attack from without. It is the bond of the two he cut off for the sake of transcendence, the child he used for incarnation, the friend he tried to forget.

The very humanity Griffith cast away, at the last, binds him, and lets the blade reach. It is not that the blade could reach. It is that Griffith cannot dodge. Those who were cast away take, from the man who cast them away, the divine art.

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■ What Does That Blow Cut?

Here, let me make clear what the final blow cuts.

It is not merely a blow that kills Griffith's flesh. The Griffith of now uses the body of the Moonlight Boy, the child of Guts and Casca, as his vessel. If so, then merely cutting that body would mean cutting one's own child.

So this blow is not a blade to kill, but a blade to sever. A blow to sever the fusion of Femto and the Moonlight Boy.

The Dragon Slayer, with Casca dwelling in it, does not kill Femto, but severs the seam of incarnation between Femto and the Moonlight Boy. Guts strikes down his foe and saves his child at once. Casca, as a mother, takes back her child from within the sword.

This connects, too, with how the Sword of Beckoning severed a boundary in the Ganishka battle and altered the world. What a blade reached to the side of the divine brings about is not mere slaughter, but the severing of a connection or boundary.

Here, let me make one thing clear — the very meaning of the reckoning itself.

This blow does not aim to physically erase the existence that is Griffith. Whether a God Hand that has reached the side of the divine vanishes completely from merely having its flesh severed — that cannot be determined from what the work has shown.

But that is fine. The essence of this reckoning does not lie in destroying Griffith itself. It lies in the state where Guts and Griffith no longer interfere with each other — in the severing of the bond.

And here, the nature of the Moonlight Boy comes to matter.

The Moonlight Boy is not an existence of the living world alone. Usually he appears in the living world, as an innocent boy. But he has become the vessel of Griffith's incarnation, and shares a body with the Griffith on the side of the divine.

Though not as deep in the astral world as Flora, he leans toward the living world while still, certainly, interfering with the astral — an existence of the gap.

This is no accident. The Moonlight Boy is the very child of Guts and Casca — of those who stand in the gap. The gap is inherited, as blood.

This nature becomes decisive. The Dragon Slayer, with Casca dwelling in it, is a blade bearing the nature of the astral world. Against a purely living-world body, that astral blade would have no meaning.

But precisely because the Moonlight Boy is an existence straddling the gap of the living world and the astral, that blade can sever the fusion of the Moonlight Boy and Griffith — bound on the side of the astral world.

To sever the Moonlight Boy's fusion is to tear Griffith away from the vessel that is his own child.

Having lost his vessel, Griffith no longer holds a body to stand before Guts.

Even if he remains, as a God Hand, somewhere in causality, the point at which Guts and Griffith intersect within each other's story — that vanishes.

The reckoning of Berserk is not a mere tale of single combat. Not won, or lost, but each falling out of the other's story. The bond, severed. That is what the true reckoning, in this story, is.

The Moonlight Boy is the vessel of Griffith, and at the same time, the last point that ties Guts and Griffith together. To sever the fusion of that child of the gap is to save the child, and at the same time, to sever the bond with Griffith. A single blade accomplishes the child's salvation, and the reckoning, at once.

The offered mother becomes the blade, and that blade tears away her child of the gap, and then, severs the bond with the nemesis.

The meaning of Casca becoming a sword, the existence of the Moonlight Boy, the meaning of Guts' sword — here they converge into one. The offered mother becomes the blade, and that blade tears her child away from the foe.

The wish becomes a sword, and grants another wish — to take back her child.

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■ The Complete Inversion of the Catastrophe

Here, everything turns over.

Griffith once trampled the one made to forget his dream, and the one who wished to become a sword, and transcended. And he dodged, without receiving head-on, a blade that reaches the side of the divine. Those two things he "did in the past" return, at the last, to himself.

The one who delivers him his end, at the last, is the blade in which dwells the woman he trampled — who once wished to become his sword. And the blade equal to the Sword of Beckoning he once dodged, this time he cannot dodge. Because that blade is wielded by a man of the same gap, by an art refined over countless nights.

The trampled wish comes true in the hand of the one it was taken from, and the dodged blade returns by the hand of those cast away. There is no inversion greater than this, I think.

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■ What the Latest Chapter Rewrote — The Redefinition into "One of the Same Side"

The one who settles it at the last is not a god, nor a miracle, nor the power of the Behelit. The key to reading it lies in the latest chapter.

In the latest chapter, a certain truth concerning the protagonist's origin was shown. I will leave the details unsaid, but to state only the point: a rewriting of structure has occurred, in which two existences long depicted as "opposites" were, in fact, "of the same gap."

Light and dark. Wing and sword. The chosen one, and the cast-away one. Two who, for thirty-five years, were depicted as utterly opposite were revealed to be, at the root, those holding the same nature. A re-arrangement of the very definition, of a scale among the largest in the series.

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■ This Disclosure Does Not Nullify Effort

This kind of "in fact, a special origin" disclosure can, one step wrong, ruin all that has been built up. If it becomes "in the end, he was special by birth," the life of blood and mud the protagonist shed risks becoming meaningless.

But my reading is the exact opposite. This disclosure, far from nullifying effort, rather gives what has been built up a meaning beyond any other.

Why can I say so? The key is to consider "origin" and "process" separately.

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■ Origin Is No More Than a "Premise"

The special origin revealed is common to the two. That is: it does not become a difference that divides them. What origin gives is no more than a "premise" — a qualification, merely, to be involved with that special domain of the world.

A qualification is not power itself. An existence merely born holding the premise was no more than "one who can belong to neither side." Origin only decides the starting point; how far one can go from there, it guarantees nothing.

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■ Power Is Obtained Only Through "Process"

Then what divides the two? It is not premise, but process.

One man forged all of that power by himself. A body able to trade blows with inhuman foes. A weapon that, at the end of endless swinging, came to reach even a realm beyond human wit.

These were not given by anyone. They are achievements, refined without skipping a single night — pain, the line of death, defeat. Not a special weapon from the start; the achievement of cutting through special things refined a mere slab of iron to a rank beyond the human realm.

The other man had his power given by another, offering up his comrades. With the blood of his comrades as the price, he merely received the rank. It is a bestowed thing, a station guaranteed by the system, not something he built up one step at a time.

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■ The Instant They Became the Same Side, Only Process Remains

This is the core of this recovery. The instant the two are reclassified as "of the same side," the variable of origin is offset as a premise and vanishes. Because both hold the qualification.

Then the variable that divides victory and defeat becomes only one. The difference in accumulation. And that accumulation is on one side only. The one who merely ascended in a single stroke has no process. Only the one who kept refining, every night, has process.

A qualification is decided by birth. Power is obtained only through process. To the one who got it by offering, the one who refined it every night reaches.

And this redefinition into "one of the same side" meshes precisely, too, with the words of the Skull Knight, stated later.

The one who can touch the Hawk is only one who is, like him, outside the story. That Guts has been revealed to be one of the same gap as the Hawk also means that Guts holds, at the level of origin, the qualification to touch the Hawk.

It is not only that he wins through process. From the start, he stands on the side that can reach the Hawk.

This is the conclusion I received from this recovery.

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■ What Ends It at the Last Is the Art and the Slab of Iron He Forged Himself

The reading so far converges into a single image. The one who settles it at the last is not a god, nor a miracle, nor the power of the Behelit. It is Guts' slab of iron.

Origin is offset, and what remains is only the difference in process. The one who holds that process is Guts alone. So the one to end it is not power a god gave, but that slab of iron — forged by himself, at the end of countless nights of challenging, protecting, and struggling on.

Casca offers herself up and becomes a sword, and Guts wields that sword with the art he refined. The one who offered becomes the blade, and the one who refined the process swings it through.

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■ It Closes Not as a Circle, but as a Spiral

And the form that runs through all of it, the latest chapter has shown. The greatest ground for saying this ending "is possible" lies here.

Because nearly this same thing happened once, a thousand years ago.

Flora, the witch of the spirit tree. One of the shrine maidens who served the Cherry Blossom Princess, and a witch who committed a forbidden art. She had an existence with whom she held a deep bond: the Skull Knight.

The identity of this Skull Knight is strongly suggested within the work. Gaiseric, the Conqueror King who ruled the continent a thousand years ago. The man whom Slan of the God Hand called "King," whom Zodd called "the one who has defied us for a thousand years."

Here, let me confirm one premise. The argument "because the standard rite goes like this" does not, in fact, hold in Berserk. Because the Eclipse and rite-type events that have appeared within the work are almost all exceptional.

The birth of Void a thousand years ago, while close to the prototype of God Hand birth, includes the external interference of Flora's forbidden art. The Count's second time is an irregularity — a re-activation by one already an Apostle.

Griffith's Eclipse, while close to standard in procedure, includes the exception of the sacrifices surviving.

Albion is a rite of incarnation modeled on the Eclipse.

The Ganishka battle is not even a rite, but a world alteration.

Not one shares the same pattern. That is: a rite presented, textbook-fashion, as "this is the standard" does not exist within the work.

If so, then the criticism "the standard rite makes it impossible" collapses from its premise. The rites of Berserk should be seen not as a fixed procedure, but as a group of rites, in which despair, wish, offering, Brand, sorcery, and the field of causality combine.

And among those, all exceptional, the most important reference point from the standpoint of reincarnation, circle, and spiral is the one from a thousand years ago.

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■ What Happened a Thousand Years Ago

To line up the making of the Skull Knight, in order, it is this.

A thousand years ago, an Eclipse occurred in which Void transmigrated into the God Hand. At that Eclipse, the Conqueror King Gaiseric was made a sacrifice, wearing the Berserker Armor. The Cherry Blossom Princess, his beloved, died. And Gaiseric himself died.

Here, Flora commits a forbidden art. She kept the soul of the dead Gaiseric in the living world. Its result is the form of the Skull Knight — who, a thousand years later, still wanders the living world, a wraith fighting on against fate.

That is: the content of Flora's forbidden art was — to keep a dead one in the living world. A sorcery that binds to this world a soul that should return. That is the forbidden art she committed.

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■ What Is About to Happen Now Is Its Repetition

Here, let me line up the ending of my reading alongside a thousand years ago.

Guts fully turns into a berserker. The true despair of Casca, despairing at it, triggers a new Eclipse. Casca, to save Guts, offers herself up. It comes true, and Guts regains his sanity. And Schierke commits a forbidden art and keeps the offered soul of Casca in the living world.

Lined up, it is plain at a glance. Turning berserker, despair, death (offering), and fixing to the living world by a witch's forbidden art. This is the complete re-enactment of what Flora did to Gaiseric a thousand years ago.

Schierke, Flora's disciple, commits the same forbidden art as her master. To keep a dead one in the living world. A thousand years apart, the same structure is traced once more.

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■ Why Can She Interfere — The Key of "One Outside the Story"

And that Schierke can be involved in this ending has a clear backing within the work.

On the midnight shore, the Skull Knight speaks thus of Griffith: "The Hawk is now one who places himself outside the principle of the living world, and no existence in the human realm could be thought to consecrate him."

"That would be like a character within a story challenging the one who pens it — a thing that, by nature, cannot be."

But the Skull Knight shows an exception there: "If there is one who could challenge and touch the Hawk, it is one who is, like him, outside the story — all the more so, a sorcerer of power. Rather than an army of ten thousand, the Hawk deemed a single sorcerer the obstacle."

That is: the work clearly defines it. There exists one who can interfere, from outside the story, with Griffith reached to the side of the divine. And it is a sorcerer of power.

Therefore, to destroy Flora, the witch of the spirit tree, alone, he sent a great host including Zodd and Grunbeld.

This is a matter of a different dimension from whether the sword physically reaches. That a physical blade can reach the side of the divine, I touched on earlier in the section "the doubt that the attack will not reach."

In addition to that, the very layer of sorcery, the work guarantees, can reach out from outside Griffith's rank.

Schierke is exactly that "sorcerer of power." Flora's legitimate disciple, holding the achievement of housing the power of a fire spirit in the Dragon Slayer.

That is why Schierke's forbidden art is not a mere single sorcery, but can act — in accord with the rules of the work — upon an ending that draws in an existence reached to the side of the divine.

The ending in which Casca dwells in the sword becomes, through the intervention of Schierke the sorceress, a line that reaches Griffith from outside the story, beyond the range of the physical blade.

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■ Why Does Schierke Step Into the Forbidden Art?

Schierke's role is strong upon the rules of the work. A sorcerer of power, Flora's legitimate disciple, holding the achievement of housing the power of a fire spirit in the Dragon Slayer.

But that the rules are in place, and that she chooses it, are separate problems. For Schierke to commit the same forbidden art, even understanding her master's error, requires her own motive.

That motive is already depicted within the work. Schierke holds feelings for Guts. But understanding Casca's existence, and knowing that within Guts there is a place that is hers alone, she has stepped back.

That Guts is swallowed by the Berserker Armor and the Beast of Darkness, and breaks. At that time, Schierke steps into the inside of the very Guts she wished to protect even while stepping back. She tries, with all her power, to hold back the beast that would swallow him.

Here she overlaps with Flora of a thousand years ago.

Further, there is one more line. Once, Schierke entered Casca's broken inner world, and within it was helped by Flora — a precedent.

If Casca's Eclipse is a place of chaos, the possibility is fully there that Flora intervenes with Schierke from the side of the inner world, the astral world, and guides the forbidden art.

In that case, Flora is no longer merely "the counterpart of a thousand years ago." At Casca's Eclipse, she becomes the present participant who guides Schierke.

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■ The Two Who Could Not Fight Together a Thousand Years Ago, Here Stand Together for the First Time

Here, a structure not to be overlooked rises up. The joint fight of Flora and the Skull Knight.

But this is not a "reunion." A thousand years ago, the Skull Knight did not yet exist. Flora committed the forbidden art, and what was born as its result is the Skull Knight.

That is: a thousand years ago, Flora committed the forbidden art utterly alone — with no precedent, no one to guide her, no power to break the God Hand's rule. That is why the soul of Gaiseric, holding no vessel, could only become a wraith of bone.

A thousand years ago was Flora's isolation.

But at Casca's Eclipse, it differs. The Skull Knight himself, who a thousand years ago was only a "result," this time stands on the board from the same side as Flora.

The Skull Knight pries open the Eclipse's rule. Flora hands Schierke the path of the forbidden art from the side of the inner world. Schierke carries out the forbidden art in that gap.

The forbidden art she could only do alone a thousand years ago, this time they can do together. The one who was once born as the result of the forbidden art, this time opens the way, to turn that forbidden art into salvation.

This is a structure in which an old generation, bearing the past, entrusts the continuation of failure to the young generation. In our generation, it could only become the tragedy of the circle. But you can make it another form.

And this is also the Skull Knight's own salvation. He was, born of Flora's forbidden art yet become a vessel-less wraith, the very "failure" of that forbidden art.

That he, at the last, fights so that no wraith like himself is ever born again. I became a wraith. But Guts and Casca, I will not let walk the same road.

Revenge, and mourning, and handing down to those who follow. The isolated forbidden art of a thousand years ago, through the joint fight, slips from circle to spiral.

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■ The One Who Makes the Sword, and the One Who Wields It

And "one outside the story" is not the sorcerer alone.

In the latest chapter, Guts himself, too, was revealed to be, like Griffith, "one of the same gap" — that is, one who is, like the Hawk, outside the story.

Here, the Skull Knight's words come to matter one step deeper. The one who can touch the Hawk is one who is, like him, outside the story. Schierke holds that qualification, as a sorcerer of power. And Guts holds that qualification, by the origin revealed in the latest chapter, as one who is, like the Hawk, outside the story.

That is: the one who makes the sword, and the one who wields it, are both "those who can touch the Hawk" by the Skull Knight's definition.

Schierke, who fixes Casca into the sword, and Guts, who wields that sword. Both belong to the few exceptions who can reach out to the Hawk from outside the story.

So this reckoning holds.

Upon the precedent that a physical blade reaches, the definition that a sorcerer can touch overlaps; and further, the qualification that the one who wields himself stands on the same side as the Hawk overlaps.

Threefold, the line that reaches Griffith runs through.

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■ Causality Is Not a Circle, but a Spiral

Here, Flora's prophecy comes to matter. Causality is not a circle. Not a ring in which the same thing repeats, but a spiral. Those children may not choose the same road as the past.

And this reading — "causality is a spiral" — is not supported by Flora's prophecy alone. Its proof has already occurred, once, within the work.

Albion.

That great Eclipse at the climax of the Conviction Arc was not the true Eclipse itself, but a rite "modeled" on it.

If so, then so long as one follows the original flow of causality, Guts and Casca, who were on the side offered up as sacrifices, were under the fate of dying at that place. By the logic of the Eclipse, the sacrifice dies. If it were a circle, that is the result that should repeat.

But both survived.

The two slipped free of the fate by which they should have died. This is the surest proof that causality is not a circle that merely traces the same ring, but a spiral that traces the same structure while shifting one notch.

Flora's prophecy is not a matter of the future. It is no more than putting into words what the two had already, once, proven by their own survival.

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■ From a Thousand Years Ago, Three Decisive Differences

Tracing the same structure, the result shifts one notch. What produces that is three differences between a thousand years ago and now.

The first is the owner of the Behelit. A thousand years ago, the one at the center of the Eclipse was the God Hand on the side that transmigrates — likely Void. This time, the one who holds the Behelit and whose despair triggers the Eclipse is Casca.

The second is the presence or absence of a "vessel" for the soul to dwell in. A thousand years ago, there was no such vessel. So the soul of Gaiseric, kept in the living world, held no vessel to dwell in and could only wander a thousand years as the Skull Knight, mere bone.

This time, there is that vessel. A substance able to contain an existence of the astral world — the Dragon Slayer. That sword, which the process of Guts cutting through changed from a mere slab of iron into a vessel able to house spirits.

And the third is the greatest. The presence of the Skull Knight himself. A thousand years ago, the Skull Knight was not yet there. Far from it — he is an existence "born" at that Eclipse. As the result of Flora's forbidden art.

That is: Flora of a thousand years ago committed the forbidden art utterly alone, with no precedent, no one to guide her, no power to break the God Hand's rule. That is why, with no conception of a vessel, Gaiseric became a wraith.

The Eclipse is a rite the God Hand completely rules. A forbidden art performed in isolation within that order could only give birth to a wraith. But this time, there is that Skull Knight. He is not a mere onlooker.

He is a man who clearly stands against the God Hand, calls himself "the one who defies the five angels," "the one who has defied us for a thousand years," and for a thousand years has aimed at the manifestation of the God Hand. The Eclipse is the place where that God Hand manifests. What he waited a thousand years for is none other than this very moment.

And he has already, once, altered the world itself. With the Sword of Beckoning he cut through dimensions and struck at Femto. That blade, as a result, cleaved Ganishka in two, fused the living world and the astral world, and gave birth to a world of chaos. His single swing holds the power to change the very nature of the world from its root.

That man, at the place of Casca's Eclipse, stands against the God Hand. With the Sword of Beckoning, he pries open the order of the Eclipse that the God Hand should rule. This works decisively.

And that the Skull Knight can break the God Hand's rule has, above all, a direct precedent. None other than Griffith's Eclipse.

At that Eclipse, the Band of the Hawk were offered up as sacrifices. The sacrifice of the Eclipse, within the rite the God Hand rules, cannot escape. That is the rule of the work. And yet, the Skull Knight broke into that place, and carried out the sacrifices who should not have been able to escape — Guts and Casca — and made them flee the Eclipse. He made, with his own hand, the result that should not be: a sacrifice surviving.

How exceptional this was, the Apostles themselves testify. Later, even Ganishka, before the Branded Guts, muttered, "To think there is a sacrifice who survived." Even seen from the side of the Apostles, a sacrifice who survived the Eclipse was an astonishing exception.

And this single point — "survived" — ties, too, with another prophecy. Once, Zodd the Immortal told Guts, still in the Band of the Hawk: "If you are an existence who can be called Griffith's 'true friend,' then mark this. When this man's ambition perishes, an inescapable death will come to you."

An inescapable death. Upon causality, Guts should have died at the Eclipse. But the Skull Knight's intervention pried open that fate. Guts survived the death Zodd prophesied.

That is why, reuniting later on the hill of swords, Zodd says to Guts: "Well done, defying my prophecy and surviving. I am glad, boy."

That is: what the Skull Knight pried open at the Eclipse was not merely a single life. It was the very fate that should have been decided — fate an Apostle prophesied, and at which an Apostle marveled. He broke, with his own hand, the appointed fate of death within the Eclipse the God Hand rules. And the ones he saved then were none other than Guts and Casca.

A thousand years ago, Flora could only commit the forbidden art in isolation, within a board under the God Hand's rule. But this time, the Skull Knight takes on the God Hand and breaks its rule. In the gap born there, Schierke completes the forbidden art, Casca becomes a sword, and Guts can wield it.

The Skull Knight does not merely see it through. The one who a thousand years ago became a vessel-less wraith, this time acts upon the world himself, breaks the God Hand's rule, and pries open, with his own hand, the place where the two who follow can choose the spiral.

Three differences. The owner of the Behelit, the trigger. The vessel, the receptacle of the soul. And the existence of the Skull Knight. Only when these three are in place does the circle become a spiral.

Without a vessel, the soul kept in the living world can only become a wandering wraith. Like the Skull Knight, a thousand years ago. But there is a vessel, and a forbidden art to house the soul in that vessel, and a blade to pry open the gap that lets the forbidden art hold. That is why that soul can dwell as a sword. Not wandering, but in the hand of the one she loves.

The same forbidden art, by the presence or absence of these three, changes its destination. Mere bone of a wraith, or Guts' sword. This is the decisive fork of circle and spiral.

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■ Housing the Od in a Vessel Is Not an Overstepping of the Forbidden Art

Here, some may hold a counterargument. To bind a soul to a substance, a sword — is that not an excessive extension, going even further than Flora's forbidden art?

But if you separate the order, this does not become an overstepping.

First, there is something I want to confirm. To "house something spiritual in a vessel, a weapon" is not, in itself, a forbidden art.

There is a clear precedent within the work. The scene where Schierke housed the power of a fire spirit in the Dragon Slayer and loosed a flame-clad strike.

This is not depicted as a forbidden art. It is an art within the range of legitimate sorcery, used by Flora's legitimate disciple.

From here, a backward deduction works. If "housing a spiritual existence in a substance" were itself a forbidden art, then Schierke would already be committing a forbidden art at the point of that fire-spirit infusion. But it is not depicted so. That is: the act of housing something spiritual in a vessel is not, in itself, a forbidden art.

Then what was Flora's forbidden art?

Here, the Skull Knight's way of being shows the answer. He calls himself a "wraith." He is not a living being. And the Berserker Armor, worn continuously, brings death to its wearer — stated clearly within the work.

And yet, the Skull Knight has lived a thousand years. This means he is not "a living being who extended his lifespan." The line of life-extension is crushed here. He is a dead one.

Further, there is a decisive depiction. Puck senses, from the Skull Knight, an aura resembling that of an elf. A fairy — that is, the aura of one belonging not to the human realm, but to the astral world.

The Skull Knight is neither human nor Apostle. He is a wraith, placing himself toward the astral world.

Layering these, the content of Flora's forbidden art can be narrowed down. It is not "to nail a soul to a substance."

To remove an Od that has lost its flesh from the principle of reincarnation, and keep it in the living world as a wraith toward the astral world. That is the forbidden art she committed.

This distinction is decisive.

Dwelling in a substance is not a forbidden art (there is the precedent of spirit infusion). Removing a soul from reincarnation is a forbidden art (there is the result of the Skull Knight). These two are matters of a different layer.

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■ Casca, as a Resident of the Astral World, Makes the Sword Her Vessel

Applying this distinction to Casca, the image of the ending becomes more precise.

Casca is not nailed to the substance of the sword.

Schierke, using a forbidden art of the same line as Flora, removes Casca's Od from reincarnation.

Casca, having lost her flesh, becomes — like the Skull Knight — a wraith placing herself toward the astral world.

And that wraith-become Casca chooses the Dragon Slayer as a window, a vessel, through which to interfere with the living world.

Here, two structures correspond completely.

The Skull Knight is the wraith of Gaiseric, and remains in the living world.

Casca is a wraith, and remains in the living world, with the Dragon Slayer as her vessel.

The part of housing something spiritual in a vessel is legitimate sorcery (the precedent of spirit infusion).

The part of removing a soul from reincarnation is a forbidden art (the precedent of the Skull Knight).

By this division of labor, Casca becoming a sword holds not as an extension of the work's rules, but as a combination of two precedents already shown.

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■ The Same Structure Divides Circle and Spiral

And this structure of "wraith plus vessel" backs the fork of circle and spiral, at one layer deeper.

The Skull Knight keeps wandering the living world as a wraith. Having lost his beloved, the Cherry Blossom Princess, he fights on against fate, utterly alone.

There is no one to be together with him. This is the circle of a thousand years ago. A wraith, wandering, alone.

Casca, too, is the same wraith. But what differs decisively is — the presence of a vessel, and the hand that holds her vessel, there.

The sword in which the wraith-become Casca dwells, Guts grips. She does not wander. She is in the hand of the man she loves. While being the same "wraith" structure, the Skull Knight wanders alone, and Casca is in the hand of the one she loves.

The structure is the same. Only the destination shifts one notch. This is the very deepest form of what it means to be not a circle, but a spiral.

Not only the presence or absence of a vessel. That a soul becomes a wraith and dwells in a vessel — that soul reaches a destination shifted one notch: not a lonely wandering, but the hand of the one she loves.

The wraith of Gaiseric, having lost the Cherry Blossom Princess, wandered alone a thousand years ago. Casca, who becomes a wraith held in the hand of the man she loves. The same wraith, dwelling in the same vessel, shifts from the loneliness of the circle to the nestling-together of the spiral.

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■ And at the Place of the Eclipse, All the Players Are Assembled

One more thing — that it occurs as an Eclipse holds great meaning. The Eclipse is the rite where the God Hand manifests. So at that place, the five of the God Hand — Void, Slan, Ubik, Conrad, Femto (Griffith) — are assembled.

Guts has, once, defied the "inescapable death" Zodd prophesied. By the help of the Skull Knight. The fate that should have been decided, he survived.

This connects straight to the matter of circle and spiral. Flora declared: those children may not choose the same road as the past — not a circle, but a spiral. Zodd acknowledged that the decided death was defied. Witch and Apostle, two whose standpoints utterly differ, each show the same thing in their own form. That Guts is one who, with his own hand, defies the fate laid before him.

If so, then at the final reckoning, too, Guts does not end as causality would have it. Guts defies the prophesied destruction once more. The first time, by the Skull Knight's intervention. And the second time, by the Skull Knight again breaking the God Hand's rule, Casca becoming a sword, and Guts wielding it.

The man who once defied causality, at the last, defies causality once more. That is what it means to close not as a circle, but as a spiral.

And the Skull Knight, too — born at the Eclipse a thousand years ago, ever since aiming at the God Hand's manifestation — holds a reason to appear at this place.

That is: at the place of Casca's Eclipse, all the players are assembled. Guts. Casca. Schierke. Isidro. Griffith. The God Hand. And the Skull Knight, and likely, Flora.

And among the players assembled there, there is one more man not to be overlooked. Azan.

Azan, who was once in a secular order of knights, was betrayed by those he was to protect, and from that pain cast away his sword and took holy vows. But betrayal pursues the man who thought he had renounced the world, twice.

Albion, that imitation Eclipse. There, he was betrayed once more by the teaching and the comrades he was supposed to protect.

Not once, but twice, betrayed by what he was to protect. That is the circle Azan bears.

That man, now, stands at the place of the Eclipse, as one of Guts' group. To a third place of betrayal.

If it were a circle, Azan would be betrayed again. Betrayed by what he was to protect, piling up only pain. That is what it means to trace the same ring. But the Eclipse is a place that shifts not as a circle, but as a spiral.

Here, what Azan protects is neither god nor church. The woman who becomes a sword, and the man who wields her.

That those two are bound not by betrayal but by giving each other their lives — that, he stands on the side to see through to the end.

The man betrayed twice sees, at the third time, not betrayal but fulfillment. Azan's circle, too, at this single point, shifts into a spiral.

There, two reckonings occur at once. The reckoning twenty-odd years in the making, between Guts and Griffith. And the reckoning a thousand years in the making, between the Skull Knight and Flora, and the God Hand.

The man who a thousand years ago, holding no vessel, could only become a wraith, faces his nemesis — and at the same time, the soul that gained a vessel becomes a sword and dwells in the hand of the one she loves. The ending the knight of the past could not reach, Guts and Casca reach.

This is what it means to be not a circle, but a spiral. If a circle, then Guts too, like Gaiseric, would only end fighting on as a wraith bearing loss. But if a spiral, he does not return to the same axis. He shifts one notch. By the differences, the vessel among them.

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■ All Converges into a Single "Singularity"

So far, we have built up many elements. Guts' origin. The two who were Branded. The Dragon Slayer that becomes the vessel. Casca's decision. Schierke the sorceress. And the existence of the Skull Knight.

These all gather at the single point of Casca's Eclipse. And what occurs at that time, the Skull Knight expresses, just once within the work, with a certain word.

"Singularity."

(* The concept of "singularity" appears in Volume 18, the Conviction Arc "Birth Ceremony Chapter," in "The Devil's Road (2)," in the conversation between Guts and the Skull Knight on the road to Albion. As far as I can tell, this word is used only this one place within the work.)

A singularity is a special point where general laws and regularities cease to hold. An exceptional state where the usual rules do not apply. It points to that branching where, at a single point, everything changes abruptly.

In that conversation, the Skull Knight speaks thus: you may be not a shadow cast upon the water, but a fish that ripples its surface.

An ordinary existence is no more than a shadow merely cast upon the water that is the principle of the world. An existence merely moved as decided, following causality. But one who could become a singularity is not a shadow. He may be a fish that ripples the water's surface itself. An existence standing not on the side reflected by the principle, but on the side that shakes the principle itself.

All that I have stated here connects to this single point.

That Guts makes his blade reach Griffith on the side of the divine. That he defies the decided fate of death. That a sacrifice remains as a sword. That the circle shifts into a spiral. These are all things that a mere shadow, cast upon the water that is the principle of the world, could never bring about. One who follows the principle can only end as the principle dictates.

But at a singularity, that principle ceases to hold.

And a singularity is not born of a single factor. Guts' origin. The two Branded who stand in the gap. The vessel able to house spirits. The will of Casca, who offers herself up. Schierke, who completes the forbidden art. The Skull Knight, who breaks the God Hand's rule. All of these gather at the single point of the Eclipse, at once. That compounding gives birth to a singularity, where the usual rules do not hold.

That is why this ending holds. Each single element, even one that, alone, would be dismissed as "impossible," at a singularity where they converge into a single point — there, the impossible can occur.

The Skull Knight had named it, long ago. You may be a fish that ripples the water's surface.

Guts and Casca, not shadows reflected upon the principle of the world, but fish that ripple the principle itself, stand at the renewed Eclipse. The singularity that arises there makes possible the ending of a spiral, not a circle.

Here, let me note one thing. The singularity I have just described is, throughout, a singularity as an event within the work. An exceptional point where will defying causality gathers at one place, and the principle of the world shifts.

But this word "singularity" holds another layer. When all the reckonings, and how the world closes, have been seen through, this singularity comes to stand forth as something beyond a single event within the work — as the place where the very structure that Berserk has kept depicting crosses at a single point.

Upon the principle within the work, an exceptional point where will gathers. And upon the structure of the story, a convergence point where the forms repeated again and again cross, all at once. Casca's Eclipse is the place where those two hold true at the same time.

Just how great a scale this second layer truly was — I will return to it, at the last, in its largest form. Here, I have only stood at its entrance.

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■ Conclusion

Casca remains not as a wraith of bone, but as a sword. The two reach an ending of a spiral, not a circle — different from the ending of a thousand years ago, where the Skull Knight lost his beloved and could only become a wraith.

This is the ending of Berserk, as I read it.

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■ And How the World Closes — Two Blades Turn the World Over

So far, we have read what happens at Casca's Eclipse. But this reading has, further, what lies beyond. After the reckoning. The matter of how the story itself ends.

But here, there is one large question I must settle first.

Supposing Griffith is defeated, where is the guarantee that the altered world returns to what it was?

The one who changed this world into a fused world of the living and the astral, where monsters run rampant, is not Griffith. It was that single blow, where the Skull Knight's Sword of Beckoning cleaved Ganishka in two.

If so, then striking down Griffith, while it is avenging, does not directly connect to returning the altered world to what it was.

But here, there is a correspondence easily overlooked.

Ganishka was not a mere Apostle. He was, by demon-womb rebirth — casting away the body of Prince Ganishka, and within the demonic womb, dying once and being born again as an inhuman monster — a being of re-transmigration. When that re-transmigrated being was cut by the Sword of Beckoning, the world turned over, and the living world and the astral world fused.

And Griffith, too, is a being of re-transmigration. Once becoming the God Hand Femto, incarnating into the living world through that demon child as a catalyst, now using the body of the Moonlight Boy as his vessel. Exactly the same as Ganishka — "a being who once became inhuman, and incarnated into the living world again."

If so, then a single line runs through.

When the Sword of Beckoning cut Ganishka, a being of re-transmigration, the world turned over. Then, if a being of re-transmigration — likewise Griffith — is cut by a blade of the same nature as the Sword of Beckoning, the turned-over world turns over once more, and returns.

The guarantee that the world returns lies not in Griffith's death itself. It lies in the very nature of that single blow — to sever a re-transmigrated being with a blade of the rank that turns the world over.

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■ And Griffith Is Deeper Than Ganishka

Here, one natural question arises. Ganishka was, in fact, cut by the Sword of Beckoning, a physical blade. Then what of Griffith? Where is the guarantee he can be cut the same way?

Rather, it is the reverse.

On the island of the elves, Guts' Dragon Slayer landed not a single blow on Griffith. The full swing of the man who staked everything on the sword did not even graze. Bow, sword — ordinary physical force does not reach Griffith, who has reached the side of the divine.

But this does not mean Griffith is "far" from the structure of the world. It is the reverse. That a physical blade does not reach is because the center of gravity of the existence Griffith is placed that much deeper, on the side of the astral world and causality.

Ganishka, even before re-transmigration — turned into thunderclouds themselves, holding no substance, letting the physical pass through, in the state of "mist" — was an existence pierced by the Dragon Slayer.

To that form, of which it was said "there is no spear that pierces mist," Guts answered, "there is a spear that pierces mist," and with that slab of iron pierced Ganishka, become thunderclouds.

Even in a state holding no substance, the spear that is the Dragon Slayer reached him. That much, Ganishka was in a layer where a physical blade reaches. That is why he was cut by the Sword of Beckoning and became the medium of world alteration.

Griffith is a re-transmigrated being in the layer that physical blade does not reach. As the God Hand itself, rooted in a deeper place of the astral world and causality.

And recall — that alteration of the world was the fusion of the living and the astral. That the world turns over is a phenomenon derived from the astral world.

If so, then to sever an existence bound more deeply to the astral world is to put the blade closer to the "root" of world alteration.

Ganishka, a medium swollen toward the living-world side. Griffith, a medium rooted deeply on the astral-world side. Both are bound to the structure of the world. But in the "depth" of that binding, Griffith is the greater.

That a physical blade does not reach is not proof of being far from the structure of the world. Rather, it is a strong suggestion of being, while in the living world, rooted most deeply in the astral world.

(I should note: to say "a physical blade does not reach" may seem to contradict what I argued earlier, in "the doubt that the attack will not reach," that a blade reaches the side of the divine. But this is not a contradiction. The ordinary-state Dragon Slayer does not reach the deeply rooted Griffith. But with the entrails of a Sea God as a medium, the Dragon Slayer reached Slan of the God Hand. Gaining a medium, taking on the nature of the astral world, it reaches. The Dragon Slayer, with Casca dwelling in it and the Od fixed by Schierke's forbidden art, is exactly that — a blade taking on the nature of the astral world. To the Griffith ordinary means cannot reach, that blade, precisely, reaches. "Being so deep that ordinary means cannot reach" and "reaching with a blade bearing astral nature" are the front and back of one and the same fact.)

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■ That Blade Is Already Prepared

Then what is a blade "of the same nature as the Sword of Beckoning"?

It is the Dragon Slayer, with Casca dwelling in it.

As already seen, what a blade reached to the side of the divine brings about is not mere slaughter. As the Sword of Beckoning severed a boundary in the Ganishka battle and altered the world, a blade reaching the side of the divine severs a connection or boundary itself.

And the Dragon Slayer, with Casca dwelling in it, is likewise a blade holding that "severing" nature — severing the fusion of Femto and the Moonlight Boy.

The Sword of Beckoning, and the Dragon Slayer housing Casca. Both reach the side of the divine, sever a boundary, and can act upon the very nature of the world — blades of the same rank.

That is why this single blow holds two meanings at once. Severing the fusion of the re-transmigrated Griffith and the Moonlight Boy, saving the child — and at the same time, by severing the re-transmigrated being, turning over once more the world that turned over at Ganishka, and returning it.

The blow of the reckoning becomes, as it is, the blow that returns the world. Severing Griffith, and the world returning, are not separate events, but occur at once, within the same single swing.

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■ And This Is Another Backing for Why He "Could Not Dodge"

Here, a certain scene touched on earlier takes on a meaning one step deeper.

Griffith, in the Ganishka battle, did not receive the Sword of Beckoning head-on. He warped space, even, to deflect that single blow toward Ganishka.

This I read as a disclosure of weakness — "because it could reach, he dodged." But adding the viewpoint of re-transmigration, the reason he dodged becomes more desperate.

Griffith must have seen it. What happened when that blade cut Ganishka, a re-transmigrated being. That the world turned over, and that the existence Ganishka was consumed utterly as the medium of world alteration.

And Griffith himself, too, is a being of re-transmigration. That blade, for him as well, is not a blade that merely cuts and kills. It is a blade that can sever, and turn over, the very root of his own existence — re-transmigration — he must have understood.

That is why, warping space even, he dodged. If it lands, it is not merely dying. If it lands, his own re-transmigration is turned over, and the root of his existence is severed. It was a single blow he had to avoid, even using the divine art.

Not "because it could reach, he dodged." Because he knew it would work fatally upon himself, a re-transmigrated being, he dodged.

And at Casca's Eclipse, even that art of dodging, he cannot use. The three shackles already stated — the figure of the two made one, the child crying from within, the gaze of the man who made him forget his dream — drop him to a human, and take the divine art.

The blade he could once dodge, this time he cannot. That blade, which turns over a re-transmigrated being, at the last reaches him.

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■ The World Returns. But the Supernatural Does Not Vanish

Here, one important distinction must be made.

That the world "returns to what it was" means that the fusion of the living and the astral is undone, and the state where monsters run rampant as a matter of course returns to its former state. It does not mean that the supernatural itself vanishes from this world.

Because, even before the world was altered, Apostles, the God Hand, and the Eclipse all existed. The Eclipse of the Band of the Hawk, too, occurred long before the Ganishka battle — in the former world, before the world fused.

That is: in the former world too, the supernatural lurked. It merely was not overflowing onto the surface.

So even severing the re-transmigrated Griffith and undoing the world's fusion, the supernatural is not made extinct. The world returns to its former state, where the supernatural has withdrawn once more to the underside. But the supernatural itself remains, still, somewhere in this world.

This distinction comes to matter decisively in what follows.

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■ What Is the Dragon Slayer a Sword For?

Here, recall the origin of the sword that Godo spoke of.

The Dragon Slayer is, originally, not a sword for cutting people. It is a single blade Godo forged when, by the king's decree, he was commanded to present a sword able to slay a dragon. Godo himself says it: a sword, after all, is just a butcher's knife for people. But this is different. This is a meaningless slab of iron, made to kill a dragon — that is, a monster beyond human wit.

To cut people, it is too heavy, too large, meaningless. A sword forged only to kill a monster, only for that meaning. That is the Dragon Slayer.

This origin comes to matter.

The Dragon Slayer "holds meaning as a sword" only while there are monsters to cut — Apostles, existences on the side of the divine — in this world. And now, as we have seen, even undoing the world's fusion, the supernatural itself does not vanish. So the Dragon Slayer still has an opponent left to cut.

And in that sword, Casca dwells.

Here, the meaning of the Dragon Slayer's existence and the meaning of Casca's existence converge into one. As long as there are monsters to cut in this world, the sword holds meaning, and Casca can remain, as that sword, in Guts' hand.

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■ So the Apostle Need Not Be Warded by the "Mark"

Here, another concern can be answered.

As long as Guts lives on holding the Brand, his body keeps drawing the supernatural. Even undoing the world's fusion, the Brand has not vanished.

And the warding mark can ward off only weak supernatural, of the level of a specter. If an Apostle-class supernatural comes, the mark cannot ward it off.

But in this ending, there is no need to ward with a mark in the first place.

In Guts' hand is the Dragon Slayer, with Casca dwelling in it. This is a blade that reached even Griffith on the side of the divine. Even if an Apostle comes, that sword can cut it.

Not to passively "ward" with a warding mark. To actively "cut," with a sword born to kill monsters.

If the Brand keeps calling the supernatural, then the called supernatural, each time, the sword housing Casca severs. The sword surpasses the limit of the mark.

And here, a cruel circle is born.

As long as Guts lives holding the Brand, the supernatural is drawn. Because the supernatural comes, the Dragon Slayer is wielded. Because the sword is wielded, Casca, holding meaning in her existence, can be in Guts' hand.

That is: the condition for Casca to remain at Guts' side is that Guts lives bearing the Brand and keeps cutting the supernatural. The curse that is the Brand binds the two together.

As long as the curse remains, the two do not part. This too is the very form of this work, which kept depicting salvation and loss on the same single page.

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■ The World Fully Closes When Guts Dies

And that ending is inseparably bound to Guts' life.

In Volume 21, the Conviction Arc "Birth Ceremony Chapter," the work clearly shows: as long as there is one who holds the Brand, monsters are drawn to that place. And once the Branded one is gone, those monsters, too, vanish.

The instant Casca casts away her flesh and becomes a sword, she ceases to be one who holds the Brand. The Branded one who remains is Guts, the one and only.

By the blow of the reckoning, the world's fusion was undone. But Guts still bears the Brand. So his body keeps drawing the supernatural that had withdrawn. Guts, gripping the sword-become Casca, his body battered all over, lives on while cutting the supernatural drawn to him.

But he, too, one day meets his lifespan.

The man who took such wounds, who walked such hell, comes at the last to end his life not in battle, but by his lifespan.

In that instant, from this world, the last one holding the Brand vanishes.

The condition shown in Volume 21 is fulfilled here. Once the Branded one is gone, the supernatural drawn to that place, too, vanishes. By Guts' death, the chain of the supernatural that kept clinging to him is, at last, severed.

The blow of the reckoning undid the world's fusion. And Guts' death erases the last Brand, and severs the supernatural drawn to him. The world, by the reckoning, regains its surface side; and by Guts' death, even the root of the last curse is severed.

And the Dragon Slayer, here, finishes being wielded. Because the hand that grips it is gone.

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■ Casca Remains, as a Grave Marker, Together with Him

Then the Casca who dwelt in that sword — what becomes of her at the last?

Guts breathes his last. There is no longer a hand to grip the sword. The Dragon Slayer will no longer be wielded.

That sword is thrust into the ground beside Guts' remains.

The sword-become Casca, while Guts lived, was gripped in his hand, fought together, was together. And after Guts died, as a sword that has lost the hand to wield it, she becomes his grave marker. Thrust into the earth, she keeps nestling close, beside the sleeping Guts, forever.

Here, Casca's oldest wish is fulfilled, in its ultimate form.

To be beside the man she loves. To be at his side, even by becoming his sword.

That wish came true, as a sword, while Guts lived. But that was not all. Even after Guts died, as a grave marker, she remains beside him.

While he lived, gripped, fighting together. After he died, as a grave marker, sleeping together. In life, in death, never parting. As a sword in his hand, as a grave marker beside his remains.

The one who kept being left behind is, never again, left behind. The one who could only send off and see him off, never again, has to send him off. In life, and in death, she is beside Guts. There is no greater fulfillment of "being beside him" than this.

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■ And So, Guts Lives by the Sword, and Ends

If we have seen Casca's final moment, there is one more we must see through. How Guts himself lives, and how he ends.

Here, let me touch on one thought that lies at the root of this work. This story places will above life.

This is not a fancy. The very structure of the work says so.

Look at the Eclipse. Griffith offered up his own body, and the lives of his comrades in the Band of the Hawk, and chose his dream.

Apostles, too, cast away their lives as humans and their bonds, to gain power. In exchange for losing life, they carry their will through.

The Eclipse, the greatest rite of this work, stands entirely upon "will over life."

The concept of the Od shows the same thing. As we have seen, in this work, the death of the body and the death of the soul are different. Even if the body perishes, the Od — that person's will itself — can remain by a different principle. That the Skull Knight, having lost his flesh, lives on for a thousand years, is the proof. Life is finite, bound to the flesh.

But will transcends the flesh, defies causality, and remains. The very concept of the soul in this work defines will as an existence of a rank above life.

The Eclipse, and the Od. These two roots guarantee, as structure, the thought that will stands above life.

And here, the inversion of the sacrifice overlaps. Even within the same "will over life," the direction splits in two.

Griffith's will was carried through by trampling others. Taking his comrades, the world, so that he himself transcends. A will that takes. At its end, he became a demon.

Casca's will is carried through by offering herself. Handing over her own life, to save the one she loves. A will that gives. At its end, she becomes salvation.

A will that takes becomes a demon; a will that gives becomes salvation. Upon the same "will over life," only the direction faces the opposite way. The inversion of the sacrifice is the two ways this work's root thought takes form.

Then, upon this thought, how does Guts' final moment close?

Guts' life had always been bound by a single choice of two. To challenge, or to protect.

He challenged in order to live as a mercenary, challenged a dream in the Band of the Hawk, challenged in revenge after the Eclipse. Midway he turned to protecting, yet in the end he kept wavering between challenging and protecting. This very choice of two was the curse laid upon him.

From that curse, he is released.

What Guts — his sword-identity broken — regains at the last is neither a sword to challenge with, nor a sword to protect with. It is a sword simply to be.

Gripping that single blade, with the one he loves enclosed within it, he is released from the fate of challenging or protecting, lives by the sword, and ends his life as one of the gap.

This is neither romance nor tragedy. It is a conditional optimal solution.

So long as he bears the Brand, Guts cannot build an ordinary home.

The tie to the supernatural cannot be severed; peace does not come. The complete overcoming of trauma, too, does not happen in this work's grammar. Under those conditions, what becomes the happiness with the least contradiction?

He does not cast away the sword. He does not lose love either. And no one is left behind. The single point that satisfies these three at once. That is the state in which his very identity comes to rest in the existence he loves.

What is most painful to him is being unable to protect, leaving someone behind, being unable to grip the sword. If so, then to be able to protect forever, to never part, to grip the sword — this is, indeed, salvation.

Seen from outside, the figure of the one he loves becoming a sword, and his gripping that sword on, looks cruel. But measured by Guts' inner standard, there is no greater salvation. Necessary, but not cruel.

And in that final moment, Godo's words are reclaimed.

"When you die, you die alone, falling forward. Tell that fool — don't end up like me."

The words of a man who lived his whole life by the forge and died at the forge, who knew the terminal point of a life.

They were not an affirmation of solitude, but a call: bear your own life through, to the very end.

If, gripping the sword with the one he loves enclosed within it, having stood in the gap to the last, he falls forward — then he has arrived at the same ground as Godo.

The same "falling forward." But the meaning differs.

Godo's was met, after all, as a single self.

Guts' is the choice of one who holds love.

The same posture, with the meaning shifted one notch. This, too, is not a circle, but a spiral.

And then, the sword is covered in nicks, but not broken.

That is Guts himself. Covered in wounds, full of chips, time and again past his limit, and still he does not break. What Kentaro Miura kept depicting was not an unbreakable man, but a man who, while breaking, does not snap. Its symbol is that massive slab of iron. If it does not break to the last, then the story, too, has not broken.

And into that nicked blade, one more line is reclaimed.

"I want a scar that you gave me, too — even just one."

This wish Casca once spoke. The wish to stand in the same place as Guts, to enter his world, to share his wounds.

If, within the countless scars carved into the sword, Casca's will dwells, then this wish is granted. She becomes the scars themselves. Not scars given to her, but scars shared.

Before, only Guts bore the wounds, and Casca watched. At the last, the wounds of the two are carved into a single sword.

Here, the twin trees become a single great tree.

The twin trees, as seen in Farnese and Serpico, were a form of standing side by side. Two, intertwined, yet standing each apart.

But Guts and Casca go beyond. From standing side by side, to union. The twin trees become a single great tree.

To remain standing side by side is a circle. The chance remains of breaking, again, separately. But once they become one, when they break, they break at once. This is the complete negation of the repetition of being left behind.

This, too, is a spiral out of the twin trees.

And this faces the opposite way from Griffith's union. Griffith became one by offering up others. So he became a god, and lost his humanity.

Casca becomes one — the two becoming one — by offering up herself. Not a union that takes, but a union that gives. So she does not become a demon.

Why does this ascent not become a loss of humanity? Because this is the story of those of the gap.

Guts was, from the start, not a complete human. Born from a corpse, bearing the Brand, cutting through both the physical and the astral, standing on the border of berserker and reason. Always in the gap of human and demon, life and death, the living world and the astral.

Casca, too, has lived the gap of sanity and madness, warrior and woman, victim and agent.

Those of the gap do not go over to the side of the divine. They ascend while holding the gap. To a third phase — neither human, nor god, nor Apostle. Unlike Griffith, who cast away the gap and became a god.

While standing in the gap to the last, they complete that way of being. So this is an ascent, not a vanishing.

If we picture that final scene.

Guts will fall with no one to see him off. This is not a cold ending. A man whose birth, whose upbringing, whose whole life was the battlefield, ends his last not within the circle of people, but upon the border. For him, that is natural.

But he is not alone. Casca dwells in the sword, the scars are carved, the wills overlap. With no one to see him off, yet bound more deeply than anyone. In his youth, he was truly alone. But at the last, it is not a denial of solitude, but its transcendence.

For the time, evening is fitting. Morning is the time of beginning, night the time of ending. But evening is the gap of light and dark. Neither day nor night, the color of the border. For the final moment of one of the gap, there is no better time. If he falls with the setting sun at his back, his shadow stretches forward. Facing forward, to the last. In his youth, there was nothing in the future. At the last, his shadow stretches toward the future.

There are no people. But he is not alone. The wind, the red sky, the chipped sword — they see his last moment off. The world itself sees him off.

And his face will not be smiling. Neither a smile of victory, nor a serene grin. Guts is not a man who arrives at a light and easy happiness. His birth itself a curse, his way of living drenched in blood, his choices always heavy. For such a man to smile at the last would be slightly off.

But he can be fulfilled. To be fulfilled is not to gain the ideal, but for contradiction to vanish. The sword is himself, love is Casca, and the choice of two — challenge or protect — is united. All of it becomes a single thing. So his face is filled.

It is not the face of one who gained happiness, but the face of one who accepted his own life. For the man Guts, there is no salvation beyond that.

Released from the fate of challenging or protecting, living by the sword, ending his life as one of the gap. Gripping the sword covered in nicks but unbroken, in the light of evening, with a fulfilled face, he falls forward. This, I consider, is how the life of Guts ends.

And if, supposing this final moment comes, one asks whether Guts was rewarded —

Not rewarded. Not that it was cruel, either.

He carried it through. That, I think, is the most accurate.

No reward is given. Fate is not kind. No miracle occurs. But he did not cast away the sword. He did not leave love behind. He united the choice of two — to challenge or to protect. He did not flee the gap. And at the end of all that, he falls forward.

This is not salvation. Nor victory. It is the proof of having never changed, to the very last, the manner of his living.

The story that is Berserk was, all along, a story of surviving. Not a story of gaining happiness, nor of fulfilling a dream. If so, then what is needed at the last is not the proof of happiness, nor the denial of defeat, but the proof, alone, of having carried his way of living through to the very end.

That is what dwells in the single phrase — he carried it through.

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■ And That "Singularity" — This Was It

Here, I return to one word placed earlier.

All converges into a single singularity — so I wrote. That singularity, where those who hold will defy causality and gather at a single point. At that time, I noted I had only stood at its entrance.

But now, having seen through the reckoning, and to how the world closes, what that singularity truly was comes into view, at one layer deeper.

It was the place where a single form, which Berserk spent thirty-five years depicting, crosses at last at a single point.

Come to think of it, this story never closed the same tragedy in the same way. It traces, but does not repeat. Raising the same composition once more, it shifts only the ending, one notch. Not a circle, but a spiral. That is the form this work has depicted all along.

And standing at Casca's Eclipse — one realizes it. All that has been built up was, each one of them, a spiral.

The sacrifice of the Eclipse dies. Though that should be the principle, Guts and Casca survived. The fate of death shifted. This is the spiral of surviving.

There was a Count who could not let go of the most precious thing, and fell himself. That same line, Casca crosses not by weakness but by will, inverting a sacrifice that takes into a sacrifice that gives. This is the spiral of the will to offer.

A man who gripped a sword under a father who gave him the sword but did not love him, this time grips, as a sword, the woman who offers herself. The sword that began in lack closes in fulfillment. This is the spiral of the sword.

The sacrifice who wore the Berserker Armor, his beloved, and the witch who commits the forbidden art, across a thousand years, once more stand in the living world, changed in form. This is the spiral of the placement of people.

The soul that, holding no vessel, could only wander alone as a wraith of bone, this time gains a vessel and remains as a sword in the hand of the one she loves. This is the spiral of the wraith's destination.

A man betrayed twice by what he was to protect, at a third place, sees not betrayal, but two who give each other their lives. This is the spiral of severing betrayal.

The comrades who, present at the Eclipse, could only be made sacrifices, this time, protected by the single one who offers, all remain, none taken. This is the spiral of the untaken.

And the blade that severs a re-transmigrated being that turned the world over, turns that world over once more, and returns it to what it was. This is the spiral of the world itself.

All of it is the structure of the spiral — events, life, death, a life lived, will, the sword, people, comrades, foes, master and disciple, soul, sin, forgiveness, the world, all of it.

For thirty-five years, Berserk, changing its hand and its guise, kept depicting just one form. Tracing the same circle, never returning to the same place, shifting one notch each time. Not as water that merely flows, but as a fish that ripples the water's surface.

Casca's Eclipse is the place where those countless spirals cross, at a single point, at once. Every spiral, at the largest scale, is bound together here into one.

This is the true identity of that singularity.

That is why this is not, I consider, a reading born of a wish of "I want it to turn out this way." Since this many events converge upon a single point, this ending is, as the destination the spiral grammar the work depicted from the very start reaches, the one that rises up most strongly.

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■ Salvation and Finality Lie at the Same Single Point

Here, the cruelty and the beauty of this story overlap, one last time, at the largest scale.

The sword-become Casca can be together with Guts only while Guts lives. During that time, Guts must bear the Brand and keep cutting the supernatural drawn to him. There is no rest. To be together, and to keep fighting, are inseparable.

When Guts meets his lifespan, the last Brand vanishes, and the chain of the supernatural binding him is severed — in that very instant, the story of the two fighting together also ends. There is no longer a hand to wield the sword. The meaning of Casca's being as a sword, too, is fulfilled to its end. But that sword, become a grave marker, still remains beside him.

The single point where they are released from the curse, and the single point where the story of the two draws its curtain, overlap completely.

Salvation, and loss. Fulfillment, and finality. They occur at the same single point, at once. This means that the structure this work kept depicting — "salvation and loss on the same single page" — is, at the last, at the scale of the world itself, repeated once more.

And that is also an ending arrived at when, in a world of causality decreed by the god of the abyss, human beings who hold will defy it, and, rather than being swept along, choose for themselves, to the very end.

Not compelled by anyone, but because Casca chose to become a sword herself, and Guts lived out his own life — that is why all of it closes not as a circle, but as a spiral, shifted one notch.

This is the true ending of Berserk, as I read it.

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■ Summary

・The center of the Behelit's activation is not Guts, but Casca.

・A sacrifice is not limited to a single beloved other. There is a precedent within the work of one offering up the world itself.

・The lineage of sacrifice shows a first sign of reversal in the Count, who could not offer his daughter and fell himself, and is completed in Casca, who gives her own life.

・Casca's "I want to become a sword" has already changed in quality, from faith in a god to the wish, as a single woman, to be beside a man. Its destination was fixed upon Guts the moment she saw through that he was not a god.

・Casca offers herself up, Schierke commits a forbidden art, and she dwells in Guts' sword.

・But this can be salvation only in the case where Casca herself chooses, by her own will, to become a sword. A sword-making that is compelled would be not salvation, but only a second trampling.

・Casca is not an existence who is merely protected, but a warrior who guards a back and sends him off; an ending where she becomes a sword is not a sacrifice but a way of being she wished for.

・Becoming a sword is not Casca's mere sacrifice, but the most desperate salvation, by which she — unable to be beside him as a human because of trauma — regains "being beside him" in another form.

・It is, at the same time, the moment when Guts' broken sword, which did not work and whose hope was shattered, is rewarded and completed.

・The counterargument that the blade does not reach the side of the divine collapses from the precedents within the work.

・A sorcerer can touch the Hawk from "outside the story," the Skull Knight states clearly. Schierke is that sorcerer of power.

・To "one outside the story" belongs also Guts, revealed in the latest chapter to be of the same gap. Both the one who makes the sword and the one who wields it stand on the side that can touch the Hawk.

・A blade that can interfere with the side of the divine does exist, and Griffith could not receive that blade head-on.

・Griffith's rank can waver by will and emotion.

・The trampled wish returns as the sword that cuts him.

・The latest chapter redefined two who were opposites into "those of the same side."

・Origin is "qualification," power is "process." The qualification is offset, and only the process remains.

・To the one who got it by offering up comrades, the one who refined it every night reaches. The one who ends it at the last is the art and the slab of iron refined through process.

・Against the circle of the Skull Knight and the Cherry Blossom Princess, and Flora, Guts and Casca and Schierke choose a spiral — an ending shifted one notch.

・The work that is Berserk is itself an aggregate of countless spirals.

・I should note: when this article says "becoming a sword is salvation," it is not a universal claim. I am not, as a general matter, calling "a heroine becoming a sword" salvation. I state clearly that it is a solution that holds only in the particular situation of Casca — a single woman who, because of trauma, can no longer be beside him as a human.

The one who offered becomes the blade, and the one who refined the process swings it through. The wish comes true with its destination changed, and the dodged blade, gaining a host, returns. And the story closes not as a circle, but as a spiral. This is, after all, a prediction. Not a wish, but a backward deduction from placement and precedent. Whether it lands or misses, in time we will know. Until then, I leave it here.

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■ An Aside

■ An Aside —One Deeper Reading on "Water" and "Fish"

From here on is one reader's deeper reading, departing from the grounds made explicit within the work. Different in nature from the backward deduction so far — as merely a private interpretation, let me place just one, at the last.

The Skull Knight, in speaking of the singularity, said: "not a shadow cast upon the water, but a fish that ripples its surface."

Come to think of it, this metaphor is a little strange. A shadow is not cast upon water. Upon flowing water itself, no shadow falls.

So "a shadow cast upon the water" points to something that, by nature, cannot be. The Skull Knight seems to be saying: not even something that cannot be — beyond that.

And one more thing. Why a fish?

Water holds no will. It has no means to. It only flows, from high to low, as the terrain has it, as the principle has it. It cannot decide for itself how it flows.

But a fish is a living thing. It holds will. While within the water, by its own will it swims, defies the current, stays, advances. While within the principle (the water), it is not swept along by the principle. And that willful movement ripples the water's surface.

If so, then the true identity of what gives birth to a singularity is — will, I think.

Recall, once more, the elements raised so far. The will of Casca, who decides to offer herself up. The will of Guts, who defies causality. The will of Schierke, who commits a forbidden art. The will of the Skull Knight, who for a thousand years has defied the God Hand. All of it, will.

The flow of will-less water — within causality, those who hold will, defying the current, gather at a single point. That very gathering of will gives birth to a singularity, where the usual rules do not hold. So it reads to me, I cannot help it.

And this, too, seems to be the very form of the work that is Berserk. In a world of causal law decreed by the god of the abyss, human beings, holding will, defy it. Not as water that merely flows, but as a fish that ripples the water's surface.

That single word of the Skull Knight's may, perhaps, have put into words — in a single metaphor — what this story has spent thirty-five years depicting.

I repeat: this is a deeper reading. It is not that the work declared it so. But if it were so, then the ending Guts and Casca meet at the last is that single point where the will to defy causality crystallizes, in its most beautiful form.

■ Another Deeper Reading: "The God of the Abyss"

What follows is, again, a deeper reading. The work does not state it outright. And what I am about to touch on comes from an installment that has been treated as an omitted chapter in the collected volumes. It is not on the surface of the official story. Still, because it seems to touch the deepest root of this reading — this view of "not a circle, but a spiral" — I will set it down here, quietly.

At the deepest depths of the story, a being that seems to govern fate was shown. The Idea of Evil, the source-form of all that is evil — the "God that was wished for."

About this god, the work says a strange thing. That it was born from the collective unconscious at the bottom of every human heart — from the wishes of people, shared beyond the individual.

To put it in modern terms. It may be something like a shared repository, built up from the small wishes of each person, accumulated like data — a vault belonging to all of humanity. No single person made it. As humanity repeated birth and death, the residue of the inexhaustible, ever-increasing Od, returning to the cycle of reincarnation, piled up, and it was generated on its own. A repository that cannot, however, be erased.

In other words — fate was not handed down one-sidedly by a god. It was generated by human wishes themselves.

If that is so. Then Casca's wish, "I don't want to be left behind anymore," and Guts' will, "I don't want to part anymore," are not mere emotions. They come from the same source as the power that generates fate. And so, when those wishes overlap with the precedents and the arrangements this story has built up — the accumulated fate, though it cannot be fully broken, shifts by a single notch. A circle becomes a spiral.

And one more thing. The root of that god's body — was in the shape of a double helix, like the structure of DNA.

That the form of the very root of fate was a spiral. Whether that is coincidence or necessity, I do not know. This is not proof. It is only a form that resonates, strangely, with the spiral this article has been tracing. But if this reading reaches anywhere at all — then perhaps its roots extend this far.

I say it again: this is a deeper reading. I have merely picked up, on my own, a single sealed-away scene. Even so, I feel that the deepest source of the spiral lies beyond this door.

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■ Structure in Summary — Diagrams

To take in the intricate correspondences of the main argument at a glance, let me gather them here, as diagrams. An appendix, for surveying the involved parts.

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【Diagram 1】The Three Forms of the Twin Trees

・Farnese & Serpico
　→ twin trees (two intertwined) → stand side by side

・Griffith & the Moonlight Boy
　→ union, taking (offering others) → becomes a god

・Guts & Casca
　→ union, giving (offering oneself) → becomes a great tree

From standing side by side, to union. But a union that takes becomes a god; a union that gives becomes salvation.

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【Diagram 2】The Lineage of Sacrifice — From "Taking" to "Giving"

・Griffith → offers his comrades → becomes a god (takes)
・Egg of the Perfect World → offers the world → a perfect being (takes)
・The Count (1st) → offers his wife → becomes an Apostle (takes)
・The Count (2nd) → cannot offer his daughter → falls himself (a sign of reversal)
・Casca → offers herself → becomes salvation (gives)

The taking sacrifice wavers at the Count, and at Casca, fully inverts.

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【Diagram 3】Guts and Casca — The Same Wound, From Both Sides

◆Trauma (what was taken at the Eclipse)
・Casca → her self stolen, her heart broken
・Guts → could not protect. His sword did not reach Griffith

◆Conflict (the twist held now)
・Casca → loves him, yet trauma will not let her even look at his face
・Guts → loves her, yet fears breaking her, cannot show his face

◆Being left behind (the wound of time)
・Casca → the one who sent him off, and kept being left behind
・Guts → the one who learned that even taking her back, the time he left her behind does not return

◆Wish (what lies at the root)
・Casca → "I don't want to be left behind anymore"
・Guts → "I don't want to part anymore"

　　　　　　↓

By becoming a sword, all of these are resolved at once.

☑ Cannot look at his face from trauma → as a sword, she can be beside him without looking
☑ The sword that could not protect → Casca dwells in it, and the sword's meaning revives
☑ The burden of being protected → she becomes the one who protects
☑ Kept being left behind → as a sword, she goes everywhere with him. Never left behind again
☑ The time of being left behind → once one, the time of parting is never born again
☑ Twin trees that break apart → they become one great tree, and when they break, they break at once
☑ The wish "I want a scar" → she becomes the scars themselves, sharing wounds with Guts

The same wound, from both sides, closes within a single sword.

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【Diagram 4】Iron That Never Rusts — Two Cores Into a Single Sword

・Casca → heart and memory broken, rusted → but her core (the wish) never rusts
・Guts → sword and heart broken → but his core (the will) never rusts

The rusted woman's core (the wish), and the broken man's core (the will),
remain together, at once, as iron that never rusts, within a single blade.

"A good sword, even rusted, keeps at its core a good iron that never rusts" — Godo's words fall upon the two, from both sides.

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【Diagram 5】A Thousand Years Ago, and Now — Same Composition, Shifted One Notch

◆Trigger
・A thousand years ago → the God Hand side (the taking side)
・Now → Casca (the giving side)

◆Vessel (the receptacle for the soul)
・A thousand years ago → none
・Now → the Dragon Slayer

◆The Skull Knight
・A thousand years ago → not yet there (born as the result)
・Now → present (joins, on the side that breaks the rule)

◆Result
・A thousand years ago → a wraith of bone (alone)
・Now → a sword (in the hand of the one she loves)

The same forbidden art, traced. But the ending alone shifts one notch. This is not a circle, but a spiral.

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【Diagram 6】The World Returns — The Correspondence of Two Blades

・Ganishka (re-transmigrated being)
　↔ Griffith (likewise a re-transmigrated being)

・The Sword of Beckoning (the blade that turned the world over)
　↔ The Dragon Slayer + Casca's soul (a blade of equal rank, that turns the world over)

Ganishka was cut, and the world turned over. So if the same-structured Griffith is cut by a blade of equal rank — the turned-over world turns over once more, and returns to what it was.

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【Diagram 7】The Complete Table of Spirals (A Full Appendix)

From here is a full appendix, not quoted in the main text. Taking the spirals named in the main argument's convergence chapter as a base, I lay them all out — those tied to the sword-becoming, those untied to it, those that shifted, and those that did not.

The aim is not to prove "Casca becomes a sword." It is to survey the mother-body — how much of Berserk is, from the start, made of spirals. So I have deliberately mixed in those that do not converge on the sword-becoming, and those that stay closed as circles. That it does not converge too neatly is itself, I believe, the proof of the spiral.

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Ⅰ. Spirals that converge on the sword-becoming (from the main argument's convergence chapter)

All spirals that converge upon the single point of Casca's Eclipse.

・The spiral of surviving — The sacrifice of the Eclipse dies. Yet in the mock-Eclipse (Albion), Guts and Casca survived. The causality of death shifted.
・The spiral of the will to offer — The Count, who could not let go of his most precious thing and fell of his own accord — Casca crosses that same line not in weakness but in will, and turns a sacrifice that takes into a sacrifice that gives.
・The spiral of the sword — A man who gripped a sword under a father who gave him a sword without love now grips, as a sword, a woman who offers herself.
・The spiral of the placement of people — The armored sacrifice, his beloved, and the witch who commits the forbidden art — a thousand years apart, they stand once more, in changed form.
・The spiral of where the wraith goes — A soul that, without a vessel, wandered as a wraith of bone now gains a vessel and remains as a sword in the hand of the one she loves.
・The spiral of severing betrayal — A man betrayed twice, at the third occasion, watches over two who give each other life.
・The spiral of not being taken — Comrades who, present at an Eclipse, would have been made sacrifices, are now protected by the one who offers herself, and remain, none taken.
・The spiral of the world itself — A blade that severs the re-transmigrated being who turned the world over turns the world over once more, and returns it.

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Ⅱ. The spiral bracket (those that, unrelated to the sword-becoming, still shifted one notch)

・The Count's spiral — The first time, a man who offered his wife and became an Apostle; the second time, he cannot offer his daughter, and falls of his own accord. Within the same man, the one who takes becomes one who cannot take.
・The generational spiral — The longing and the rupture between Guts and Griffith stand up again, in changed form, in the next generation, in Isidro and Mule.
・The ritual spiral — The composition where, in the true Eclipse (Griffith), all died, is shifted one notch by the mock-Eclipse (Albion), and the sacrifices survive.
・The spiral of birth — A man born into blood from a hanged corpse lived as a human. His child, of an even harsher birth (a fetus defiled within the Eclipse), does not let go of love for his parents. The type of one who begins from a cursed birth shifts, from parent to child, growing harsher — yet toward the same direction: love.
・The spiral of the bond — In their first encounter, Guts alone could not match Zodd, and slipped through only by Griffith's intervention. At the Hill of Swords, that Griffith has crossed to the side of the divine, and Zodd stands on Griffith's side. The placement is reversed. And yet Guts, this time alone, crosses blades with Zodd as an equal. The same "against Zodd," shifted one notch. Further, in the Ganishka battle, Guts and Zodd fight side by side — shifted one notch further still. What lies between is the process Guts himself accumulated.
・The spiral of the rebuke — At first, Silat was beaten by Guts twice, his arrogance broken. A man proud of his chieftain's blood and his inherited skill, from that defeat onward, casts off his conceit and retempers himself in real battle. Now, the one who rebukes the Guts breaking down in search of a place to die is that very Silat. The one who beat, and the one who was beaten — their positions reverse. The one who had it driven into him, this time drives it in.
・The spiral of acknowledgment — To protect Farnese, Serpico crossed swords with Guts twice. The first time, as an outright enemy. The second time, to shield Farnese from the Guts swallowed by the Berserker Armor. Crossing the same blade, the meaning shifted — from enmity, to a stand taken in protection. And now, Serpico acknowledges Guts. The one he fought becomes the one he recognizes.
・The spiral of severance — Once, Silat was proud of his chieftain's blood and his skill, standing close to Rachsis, who toys with death. But beaten by Guts, he casts off his conceit and retempers himself. Now, the one who drives back the Apostle Rachsis — who tried to assassinate Rickert — with the words "an assassin is one who governs death, not one who toys with it," is that very Silat. From the same lineage, two were born; one changed, one did not. The one who changed drives back the one still standing where he once stood.
・The spiral of convergence — Daiba, a sorcerer of Kushan, at first stood against Guts and the others. But now, he lends his aid to Guts' side, fighting alongside them. And not only that. Daiba, a sorcerer of the East, has begun to take interest in Schierke — a girl who inherits the magic of the West, a different system of sorcery. From enmity, to fighting together. And further, not hatred, but interest in what differs. Two systems, once divided, begin to converge rather than break apart.
･The spiral of severing — Guts did not bring Rickert to the place of the Eclipse. "You cannot bring yourself to hate Griffith," he said. A boy who could not step into hatred, left hanging. But at the last, he strikes the cheek of the returned Griffith, with his own hand. Urged by no one, against a god force cannot reach, not with violence but with a single open-handed slap, he severs the bond by his own will. The one who could not hate shifted, of his own accord, to the side that severs.

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Ⅲ. The circle bracket (those that close upon the same place without shifting / do not close at all)

・The fable's circle — The fable of Peekaf, who wept in the gap, neither human nor elf, is traced by Rosine in reality. But Rosine does not shift; she repeats the same "losing one's place in the gap," and falls.
・The circle without conclusion — The Skull Knight and Zodd have fought for a thousand years. No conclusion comes; they repeat the same battle. They do not shift, do not close.
・The circle of becoming a god — Void, when he was human, offered his most precious thing and became a god. Femto (Griffith), too, offered his comrades and became a god. The ritual of the God Hand's birth — "offering, and becoming a god" — repeats across time. A circle that does not shift. And precisely for that reason — when Casca "gives, and becomes salvation," this circle, for the first time, turns over into a spiral.

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Ⅳ. The master-disciple / lineage bracket (those that are handed down)

The sword, and magic, are both handed down, master to disciple, across three generations.

・The lineage of the sword — Gambino (the father who gave a sword without love) → Guts (who lived by that sword, was broken, and whose love becomes a sword) → Isidro (the boy who would inherit the sword; the generation that does not pass through a taking Eclipse, but witnesses a giving one).
・The lineage of magic — Flora (the great witch who served the Sakura Princess-Priestess, committed a forbidden art out of the strength of her feeling, and was banished) → Schierke (who inherits her master's power; in this prediction, commits the forbidden art of salvation) → Farnese (a woman who had been in twisted faith and self-harm, learns magic, and changes).

Guts (the sword) and Schierke (magic) — the two who make the sword-becoming possible stand each at the center of three generations. To be handed down — that itself is a spiral that does not break off.

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Ⅴ. The placement-repetition bracket (high in purity, but the ending undetermined)

・The spiral of the conqueror and the priestess — A thousand years ago, beside the conqueror Gaiseric (the Skull Knight) stood the Sakura Princess-Priestess. One of the priestesses who served her was the young Flora. The Princess-Priestess was lost, and sleeps in a mausoleum. Now, beside the conqueror Griffith stands Sonia (the Falcon's priestess). Sonia has met Schierke, Flora's disciple, and they have begun to connect.

→ The placement of a conqueror and the priestess at his side repeats, a thousand years apart, in high purity.
→ Once, this placement closed in tragedy (the Princess-Priestess was lost; the witch was banished).
→ Whether it closes the same way (a circle) or shifts (a spiral) this time — the work has not yet depicted it. This is an undetermined spiral.

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Ⅵ. The vanishing bracket (those who appeared in Guts' journey, and vanished)

・The lineage of those who vanish — Chich (a flower spirit who sprouted in solitude and knew no companions. She met Guts for the first time, used her own life for his treatment, and vanished). Isma (a mermaid's child, shunned by the islanders, who lived in solitude. She met Guts' party, gained her true name, and was reunited with her mother. But with the vanishing of the elf island, she vanished).

→ Solitary beings touch Guts' journey, and then are gone.
→ In Berserk, there is, surely, a lineage of those who vanish.
→ And precisely for that reason — Casca, who offers herself to Guts yet does not vanish but remains as a sword, shifts, alone, from this lineage.

────────── **And so.** Among the spirals laid out here, the one upon which the most converges, with the least contradiction, is Casca's sword-becoming. But it is not the only solution. There are those that fall without shifting (Rosine), the battle that does not conclude in a thousand years (the Skull Knight and Zodd), the placement whose ending has not yet come (the conqueror and the priestess), and those who vanish (Chich, Isma). Berserk is, from the start, made of spirals. Events, life, death, a life lived, will, the sword, people, comrades, enemies, master and disciple, souls, sin, forgiveness, the world. All of it traces the same composition, while shifting the ending alone, by one notch. The sword-becoming is its most beautiful instance. The one with the least contradiction. But — it is not absolute.

■ Afterword — This Is Not a Defense. It Is Conquest.

As an afterword, let me touch on this single move itself.

The continuation of a work whose original author has passed is, usually, the domain of "defense." Bring the art style close, raise no contradictions, do not break it. The work of defense. And readers, too, read as if in prayer — "just to have it continue is something to be grateful for."

But this is not a defense. It is conquest. To dig up the cornerstone laid thirty-five years ago, put a blade to the very root definition of the story, and rewrite it. A move among the largest in the series — swung through not to fill the absence of the author, but as an advance. In a sanctuary no one should be able to touch, in the very place where retreating into defense would be only natural, the full blade of a single stroke was brought powerfully down.

Let me write honestly. It is not as though there is no discomfort with the current production. The art, the paneling, the speed of development — they are not Kentaro Miura himself. There, I, too, as one reader, acknowledge it.

And yet, to cut away even this resolve, for the sake of that discomfort, is something I cannot do. In a place where, whatever is drawn, it will be said "this is not Miura," they stepped, without fleeing, into the core of the story. The latest chapter, indeed, touches head-on the one move Kentaro Miura agonized over for twenty years.

So I, as a fan, gladly stand on the side of the production team. If there is criticism, I will take it on, criticism and all, together. The discomfort, I acknowledge. But the respect due to this resolve — that alone, I will absolutely never let go.

That this held together is, I feel, because the design Miura left behind was that strong. Between mere upkeep, and an advance toward completion, there is a wall of a different dimension. They have crossed it.

After the original author's passing, to step this far with an inherited plot. This is, I think, a monument among continued works. And that posture — not fleeing into defense, but swinging through, forward — was, without a hair's difference, the very same thing this story has kept depicting.

As one fan, let me, borrowing this space, offer my deep respect to the original author and to the members of the current production team.

— One last thing.

This article spent fifty thousand characters predicting a single ending. And yet, I am not so attached to whether this prediction proves right.

Because even if the original work depicts an ending utterly different from this — it does not change that Berserk is a story of a spiral, not a circle.

The same tragedy, never closed the same way. It traces, but does not repeat. It shifts, one notch. That very motion is the essence of this work. The form I read — "Casca becomes a sword" — is no more than one manifestation of that spiral.

So if a different ending comes, I will surely think, "Ah, so that is how they shifted it," and read it again, from placement. Not to guess it right, but to be able to read it again and again — that is the greatest joy of reading this work.

A story that has kept shifting for thirty-five years is still going on. That spiral, I want to see through to the very end, with my whole life.

For me, Berserk is that kind of work. "God bestows destiny... a destiny known as an encounter."

Then — have a good journey to your destined path.