Chapter XXXIV: Dead Weight

  Christa rode with the reins loose in one hand, Nanaba's sealed report tucked into the saddlebag where it pressed against her thigh with every stride. She kept her eyes forward, tried not to think.

  But the road was quiet, and quiet was where the thinking lived.

  The girl was eight at most—dirty-blonde hair, blue eyes gone dry—slumped against the far wall with both hands locked around an axe handle. Her neck was a bloody ruin. Her mother was spread across the floor between her and the door, and the girl’s dress was soaked through.

  They'd been too late. The titan had already moved on, and the girl had just sat there slowly bleeding out as it ate her mother, waiting for someone to help. No one had.

  She knelt and closed the girl’s eyes. The skin still warm.

  Ymir pulled her out. Hands on her shoulders, turning her toward the door.

  All she could remember was her words, before she was sent away.

  Move. Don’t stop. Don’t turn this into an excuse to die.

  So she kept riding. And the girl’s face stayed lodged in her gut.

  She almost didn't see the horse.

  It stood off the road in the tall grass, saddled and riderless, reins trailing. Its flank was streaked with blood. The saddle had shifted, girth half-loosened.

  Past the horse, a man lay in the road. Long dark coat fanning out behind him in the mud, as he crawled, fingers gouging trenches in the wet earth. One hand was clamped to his side, and between his fingers she could see it — a crescent-shaped tear through the coat and the flesh beneath. Ragged. Deep. Teeth marks.

  Don’t stop.

  She pulled back on the reins. Her horse planted its hooves and skidded, and she was out of the saddle before the animal settled. She dropped to her knees beside him, pulling the medic pouch from the saddlebag by touch.

  "Don't move. I can help."

  The man's eyes rolled toward her. White-rimmed. Losing focus. Blood filled his mouth. He grabbed her wrist — hard, desperate — and tried to force a word past the gurgling in his throat.

  "Wai—"

  A shot like thunder came from behind her.

  The grip on her wrist went dead. His hand dropped into the mud, and the effort left his face all at once.

  Her hands stayed where they were — pressed to a wound that didn't matter anymore. Her ears ringing.

  She looked up.

  A tall man stood three paces away, lowering a pistol that trailed a thin ribbon of smoke. Wide-brimmed hat pulled low, long coat crusted stiff with gore that wasn't his. Behind him, three riders sat their horses on the road — battered, pale, watching the southern horizon like something was still behind them.

  "Can't haul dead weight." He didn't look at her. He stepped over the body and crouched, checking the dead man's coat pockets. Took something small — a folded paper — and straightened.

  "Titan got his liver, sweetheart. He was dead the minute we hit the road. I just saved him the wait."

  He turned toward his horse, already done with her.

  "Scram, kid. Road's not—"

  He stopped.

  He'd stooped to pick up her medic pouch from the grass, but his hand stayed in the air. His grey eyes moved over her face, and the idle amusement dropped out of them.

  He lowered his hand.

  "Huh." The grin that crossed his face had nothing warm in it. "Now that's funny."

  The farmhouse. Lantern light and frost on the grass and the men who had come in the dark. Her mother's hand shoving her away — not to protect her, just to put distance between them so the men wouldn't think they were related. The blade drawn quick across her mother's throat. The spray that hit her face while she stood with her arms at her sides and listened to the choked gurgles.

  And the tall man in the hat who had looked down at her exactly the way this one was looking at her now.

  She lunged for her stirrup.

  He was faster. He dropped from his idle stance into motion so fluid it barely registered as movement, and his hand locked around her upper arm like a shackle.

  He wrenched her away from the horse. Her teeth cracked together.

  "Let go—"

  She clawed at his glove, drove her knee toward his thigh. He absorbed it without shifting his weight.

  "Rod Reiss's little accident." His voice was low. His eyes went to one of his riders. "Spent two days tracking the freak through the mud and she slips me in a titan stampede. And what do I trip over instead?"

  He looked down at her.

  Her legs had stopped working. Rod Reiss. He had told her to forget that name, to leave behind hers. Told her to live quietly, under a different one.

  "My father?"

  The man in the hat clicked his tongue. "Bad luck, runt."

  He hauled her off her feet and threw her face-down across the front of his saddle. The horn drove into her stomach. Before she could draw breath, rope cinched around her wrists and bit into the leather, lashing her to the saddle. A rag followed — wadded and shoved between her teeth, tied at the back of her skull.

  He mounted up behind her.

  "Move out!"

  He kicked the horse into a gallop.

  Historia twisted her neck, cheek grinding against the wet leather. The road unwound behind her. She could see the dead man shrinking in the mud, and beyond him her own horse standing riderless in the grass — and somewhere on that horse, growing smaller with every stride, Nanaba's report. The sealed orders. The message that was supposed to reach Ehrmich and bring reinforcements to the people counting on her.

  I'm sorry, Ymir.

  She’d stopped anyway—because Christa Lenz couldn’t ride past a man dying in the road.

  The wind found every crack in the castle's old walls and made itself at home.

  Ymir stood by the gap where a window had been, arms crossed, staring out at the trees and the wall’s outline.

  She'd told her not to go. The road's long. Send someone else.

  But Christa had stepped forward before anyone asked. Of course she had, just like when she joined the Scouts. Hand up, voice steady, already volunteering for the ride to Ehrmich like it was a privilege.

  Nanaba had waved it through. She'll be fine, the road east was clear when we came through. Barely saw a titan between here and Dauper.

  Which should have been a comfort. Wasn't.

  Behind her, the lower keep had settled into something that almost passed for rest. Petra had posted Lynne on watch, and the recruits had spread across the stone floor around a fire that Hennig had coaxed out of broken furniture and dry moss. The smoke collected against the ceiling and made the air taste like a chimney.

  Nanaba sat against the far wall, sharpening a blade with slow, methodical strokes.

  Gelgar came down from the upper stair with a crate balanced on his shoulder. He dropped it near the fire with a thud that made two recruits flinch.

  "Found some supplies. The bandits holed up here probably left everything behind when they saw titans. There’s blankets, candles, some food."

  Gelgar crouched, pried the lid, and pulled out a dark bottle. He held it up to the firelight, squinting. “Can’t read this damn label.”

  He popped the cork and sniffed. His eyebrows went up. "That's alcohol."

  "Then put it down," Petra said from across the fire. "We're on watch."

  "I'll save it for later." Gelgar set the bottle aside, close enough to reach.

  Hennig leaned over. "Think it’s from Sina? Never seen that label."

  "How should I know? Stuff gets moved around."

  Nanaba's blade slowed. "Bandits don’t abandon a place like this unless titans are close... " The steel resumed its quiet scrape. "Strange, though. We didn’t see any on the ride here."

  "Maybe they moved through already," Hennig said. "Headed deeper in."

  "Or they're concentrated somewhere else," Gelgar said. "Some sector we haven't reached, here’s hoping the bastards leave us a good night’s sleep at least."

  Petra said nothing. Her hand rested on her knee, fingers still.

  Sasha sat near the edge of the firelight, knees drawn to her chest, arms wrapped around them. She hadn't eaten. Reiner sat beside her — close but not touching. He'd draped a blanket across her shoulders from the supplies.

  "Try to get some rest," Reiner said. "Even an hour."

  Sasha didn't respond. Her eyes were on the fire.

  "That titan in Ragako," she said quietly. "The one that was stuck."

  "What about it?"

  "It looked at me. When we were leaving. I think… It looked right at me and it was crying. It was trying to talk too."

  Hennig stopped fussing with the fire. Nanaba’s blade went still for half a stroke before it started again.

  Petra's hand had moved to her blade grip. She didn't speak.

  "Titans don't cry," Reiner said. His voice was steady. Gentle. "And they don't talk either. You were exhausted, Sasha. The mind fills in what it wants to see."

  "I know what I saw."

  "I believe you saw something." He put his hand on her shoulder. "But you'd been riding for hours without food, looking for people you kne—" A pause, barely there. "— know. The brain does strange things under that kind of stress."

  "Really?" Ymir pushed off the wall. She couldn't take it — the silence, the firelight, the pretense that any of this was normal. “If titans cry, Sasha, what—do they laugh too? Have birthdays? Maybe try asking the next one you find how its day's been."

  Sasha flinched. Reiner’s eyes snapped to her.

  "Ymir." His voice was even. "Lay off."

  "Oh, give me a break." Ymir shot back. "Think sitting there talking her down like that fixes anything?"

  "Enough," Petra's voice was sharp.

  "Is it? Because from where I'm standing, we're sitting in a pile of rocks in the middle of titan country, and everyone's acting like if we're quiet enough they won't find us." She spread her arms. "We rode the wall all day and found nothing. Nanaba just said it herself — we didn’t see a single titan on the way here. So, where are they coming from? Raining out of the sky?"

  "I said enough." Petra didn't raise her voice, but something in her tone carried the weight of rank. "Nobody here has forgotten where we are. Running blind in the dark gets people killed. The plan doesn’t change."

  Ymir held her stare for a beat.

  Then she looked away. Clicked her tongue.

  "Sure. Rest in the haunted castle while the world burns. Inspiring."

  Reiner watched her a moment, expression flat. Then he sat beside Sasha again.

  "Ignore her," he said quietly. "She runs her mouth when she’s nervous. "

  That landed wrong because it was true.

  She turned her back on the fire. Standing still felt like agreeing to wait, and waiting felt like giving up.

  "I think I saw some rooms downstairs worth checking," she said, already moving toward the stairwell. "If there were supplies up here, might be more below."

  "Take a light," Nanaba said without looking up.

  Ymir picked up a candle from a crate and held the wick to the nearest flame until it caught. The small light barely cut the dark of the stairwell.

  She descended, and the voices above faded to murmurs.

  The titans parted like curtains.

  They stepped backward in unison — no signal, no sound — and opened a corridor through the trees.

  Anja watched them move like dogs called to heel.

  The man walked ahead, hands in his pockets. Annie followed a few paces behind, head down, shoulders drawn.

  Let me handle it, Annie had told her. Don't give them a reason to think you're useless.

  So Anja walked. Mouth shut. Eyes down. Left hand wrapped around the ring at her neck, the crossed keys biting into her palm.

  The trees eventually thinned. Firelight bled through the undergrowth, and the forest opened into a clearing.

  A military camp. Tents in clean rows, supply crates stacked under tarps. People moved between the fires —unbothered by the titans at the perimeter. Men straightened as he walked past, eyes sliding away from him first. They wore uniforms Anja had never seen: muted white, high-collared, with black boots. The rifles slung across their backs were different too — shorter, the metalwork finer.

  One of the soldiers looked up as they passed. His hand drifted to his sidearm. He rested his fingers there, tracking Anja the way you'd track a stray dog near your food. He and another stepped back, giving her a wider berth than necessary.

  Nobody spoke. A few stared. One spat.

  She smelled cooking meat and her stomach clenched. Annie's hand found her elbow —steering her forward.

  They bypassed the central fires and moved toward a larger tent set apart near the tree line. Before they reached it, something shifted in the dark to the left — low, massive, and breathing.

  Anja stopped.

  The four-legged titan. The one they'd seen in the distance. Up close it was worse — flat-backed, strapped with heavy cargo harnesses, its face long and slack, chin resting on crossed forelimbs like a dog by a hearth.

  Its eyes were open. They tracked Anja with a heavy, tired intelligence.

  Then its jaw opened.

  "Annie."

  Anja's hand tightened on the ring so hard the cord bit into the back of her neck. The voice had come from inside the titan's mouth. It was deep, resonant and slow.

  "You're late," it said.

  Annie stopped. "Pieck. It's been a long time." She raised her right hand — her posture stiff, abbreviated. Some kind of formal gesture Anja didn't recognize.

  "Too long." The massive head tilted. The eyes — brown, heavy-lidded — slid off Annie and settled on Anja. "And who is this?"

  "A guest," Zeke said, stepping between them. He adjusted his glasses, firelight catching the lenses. "Don't overwhelm her, Pieck. She's had a rough trip."

  The talking titan made a low sound — almost a hum — and settled its chin back onto its forelimbs. The eyes stayed on Anja for another beat before drifting shut.

  Zeke gestured toward the command tent. "Inside, Annie. We have a lot to discuss."

  Annie ducked through the flap. Anja followed, and the canvas fell shut behind them — cutting off the firelight, the camp noise, the breathing of the thing outside.

  The interior was lit by a single lantern hanging from the center pole. A table built from crates and planking dominated the space, covered in maps—coastlines she’d never seen, marked in symbols she couldn’t read. The air smelled of tobacco and lamp oil.

  He draped his coat over a chair and leaned on the table, eyes on Annie.

  "Five years," he said. "I'll be honest, Annie. We saw the breach, but after we received no contact... we prepared for the worst."

  "I understand, sir."

  "Marcel was supposed to be leading your unit, where is he?"

  Annie's breath hitched, barely. "We lost him before we reached the outer wall. A titan caught us off guard during the approach. There was nothing we could do."

  Zeke was quiet for a moment. His thumb traced the edge of the table.

  "A titan," he repeated, and let the word hang. "Marcel was the most experienced among you."

  "It happened fast. We were in the open."

  Zeke studied her. The silence stretched long enough that Anja could hear the lantern wick hissing.

  "That is a significant loss," he said finally. His voice carried no inflection — not sympathy, not accusation. "And the Jaw?"

  "We searched. The area was crawling with titans — we couldn't stay without risking the mission entirely." Annie's voice held steady. "We made the decision to proceed to the wall without it."

  Zeke regarded her for a long moment: "And the others?"

  Annie's eyes didn't move toward Anja. "Alive. Operational. Still embedded within the island's military."

  Still embedded.

  The words snagged. Others. More of them. Inside. Annie had said we had to break the walls — she'd never said who we was. Anja's mind pulled toward faces, names, and flinched away before it got there.

  Not now.

  "Good." He stroked his beard. "Your objective?"

  "Unidentified." Annie's voice went clipped. "The plan to flush out the Coordinate didn't work. We pursued a secondary avenue by joining their military. It didn't yield results."

  "And your cover?"

  "Compromised. I had to extract."

  "How?"

  Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  Annie paused. "The island military identified me as a shifter. They set a trap. I had to fight my way out."

  "A trap." Zeke’s fingers drew slow circles across the map. "Which means they were watching you before you realized it. How long?"

  "I don't know."

  "That's not an answer I can bring back to command, Annie."

  "It's the one I have, sir." Annie held his gaze. Then she reached into her backpack and produced the small cloth-wrapped notebook — the one Anja had seen her consult on the road. "But this might help. Patrol routes. Guard rotations. Troop strengths. Supply lines. Five years of observation, encoded. I can translate it for command."

  Zeke looked at the notebook.

  He took it, turned it once in his hand, and set it on the table beside the maps.

  "A failed operation, then."

  "An incomplete one."

  Zeke's eyebrows rose a fraction. Then he looked at Anja.

  It was the first time he'd directed his full attention at her. His eyes moved over her face — the bandage over her missing eye, the way she held her right hand tucked inside her cloak.

  "Your companion," Zeke said. "I am going to make a logical leap and assume she is not the Coordinate we've been searching for."

  "No, sir."

  "She looks like she's been through something unpleasant."

  "She was held by the island's military," Annie said. "Interrogated. She helped me escape when I extracted."

  "I see." Zeke’s eyes stayed on Annie. "And you brought her with you because..."

  "She has value." Annie stepped closer, putting herself marginally between Anja and Zeke. "Anja was embedded in a military unit with a boy. We confirmed he can transform. He’s the closest lead we have on the Coordinate. She trained closely with him. She knows how they move and guard him."

  Anja listened. A boy. He can transform. How they move him, how they guard him.

  Her fingers went white around the ring.

  Annie had never told her. In all the time they'd spent running, she had never once said why she'd really come here. Who she'd come here for. Her attack on the expedition, now it all made sense.

  Annie had come here to take him.

  Not the entity’s whispers. Something worse. Something that was entirely her own.

  She told you to trust her, the thing wearing Heinrik's face murmured. And you did.

  Zeke was watching her face. Whatever he saw, he filed away.

  "Is that so?" he said slowly. He turned back to Annie. "Does this boy have a name?"

  Annie paused. The pause was just a fraction too long.

  "Eren Jaeger."

  Something stilled in Zeke’s face. His hand stopped on the table. The lantern hissed in the silence.

  Then he blinked, and the mask returned. He walked a slow circuit of the tent, hands clasped behind his back.

  "Interesting…" he said, quieter.

  Anja didn't understand. She watched him pace and tried to read the shift, but whatever had passed through him was buried now.

  "You've done well, Annie," Zeke said, stopping by the tent flap. He didn't look at her. "Losing Marcel and the Jaw was a blow. The state of this operation is regrettable. But you survived five years behind enemy lines, and you've brought back actionable intelligence. That counts for something."

  "Thank you, Warchief."

  "We had some complications of our own getting here, you know?" Zeke lifted the flap and looked out at the dark. "Bad terrain south of the wall. Had to avoid dead patches, clusters of titans around them."

  He said it offhandedly, almost to himself, and let the flap drop.

  "Now. There's a ruined structure, an old castle, a few kilometers northeast. Stone walls, partially collapsed. We’ve noticed a group of island soldiers has moved in."

  Annie stiffened.

  "I’ve got titans in the area if containment becomes necessary," Zeke continued. "But I need a proper assessment before deciding anything. Pieck is fast, but she doesn't know how these people fight. Their equipment — those anchor-and-cable rigs they use — I need someone who understands their tactics."

  He turned to Annie.

  "Go with Pieck. Observe. Report back."

  The air in the tent went taut.

  Annie's jaw tightened. Her eyes flickered — a single, fast glance sideways at Anja, barely a movement — then back to Zeke.

  "Warchief." Annie's voice was controlled, but thin. "I should complete my debrief first. The intelligence on Jaeger is time-sensitive, and there are operational details that—"

  "The intelligence will keep." Zeke didn't raise his voice. "Your friend isn't going anywhere, and besides, she looks like she could use a fire and something warm to drink."

  He smiled, pleasant, practiced.

  "Is there a problem, Annie?"

  Annie closed her mouth. Anja watched the fight go out of her — not all at once, but in stages, like a structure collapsing floor by floor. First the shoulders. Then the eyes, which went cold and distant.

  "No, sir. No problem."

  She turned and walked toward the tent flap. She didn't look at Anja. She didn't slow down. She pushed through the canvas and was gone, and the flap swung shut behind her, the lantern flame guttered once in the draft and steadied.

  Anja’s hand was still locked around the ring. Her knuckles ached.

  "Have you ever had coffee, Anja?"

  She stared at him clueless.

  Zeke glanced back, read her face, and something like amusement crossed his.

  "You'll enjoy it," he said. "I've yet to meet someone who hasn't."

  The cellar smelled like damp stone and years of nothing.

  Ymir had been down here long enough that the candle had burned to half its length. The flame guttered every time the wind found the grate overhead, throwing the walls in and out of shadow.

  She'd worked through most of the room by now. Shelves cut into the rock held the usual debris of abandonment. Against the far wall she'd found a few things worth keeping: a coil of rope that still had some life in it, a dented pot that she'd set near the stairs.

  One shelf held something that made her pause: a small hand grinder, iron and wood, with a crank handle and a hopper on top. She turned it over. Coffee grinder. She hadn't seen one in what felt like a lifetime ago. It was in good shape too, no rust on the mechanism, the wood barely weathered. Must have been well-made to last this long here.

  She set it aside.

  In the far corner, half-buried under a tarp, she found a crate shoved flush against the wall. She dragged it out and looked for an edge to work.

  She went back to the shelves and found a small kitchen knife wedged behind a jar, the wooden handle cracked. Good enough.

  She jammed the blade under the crate lid and wrenched. The wood splintered.

  Inside, rough cloth packages were stacked tight against each other, coarse fabric cinched with twine. She pulled one loose and started working at the knot.

  Heavy boots on the stairs.

  Ymir set the package down and leaned back against the crate, the kitchen knife resting across her knee, her smirk already in place.

  "You shouldn't wander down here alone," Reiner said. He ducked under the low lintel and stepped into the cellar. "It's pitch black. You'll break an ankle."

  "Sneaking up on a girl in the dark, Reiner? Didn't peg you for the type to like women."

  He let out a short huff, crossing his arms. "Yeah, and I didn't peg you for the type to like men. Hard to believe you'd volunteer for a sweep. Especially since Christa isn't here to impress."

  "Oh, I’m just like that, full of surprises."

  Reiner stepped inside and pushed, closing the door behind him. The latch clicked softly.

  "Sasha's asleep," he said. "Took a while after your little performance."

  "Good. Sleep's better for her than that talk you gave her."

  "Maybe." He rubbed the back of his neck. "Look — what you said up there, about the wall and the breach. Sasha's already falling apart. The last thing she needs is someone asking questions nobody can answer."

  "So, you came down here just to say that? She’s a big girl, you can stop acting like her knight in shining armor."

  "Not as funny as you think you are, Ymir. You should read the room. Everyone's running on fumes. You start talking about where the titans are coming from and how none of it makes sense, and the people up there who are barely holding it together stop holding it together."

  Ymir exhaled a short, harsh breath through her nose. She turned her back on him, picking up the knife. "Right. Better to keep them calm and stupid."

  "If it keeps everyone alive tonight, that's enough. We have enough to worry about as it is."

  The silence sat between them for a beat.

  Ymir turned back to the crate and picked up the package she'd been working on. She cut the twine and pulled the cloth apart. Inside, tin cans were packed in rows small, the labels coated in grime.

  She pulled one free and held it close to the candle, wiping the surface with her thumb. Angular characters, stamped clean into the metal.

  "Now this is worth bringing up," she said. She read the label after she managed to clean it. "Herring. Not my favorite, but food's food."

  She tossed the can to Reiner. He caught it one-handed.

  "Canned food, huh?" he said.

  "Don't be picky."

  Reiner looked down at the tin.

  His thumb moved across the label. Then it stopped.

  The silence changed.

  Ymir's hand was still in the air from the toss. The smirk was still on her face.

  Then the echo of her own voice reached her. Herring. She'd read it. Out loud. Hadn't even paused.

  The smirk died.

  "Ymir," Reiner said softly.

  He lifted his head.

  The golden eyes that looked back at her had nothing behind them she recognized.

  "These letters." He held the can up. "I can't read any of it."

  He took a step forward.

  "This says herring?"

  The candle guttered. The shadows jumped.

  "You are able to…Read this language? Ymir… You’re--"

  "It was a joke, Reiner." The words came too fast. "I don't know what it says. I made it up."

  Reiner’s mouth closed.

  The confusion that had fractured his voice a second ago vanished, replaced by a stillness that was sudden, heavy. He didn't blink. He just stood there, by the door, his thumb resting over the script.

  "I made it up," Ymir repeated. Her back hit the stone wall.

  "There is only one place in the world that prints this label," Reiner whispered.

  "And it isn't inside these walls."

  The ground trembled once — a deep, shifting compression outside the tent, like something massive rising to its feet. The talking titan. Then heavy footfalls, receding.

  Anja stood where she'd been standing since they entered. Hands at her sides. The ring pressed against her collarbone through the cord, and she held it with her left hand because it was the only thing in here that belonged to her.

  Zeke moved to a small metal stove in the corner. Beside it, a stack of cans, with labels printed in characters she couldn't read. Two open and empty, scraped clean. A third sat unopened, same dull metal, the same foreign script.

  He picked up a hand grinder, tipped dark beans into it, and began cranking with an easy rhythm. His back was to her.

  "How long since you've eaten a proper meal?" he asked.

  "I don't remember."

  "That's too long." He tapped the grounds into a metal filter, set it over a ceramic pot, and reached for the kettle. Both hands occupied. Unhurried. The kettle tilted, water hissing through the grounds, and he stood there watching it drip as if they had all the time in the world.

  Anja's nails bit into her palm. She could feel her own pulse in her jaw where the teeth were missing. This man controlled titans. This man's people had broken the walls.

  "What will happen to Annie?" she asked.

  "Annie is a Warrior. She'll be treated as one." He lifted the filter away. "Five years behind enemy lines is a long time. The debrief will be thorough, but she survived. That goes a long way."

  He paused with the pot in his hand.

  "And she brought you here. Which was... an interesting choice on her part."

  "She said I had value." Her voice came out thinner than she wanted.

  Zeke poured coffee into two cups, his back still to her. He set the pot down, reached for a small silver spoon, and stirred one cup twice, then the other four times before setting the spoon down. "So, you trained alongside Eren. I take it you know him personally then."

  "Yes."

  "A friend?"

  Anja didn't answer. Her nails dug deeper.

  Zeke picked up both cups and turned around. He crossed the tent and held one out to her.

  "Drink. You're shivering."

  She was. She took it with her left hand. The ceramic burned.

  He leaned against the table and sipped from his own cup, studying her over the rim. Patient. Unhurried.

  Sasha couldn't sleep.

  She lay on the cold stone with her vest bunched under her head, her skirt twisted around her legs. Staring at the ceiling where firelight made shapes that looked like nothing. Around her, the others had settled into an uneasy quiet. Petra sat against the wall with her eyes closed. Nanaba's blade had gone still. Gelgar cradled a bottle against his chest.

  Her stomach hurt. Not the usual hunger — deeper, the kind that food couldn't fix. Her father's face kept surfacing. The way he'd look up from his bow when she came through the door.

  She didn't know if he was alive.

  She sat up. Moving was better than lying still.

  She paced the fire once, twice.

  Ymir had gone downstairs a while ago. Mentioned something about rooms worth checking, that there might be more supplies. She hadn't come back.

  If she'd found food down there and was keeping it to herself, Sasha was going to kill her.

  She moved toward the spiral staircase. Bertholdt sat at the top back against the wall, long legs stretched across the opening, one hand still loosely gripping his knee. His chin had dropped to his chest.

  Sasha studied him for a moment. His breathing was slow. Even.

  She stepped over his legs, weight on the balls of her feet, careful not to wake him.

  The stairs curved, narrowed. The stone was cold under her palms as she steadied herself against the wall. Somewhere below, candlelight bled faintly up the stairwell — warm and flickering.

  Then voices. Faint at first. Then clearer as the stairwell leveled out into a short corridor. Candlelight threw jittering shadows across the stone ahead. The cellar door was nearly shut — a thin gap, enough for the light and the voices to bleed through.

  "—doesn't matter what I am." Ymir. Low, clipped. Nothing casual in it. "What matters is what you are. Because we both know I'm not the only one in this cellar who can read that label."

  "You're protecting him," Zeke said. Not a question. He set his cup on the table and folded his arms. "I understand that. Loyalty is admirable."

  "I don't know what you want."

  "Fair. Then let me be direct. If this boy is a shifter, then the people running your military will treat him as a weapon, one they don't understand and can't control. They'll put him in a uniform and march him toward whatever problem needs solving until his body gives out or his term runs out. Thirteen years. That's how long a shifter lives when they become one, Anja. Did you know that?"

  She didn't answer. She didn't know if it was true — Annie never mentioned it. Only that it sounded like the kind of truth nobody bothered to tell you until it was too late.

  "I'm not here to hurt him. I'm here to get him out before this island eats him alive." Zeke's voice carried a reasonable tone. "I need you to think about something. You should know better than me, you were held by the island's military. I assume your current state to be the result of their interrogation methods?" His eyes moved over her face — the swollen jaw, the missing eye, the bruises.

  Anja said nothing.

  "This boy — your friend — the people who hold him understand nothing about what he carries. What do you think happens to him? Do you think they'll treat him gently?" Zeke set his cup on the table. "What they did to you is child's play compared to what they will do to him. They'll study him. Restrain him. Push him until something breaks, and then push some more until he has nothing else to give. They'll tell themselves it's necessary. They'll tell themselves it's for the greater good."

  The words hit a place she'd tried to wall off. The collar around her neck in the dungeon. Hange's framework. The chains.

  They did what they had to.

  Her own words. The hollow ones she'd given Annie.

  "You already know I'm right," Zeke said quietly. "We are the only ones who can help him."

  Anja's hand shook. Coffee rippled in the cup.

  "But I can't help someone I can't find. And I can't find him without understanding who he is."

  The silence stretched. Zeke let it work. Then, quieter:

  "Annie staked her life to bring you here. Was she wrong to?"

  Sasha slowed. Her hand found the wall.

  "Careful." Reiner. Barely above a whisper. The warmth she knew from his voice was gone. "You don't know what you're talking about."

  "No? Then why did you close the door? Why are you standing between me and the only exit?" A beat. "You knew what those characters were the second you saw them. You didn't freeze because you couldn't read them. You froze because I could."

  Silence.

  "Who sent you?" Reiner's voice had dropped to something cold. "How long have you been here?"

  "Long enough. And nobody sent me. I've been surviving on this island for a long time. I don't answer to anyone."

  "That's not an answer."

  "It's the only one you're getting. But here's one for free — I don't care about your reason for being here. I don't care who you report to or what you came here to do. I have one thing I care about, and she's not here."

  Sasha pressed herself flat against the wall. Her legs wanted to run and her body wouldn't let them — the way her body froze when the woods went wrong.

  Report to. What you came here to do.

  She didn't understand. But her body did.

  "Here's how this works," Ymir continued. Her voice had steadied. "You have secrets. I have secrets. If I talk, you're finished. If you talk, so am I. Neither of us wants that. So we walk upstairs, we sit by the fire, and none of this ever happened."

  "And I'm supposed to trust that?"

  "You're supposed to understand that I have something to lose. Same as you. That's better than trust."

  "He's from Shiganshina," she said.

  Zeke waited.

  Her hand was steady now. It shouldn't have been — she wanted to throw the cup at his head, wanted to scream, wanted to be anywhere but here holding a drink she'd been given. The Scouts. This man pretending to care about someone he'd never met. All cut from the same damn cloth. And Annie had—

  But her hand was steady and the coffee was still, she couldn't even make the surface tremble.

  Underneath all of it sat the truth she couldn't get around: They had done those things to her. And they would do them to Eren.

  Maybe… Just maybe…

  She closed her eye with a shaky breath.

  "He lost his mother when the wall fell," Anja said. "His father disappeared the same day. A doctor."

  "A doctor." Zeke picked up the small silver spoon, turning it slowly between his fingers.

  "Yes."

  "And the father's name?"

  Anja's jaw tightened. She could feel herself at the edge of something. Annie's voice in her head: Don't give them a reason to think you're useless.

  "I don't see how that matters."

  "It matters because I need to understand who gave this boy his power. Titans don't appear from nowhere. Someone made him what he is. A doctor who vanished the day the wall fell — it could be vital information." Zeke's voice stayed even.

  Anja said nothing.

  "I'm not asking you to betray your friend. I'm asking you to help me understand what was done to him. There's a difference."

  The ring hung like a weight against her throat.

  "Grisha," she said. "His name was Grisha Jaeger."

  The spoon slipped from Zeke's fingers and hit the ground. The sound was small and sharp — metal on packed dirt, it cut through the tent like a crack in glass. He didn't pick it up. His hand stayed frozen where the spoon had been.

  A long pause. Reiner's voice, quieter.

  "If you step out of line. If you try to put me at risk. If you say one word to anyone—"

  "You'll do what? Kill me? Try explaining that to the armed soldiers upstairs."

  Another silence. Heavier than the last.

  "Clean slate," Reiner said. The words came out ground flat. "Tonight doesn't exist."

  "Tonight doesn't exist," Ymir repeated.

  The back of her neck, her forearms — every hair standing the way they did before the boar charged.

  She took a step backward.

  Her heel caught the edge of a flagstone.

  The scrape was tiny. A half-inch of boot leather on rock.

  Sasha froze. One foot on the step behind her, one below, hand flat against the wall.

  The composed lean against the table, the folded arms, the mild interest — all of it was gone. What was underneath looked nothing like a commander.

  The lantern hissed.

  Then he crouched. Picked up the spoon. Set it on the table.

  "Apologies," he said. His voice was level. Almost. "Clumsy of me."

  He turned away. Walked to the stove. Stood there with his back to her, one hand on the metal frame, his head slightly bowed.

  "Grisha Jaeger…" he said quietly.

  "You know the name."

  He didn't answer that. When he turned back, the mask was in place again, but it fit differently now. Tighter.

  "Drink," he said. "It'll get cold."

  Anja raised the cup and drank. The liquid was hot enough to scald and bitter in a way she'd never tasted. She coughed sharp, involuntary and pressed the back of her hand to her mouth.

  "An acquired taste," Zeke said. "Like most things worth having."

  He picked up his own cup. Sipped. Watched her.

  The interrogator was gone. He regarded her the way you'd regard a finished equation.

  "You've been very helpful."

  "What happens now?"

  He took another sip. "I'll have a word when Annie gets back."

  The tent was quiet. The lantern flame burned steady. Outside, the camp sounds continued — low voices, the crackle of fires.

  Anja drank again. The bitterness was easier the second time. Her head throbbed. A dull, spreading pressure behind her eye.

  "Can I ask you something?" Zeke said. He set his cup down, and his voice had dropped to something almost gentle. "This war — the titans, the walls, all of it. Do you think it ends well? For anyone?"

  Anja looked at him.

  "I don't think about how it ends."

  "No." Something crossed his face. "I suppose you wouldn't. War is a terrible thing, one big, stupid, never ending cycle."

  Anja's hands were cold. The cup in her grip had stopped feeling hot. Her shoulders had gone cold. Not the air — something settling inward, spreading down through her arms. She clenched her jaw against the shivering.

  "I almost envy you," Zeke said. "Out here, behind these walls, you never had to see the full picture. Never had to carry it." A beat. "But then, I suppose it doesn't matter. You're caught in the same cycle as the rest of us. You just didn't know it."

  He turned back to his maps and began rolling one of them carefully, his hands steady, his attention elsewhere.

  "Finish your coffee," he said.

  His voice carried the soft, distant tone— his eyes already looking past her, looking at something much further away.

  "It'll all be over soon enough."

  The cellar door swung open.

  "Sasha?" Reiner filled the doorway. And there it was — his usual warmth sliding back on like a coat. "That you?"

  She made herself move. Stepped down into the corridor and through the doorway, pulling a smile onto her face.

  "Sorry. Couldn't sleep. Ymir went down here lookin' for supplies a while back and hadn't come up, so I thought—"

  "Oh, we found some canned stuff." Reiner held up a tin, easy, relaxed. "Can't read the label, though. Probably nothing."

  Her stomach tightened. Ymir's voice echoed — we both know you can read that label.

  Ymir leaned against the far wall behind him, arms crossed, face blank. A kitchen knife rested on the crate beside her.

  "Oh. Great." Sasha heard how thin her voice sounded. "I'll just — go tell the others, then."

  "It’s not worth mentioning." He set the can down. "Just junk."

  "Right. Well." Sasha took a step back toward the stairs. "I'll just head back up."

  She turned.

  Soft footsteps on stone behind her. Careful. Recent.

  Bertholdt was standing on the bottom step, blocking the narrow stairwell.

  His hair was pressed flat on one side. His eyes were half-lidded, still catching up with the rest of him. But his jaw was tight and his weight had already shifted.

  "Bertholdt," Sasha said. "I was just heading up."

  He didn't move. His throat worked. His eyes went past her to Reiner.

  "Sasha." Reiner's voice behind her. Closer than before. "How much did you hear?"

  "I-I just got here. I told you—"

  "Bertholdt." One word. Clipped. The warmth gone. "The stairs."

  Bertholdt's eyes were wet. But he shifted his weight, widened his stance, and the stairwell behind him went from narrow to sealed.

  "I didn't hear anything," Sasha said. Her voice was climbing. "I don't know what you're—"

  "It's okay." Reiner was right behind her. "It's alright, Sasha. Just stay here a minute. We need to talk."

  Her weight dropped. Her shoulders pivoted toward the gap between Bertholdt and the wall — like a hunter calculating the sprint, the angle, the half-second to squeeze past and scream.

  Reiner saw her shoulders turn.

  His hand clamped over her mouth and wrenched her backward off her feet.

  Anja coughed black onto the dirt and the cup fell from her hand.

  She heard it break. She heard Zeke say something. The words didn't reach her — they came from far away, muffled, as if she'd been shoved underwater.

  Her knees hit the ground.

  The crawling in her stomach had become a roar. It surged upward through her chest, her throat, her skull —every nerve fired at once. She could hear the blood in her own veins. She could hear the lantern flame consuming its wick. She could hear the heartbeat of the man standing six feet away, beating faster than his face suggested.

  Her hands pressed into the dirt. Black fluid dripped from her lips in long, thick strings.

  "But…" Zeke had stepped back. One step. "I didn't scream..."

  Anja tried to speak. Her jaw wouldn't close. The hinge had gone loose, the muscles slack, and when she opened her mouth wider something in the joint popped like a knuckle cracking.

  Heinrik stood in the corner of the tent.

  The thing that wore him. It stood with its hands at its sides watching her with her brother's face, and for the first time, it wasn't speaking. It wasn't whispering.

  It was smiling.

  Her right hand spasmed. The healed stumps of her missing fingers split open along the knuckles. Not bleeding. Unfolding. The skin peeled back and something hard pushed through from underneath — ridged, sharp, slicked black and steaming, growing fast.

  No sound came when she screamed. Her throat was full.

  Annie. Annie's face in the forest. Sasha laughing with her mouth full. Armin drawing shapes in the air with his hands. Eren on the wall at Trost, fist raised. Mikasa pulling the scarf over her mouth against the cold. Connie. Heinrik. Her mother.

  The faces came fast, overlapping, blurring — and behind them all, patient and still, his smile widened.

  Stop this. Stop — it hurts — stopstopstop please stop pleasehelp pleasehelpAnnie I—

  Her spine arched.

  I

  Zeke threw himself backward. He hit the table, knocked it sideways, maps scattering across the dirt. Black fluid erupted from the tears in her tunic, spraying the canvas walls behind her.

  He didn't shout. Nothing in his understanding of titans accounted for what he was seeing.

  His spinal fluid was a key without a lock until he turned it. He had not turned it. The key had turned itself.

  The tent pole buckled. Something massive was reshaping itself inside the collapsing canvas — too many limbs, too many joints, the shapes wrong. A calcified spike tore through the roof and kept going, ten feet, fifteen, dragging the canvas up before the fabric shredded and fell away.

  Zeke was already outside. He'd gone through the tent flap at a dead sprint, boots sliding in the mud.

  The camp had come apart. Soldiers scrambled from their tents half-dressed, rifles up, barking orders. One man fired into the collapsing canvas and the shot went nowhere. Another was running — not toward the threat but away from it, toward the tree line, his weapon abandoned in the mud.

  His tent imploded.

  It didn't fall — it was torn apart from the inside, the heavy canvas ripping like paper, support poles snapping and spinning into the dark. What stood in the wreckage was not a titan. It was something else. Something pale and dark and angular, still spreading, still growing across the surface of a body that hadn't finished deciding what shape it was.

  Smoke seemed to pour off it. But what hit them was cold.

  Zeke steadied himself. His hands were shaking. He looked at the thing, and he looked at the soldiers around him — some firing, some frozen, one screaming something about devils — and made a decision.

  He raised his hand toward the treeline. Two of his Titans — four-meter class, standing sentry at the perimeter — locked onto the gesture and launched forward, sprinting through the mud, jaws wide.

  They hit the wreckage and buried themselves in it. Teeth on flesh. Biting, tearing, the mindless feeding frenzy of titans doing what titans were made to do.

  One second. Two.

  A sound cut through the camp — high, metallic, like steel being torn lengthwise. The ground shook.

  A limb came out of the dark. A titan's arm — a chunk of steaming flesh — spinning end over end through the air. It hit the mud three feet from Zeke and skidded, fingers still twitching.

  The second titan came out next. Headless. It was still running, legs pumping, arms swinging, stumbling through the mud in a blind sprint with nothing above the neck but a steaming stump. It crashed through a row of supply tents, scattering crates and men, and ran three more steps before the legs buckled and it went down.

  The camp went silent.

  The fires guttered in a wind that smelled like rot and copper. The vapor spread low across the ground like fog, swallowing the firelight.

  And in the dark, points of red opened. Two. Then two more. Then more — scattered across something massive, looking down at the camp with eyes that had no right to exist.

  Zeke stood in the mud with a titan's severed arm steaming at his feet. Behind him, a soldier was whimpering. Another had dropped to his knees.

  The Warchief stared up at the thing he had made, and had no plan.