Hello, Drinor here. I'm happy to publish a new Chapter of Attack on Titan: A Warrior of Devils
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"Explain," Erwin said. He kept his voice level.
"Titans, sir. Inside Wall Rose." The soldier pressed a fist to his chest, the salute sloppy, his arm trembling. "Multiple sightings from the southern territories. Garrison relay stations picked up smoke signals from at least three villages south of Ehrmich District. The reports are... they're scattered, sir, but they all say the same thing. Titans moving north."
The room had gone very still. The oil lamp on Erwin's desk hissed, the flame eating through the wick.
Hange straightened beside the desk. "That's impossible. If they came from Wall Maria, they'd have to pass through the southern gate district. The Garrison would have seen them."
"They didn't come from the gate, Squad Leader. That's what the scouts are saying. They just... appeared."
"Who else has been notified?" Erwin asked.
"Commander Pixis is being informed now, sir. A rider was sent to MP headquarters in Stohess twenty minutes ago."
"Where is the breach?"
The soldier's face tightened. "We don't know, sir."
"You don't know," Erwin repeated.
"The scouts haven't reported back yet. We know the Titans are inside Wall Rose territory, but no one has located the hole. The southern stretch of Wall Rose is over a hundred kilometers. It could be anywhere between Krolva and Trost."
Erwin stood.
"I need soldiers in the field within the hour. Every available squad. They are to locate the Titans, establish their numbers, and find the breach. Those are the only three objectives. Everything else is secondary."
"Yes, sir." The soldier saluted again, steadier this time, and turned for the door.
"Wait." Erwin's voice caught him mid-stride. "Tell the garrison commander at Trost, Krolva, Utopia, and Karanes districts to begin civilian evacuation toward Wall Sina. Do not wait for confirmation. Begin now."
The soldier nodded and was gone.
The door closed. Jaime stared at the grain of the wood and tried to make his thoughts settle. They wouldn't. His mind kept circling back to the same dumb arithmetic. Wall Rose. Titans inside. Jaime remembered Commander Erwin saying that Reiner and Bertholdt had the same background as Annie, and Jaime still remembered Bertholdt calling him a Devil, but the two were still in the Headquarters. If any of them were the Colossal Titan, the entire place would have been destroyed, and the Colossal Titan was not something that could be hidden. Yet, the only way for Titans to get inside the territory would be if the Colossal Titan appeared once again, and this time, decided not to kick a gate, but instead kick a random part of the Wall, and let the Titans inside, yet, Jaime felt that he was missing something. The other two attacks have been at the gate for whatever reason; why change now?
"Sealing the breach," Hange said, pulling him out of his thoughts. She was already pacing. "At Trost, Eren sealed the gate because there was a boulder in the city. A boulder the right size, in the right place. That was luck. There won't be a second boulder sitting conveniently beside the next hole in the wall."
"Trees," Jaime said right away.
All three of them looked at him. Erwin waited. Levi seemed curious. Hange had already leaned forward.
"Eren's Titan form is fifteen meters tall," Jaime said. "He can lift weight no human could touch. If there's forest near the breach, and there's forest everywhere in southern Rose, he could haul timber. Whole trunks. Stack them in the gap. Boulders too, if there are any nearby. It wouldn't seal it. Not permanently. But it would block it long enough for engineering crews to bring mortar and stone."
He could picture it. Eren's massive hands tearing a pine from the earth, roots trailing dirt like torn hair. Slamming it sideways into a gap in the wall. Ugly, crude work. Kenny would have liked it. Use what's in front of you and stop wishing for what isn't.
"That works if the hole is small," Levi said, flat. "If we're looking at a breach the size of Shiganshina's gate, trees and rocks won't do anything. We'd need to collapse a section of wall to fill it, and we don't have the firepower for that."
"Then we'd better hope it's small," Jaime said.
Levi looked at him for a long moment, then turned back to Erwin.
Erwin was already writing. His pen moved across the paper without hesitation, the letters appearing in clean rows as though he'd composed the orders in his head before the ink touched the page. Jaime wondered if he had. If there were contingency orders for this exact scenario folded in a drawer somewhere, gathering dust.
"Levi," Erwin said without looking up, "you will take your squad and Eren Yeager. Once Eren is awake and combat-ready, you move south. Your objective is engagement. If you find the breach, you hold the position and Eren seals it however he can."
Levi didn't seem very pleased. Levi's squad had just fought the Female Titan. Gunther's legs were crushed. Petra had taken a hit meant for someone else. Eld and Oluo were on their feet but running on fumes. Everyone was running on fumes.
"My squad," Levi said carefully, "is not at full strength."
"I'm aware." Erwin set the pen down and met Levi's eyes. "Take whoever can stand and fight. That's the threshold."
Levi was quiet for a moment. Then: "Understood."
"Mike's squad, Hange's squad, and Squads Dita and Klaus will sweep Wall Rose from Krolva south to Trost. Take Garrison soldiers from every district you pass through. Search every kilometer of wall until you find the breach. Once you find it, send a flare and hold position."
Hange nodded. She'd stopped pacing, and the jitter had burned off into focus. She adjusted her glasses with one finger. "I'll have my squad ready in thirty minutes."
Erwin turned to Jaime. "Our conversation will have to wait."
Jaime nodded. The thing he'd come to say, the words that had been stuck in his throat about Ymir, about the word "devil," about a suspicion that made his stomach turn, all of it sank back down into the dark where he'd been keeping it. It would have to keep.
"Which squad?" Jaime asked.
"You'll ride with Mike."
Mike Zacharias. Second only to Levi. The man who smelled Titans before anyone could see them.
"You and Levi captured the Female Titan," Erwin continued. "You fought a shifter one-on-one and lived. That makes you one of the few soldiers we have with firsthand experience against an intelligent Titan. Mike is our strongest after Levi. Together, you find the breach and you eliminate any Titan you encounter inside Wall Rose."
The logic was clean. Jaime couldn't argue with it. He wasn't sure he wanted to. Some part of him, the part that still felt Kenny's voice in the back of his skull whispering move forward or die, wanted to be out there. Wanted a blade and a nape and an enemy that didn't have Annie's face.
"What about Annie?" he asked.
Erwin looked at him.
"If the breach was caused by the Colossal Titan, then all of this can be just a distraction to free her, this is their chance. Everyone deploys. The compound empties. They could walk into her cell with a key and no one left to stop them."
Erwin's expression didn't change. "I've already considered that. Annie Leonhart will be transferred under guard to Karanes District before the squads deploy. Separate location, separate security detail."
Karanes. East, near the wall. Away from the southern breach, away from wherever the fighting would be. It made sense. But Jaime couldn't help but feel that he was missing something. That District was known to have wealthy people in it, so he wondered why Commander Erwin wanted her there, of all places?
Jaime swallowed the question he wanted to ask and saluted instead.
"Yes, sir."
Erwin returned the salute with a nod. "Get to the armory. Draw fresh blades and gas. You leave within the hour."
Jaime turned for the door. Behind him, Hange was already talking, her voice climbing as she worked through logistics with Erwin. Levi said something low that Jaime didn't catch.
The hallway was cold. Gray stone on both sides, torch brackets throwing uneven light. The exhaustion pressed at his temples. He hadn't slept. He couldn't remember his last meal. His hands ached from the knuckles he'd split open punching the walls of his room hours ago, and beneath the bandages, the skin pulled and stung with every flex of his fingers.
He thought of Krista and Ymir asleep in the women's barracks. Of the golden-haired girl from the dream, the farm, the hawk circling overhead. Of a child's voice begging not to forget.
Then he stopped thinking and walked faster.
Two hours had passed since the world broke again.
Jaime tightened the last strap on his ODM gear, and the harness bit into his thighs. The leather was still stiff from yesterday's expedition. His blades were fresh, at least. Eight of them, slotted and locked. His gas canisters were full.
"I was sleeping," Ymir announced to no one in particular. "Eyes closed, mouth open, drooling on the pillow, the whole thing. First real sleep in two days." She yanked a strap across her chest and cinched it with more force than necessary. "And now here we are. Strapping on gear, about to ride south into another pile of Titans, risking our asses again, can't we go three days without this world wanting to kill us."
"Look on the bright side," Krista said, checking the release mechanism on her left blade holster, her voice warm and steady as ever. "At least we're together. All of us. On the same mission."
"That's the bright side?" Ymir shot back. "Being together when we die?"
"We're not going to die."
"You don't know that."
"I choose to believe it."
Ymir opened her mouth, closed it, and shook her head.
Jaime said nothing. He'd barely spoken since the compound stirred to life two hours ago. The words were there, somewhere behind his teeth, but they kept getting tangled with other things. Annie's voice. The child begging not to forget. The word "Historia," a stone in his skull.
He watched the group assemble in the predawn grey. Counted faces.
Ymir, Krista, Reiner, Berholdt, Connie, Sasha, and Mikasa.
And Mike's squad.
Jaime's gaze drifted back to Ymir.
He wanted to trust her. Wanted it enough...surely he was wrong, maybe it had been just a coincidence. She called him Shorty and he called her Ugly Freckles and she'd lain beside him an hour ago while he fell apart, offering warmth without sentiment. That was real.
But Annie had been real too.
And it wasn't just Ymir. If he was right about the word "devil," if the connection held, then Reiner and Bertholdt were part of it. All three cadets from the same village. The same cover story. Erwin had laid it out during those seven hours: Annie's background check listed a remote settlement in Wall Maria territory as her hometown. Reiner and Bertholdt claimed the exact same village. The same lie, told three times by three people who supposedly didn't know each other before enlisting.
He looked at Reiner now. The man was talking to Bertholdt in a low voice, one hand on the shorter boy's shoulder. Reassuring him. The way a squad leader reassures his men before a fight. Jaime had seen Reiner do it a hundred times during training, and he'd admired it every time. Reiner was the kind of soldier others leaned on, the first one through the door and the last one to complain.
Bertholdt was sweating. His hands moved from his belt to his face to his belt again. The morning air was cool enough to see their breath, and Bertholdt's forehead was slick.
Jaime looked away before either of them noticed.
He wondered if Captain Mike knew. Commander Erwin had said the information was restricted. Levi knew. Hange knew. Armin and Jean had figured it out on their own. But Mike's orders, as far as Jaime could tell, were about the breach. Find it. Seal it. Kill what you can along the way. Whether Erwin had pulled Mike aside and told him that two of the cadets riding with him might be enemy agents, Jaime couldn't say. This wasn't the time to ask.
Mike stepped forward. He was a tall man, very tall, and a mustache that made his expressions difficult to read.
"Listen up. We ride south. Our orders are to locate any Titans inside Wall Rose, engage or bypass depending on numbers, and find the breach. That's the priority. Find where they're getting in, and report back so we can seal it." He looked across the group without lingering on anyone. "Stay in formation. Don't break off. If you see Titans, signal first, then engage. We're not here for glory. We're here to find a hole in a wall."
Connie's hand went up before Mike finished. "Sir." His voice came out fast, running over itself. "Ragako Village. My village. It's south. Right in the path of where they're saying the Titans were spotted." He swallowed. "Can we check on it? My family's there. My mom, my brother, my sister. If the Titans came from that direction..."
Mike studied him for a moment. "We'll check every village on the southern route. Ragako included."
Connie nodded, but his jaw stayed tight. His eyes were too wide, and his breathing was shallow. Jaime recognized the look. He'd seen it in the Underground on the faces of people waiting for news they already knew would be bad.
He walked over and put a hand on Connie's shoulder. "Your family should be alright."
Connie looked up at him. "You think so?"
"Titans aren't exactly known for stealth, Connie. They shake the ground when they walk. Your family would have heard them coming from a mile off."
Connie's breathing evened out a little. "We have horses in the village," he said, and a weak smile surfaced. "Fast ones, too."
"A horse is faster than a Titan," Jaime said. "Your family got out."
He said it with more certainty than he felt, because certainty was what Connie needed right now, and the truth could wait for evidence. South. Right in the path. Connie's own words, and Jaime couldn't unhear them. He pushed them aside.
Sasha hadn't said anything. She stood apart from the others, gripping her gear straps, staring south into the predawn dark. Her village, Dauper, was south too. Hunting country, deep woods, a settlement that survived by knowing the forest better than anything else that moved through it.
Krista moved beside her. "Sasha, your village is in the mountains, right? Surrounded by trees?"
A nod.
"Trees slow Titans down. Your people will have had time."
"Yeah." The word rang hollow.
Ymir appeared at Krista's side. "Your old man's the hunter who taught you to shoot before you could write, yeah?"
Sasha blinked. "Yeah."
"Then he's fine. A man like that hears a Titan, he has his family moving before its second step. Stop looking like death and get on your horse."
Sasha straightened up, her white-knuckled grip relaxing into readiness.
Crossing to where Mikasa adjusted her scarf, gear already prepped with typical precision, Jaime kept his voice low beneath the bustle of saddling horses and tightening straps. "Keep an eye on Reiner and Bertholdt."
Her hands paused. She didn't look at him.
"They've been sweating bullets since we left. Bertholdt especially. Look at him."
She looked. Bertholdt wiped his face again, tall frame hunched as if trying to shrink.
"You think they're like Annie?" Mikasa asked quietly.
"I'm not sure, but you heard Commander Erwin. They're from the same town. We need to watch them and be ready for the worst."
She considered this in silence. Jaime waited, knowing she rarely needed things repeated.
Then, turning to meet his purple eyes directly, she asked, "Are you alright?"
The question, delivered with rare softness, startled him. She searched his face for things he likely failed to conceal.
"I'm fine," he deflected too quickly.
She let it go, adjusting her scarf a final time. "I'll watch your back."
He nodded.
"I still have your drawing," she added, pulling the small sketch he'd seen in a dream from her pocket before tucking it away again. "I know we'll be fine."
"Thank you," he said, relief evident in his tone.
They mounted up, sixteen riders breathing steam in the grey light as the compound walls fell behind them and the southward road unfurled ahead, slicing through oddly silent farmland. In the Underground, such quiet always preceded death. The stillness made Jaime's skin crawl.
He rode flanked by Mikasa and Connie, Mike's squad fanned out ahead. Reiner and Bertholdt kept near the center, Ymir and Krista close by each other. Sasha rode with bow on back and eyes forward, hands steady on the reins.
To the south, Titans strode through cropland and homesteads. To the south, a breach gaped in Wall Rose.
Gaze locked ahead, Jaime rode resolutely toward all of it.
.
.
Three hours of nothing.
The horses had settled into the mindless rhythm of a long ride, hooves beating soft against packed dirt. A thin overcast had crept in from the west, turning the sky the color of old pewter, and the fields on either side of the road stretched flat and empty. No smoke. No screams. No ground-shaking footsteps.
No Titans.
Jaime's thighs burned from the saddle. His eyes stung from scanning every treeline, every rise in the terrain, every shadow that could have been a figure standing where a figure shouldn't be. Three hours of that, and all he'd found were crows and fenceposts.
"Maybe they were wrong," Connie said. He'd been saying versions of this for the last half hour, each one a little more hopeful than the last. "The scouts. Maybe they saw something else. A landslide, or a herd of cattle, or..."
"Cattle," Ymir repeated.
"I'm just saying. It was dark. People see things in the dark."
"People see fifteen-meter naked monsters in the dark and think cattle."
"Forget it."
Sasha pulled up alongside Connie, her horse matching his stride. "He has a point, though. Three hours and nothing. If Titans were really inside Wall Rose, we should have seen something by now. Tracks, at least. Footprints. Flattened buildings." She chewed her lower lip. "Maybe they got the direction wrong."
Nobody answered.
Jaime kept his mouth shut. He didn't share their confusion, but he didn't have an explanation either. The reports had been specific. Titans south of Ehrmich, moving north. Three villages had sent smoke signals. That wasn't a mistake. That wasn't drunk scouts. Something had been out here.
Something still was.
Mike Zacharias rode at the head of the column. He hadn't spoken in over an hour. His chin was slightly raised, nostrils flaring at intervals, sampling the air the way a hunting dog works a scent line. Jaime had watched him do it during the expedition, and he'd learned to pay attention. When Mike smelled something, things happened fast.
Mike's head snapped left.
His nostrils flared wide. Then his hand went up, fist clenched, and every rider behind him pulled their reins.
"South," Mike said. "Titans. South-southwest, maybe two kilometers."
Jaime stood in his stirrups. His eyes tracked the direction Mike indicated, past a low ridge dotted with scrub brush, out to where the land dipped into a shallow valley. For a moment he saw nothing.
Then movement. Nine shapes, distant, the size of fingers held at arm's length. Walking. No particular direction. Just shambling through the valley in that loose, boneless gait that made the hair on Jaime's neck stand up no matter how many times he saw it.
"I count nine," Jaime confirmed.
Nanaba brought her horse alongside Mike. "What do we do?"
Mike watched the distant figures for several seconds. "Ignore them for now. They're not near any settlement. Our priority is the villages south of here. We evacuate civilians, then deal with any Titans in our path on the way back."
Nanaba nodded and turned to relay the order.
Jaime settled back into his saddle. Nine Titans, wandering aimlessly. No breach in sight. Something about the picture was wrong, but he couldn't name it yet.
Then his spine caught fire.
A jolt that shot from the base of his skull down through every vertebra, white and blinding. His vision went out like a snuffed candle.
In the blackness, a girl.
Small. Barefoot. Rags for clothes. She stood in a vast emptiness, and her eyes were hollow. She looked at him, or through him, and her mouth moved but no sound reached him. Behind her, shapes towered in the dark. Enormous. She was so small against them, and Jaime felt something crack open in his chest, tears ran down his face, and he felt crying.
Then it was gone.
He was in the saddle. His hands were gripping the reins so hard the leather creaked. His horse had stopped, tossing its head. He was panting.
"Jaime!" Krista had pulled up beside him, one hand on his arm. Her blue eyes were wide. "What happened? Are you alright?"
He blinked. Swallowed. His mouth tasted like copper.
"I'm fine."
The words came out hoarse. Reiner had turned in his saddle. Bertholdt was staring. Ymir's eyes were sharp and still. Connie looked frightened. Sasha had stopped chewing.
"You went white," Krista said. "You made a sound like someone hit you."
"It was nothing." Jaime straightened in the saddle and forced his breathing level. The girl's face flickered at the edges of his vision, fading, a face he didn't know and had never seen. "Something strange. It's passed."
Krista didn't look convinced, but she let go of his arm.
Jaime opened his mouth to tell Captain Mike they could keep moving.
A shout from the rear of the column cut him off.
"They're running!"
Jaime whipped around. The nine Titans in the valley, the ones that had been shambling aimlessly thirty seconds ago, had turned. All nine of them. In unison. Their heads were locked toward the column, and they were running.
Full sprint, arms pumping, feet tearing divots in the earth. The ground vibrated under the horses.
"That's not possible," Nanaba shouted. "They were normal. I saw them walking. Normal Titans don't just start running."
One of Mike's veterans swore. "What the hell set them off?"
Nobody answered. Jaime's mind went to the bolt in his spine, the vision of the girl, the sound he'd made. Thirty seconds between his episode and the Titans turning. Coincidence sat poorly in his gut. Kenny used to say coincidence was a word for people too lazy to look for the connection.
But there was no time to think about it now.
Mike's voice cut across the column. "Nanaba, take the cadets and continue south. Find the villages. Evacuate everyone you can. I'll handle the nine."
"Alone?" Nanaba asked.
Mike was already unbuckling himself from the saddle, one hand on his blade grip. "They're running in a group. I can thin them before they reach you."
He looked at Jaime. "You. With me."
Jaime nodded. His hands had stopped shaking. Whatever that vision had been, wherever it came from, it could wait. The Titans couldn't.
"Jaime." Krista's voice, close. She'd ridden up beside him again, and her face held that stubborn set he recognized from every time she refused to leave someone behind. "Stay with us. Let Mike's squad handle them."
"Krista. Go."
She flinched at the shortness of it. He saw the hurt flash across her face, but there wasn't time to be gentle.
"Ymir," Jaime said, turning. "Protect her."
Ymir nodded.
"Keep close to Mike's squad," Jaime continued, louder now, addressing the rest. Connie, Sasha, Reiner, Bertholdt. "Watch each other's backs. Stay near Mikasa. Don't break formation for anything."
Mikasa caught his eye from three horses back. She inclined her head. She understood. She would watch them.
Jaime kicked his horse, and the two started riding towards the Titans.
Nine Titans. Two soldiers.
"Be ready," Mike called over his shoulder. The wind pulled at his voice.
"I'll protect Historia," he said. "No matter what."
The words came out of his mouth before he realized what he'd said.
But now wasn't the time to think about that, as the Titans approached, Jaime fired his hook and went for the kill...
But now wasn't the time to think about that, as the Titans approached, Jaime fired his hook and went for the kill...
From far away, a Titan with fur was watching them closely....Interesting!
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