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In a chamber alongside the Reiss family chapel, where its walls were lined with tapestries depicting the Titans of old. The nine faces of the Titans of Ymir stared down from the woven fabric with hollow eyes and frozen mouths looking like they are screaming. While strange crystals shun around the walls giving the room light.
At the center of the room stood a table, so massive it could have seated thirty men. A map of Paradis was spread across its length, marked with pins and annotations; red for known threats, blue for military installations, black for the dead…or other ulterior motives.
Lord Rod Reiss sat at the head of the table, his round face and weary eyes scanning the room occupants. There were some members of the Order, some easily recognizable. To his right sat Sir Aldric with his sword rested against his chair. Ser Valerius sat beside Aldric, though his posture was obviously rigid no matter how much he tried to suppress it, his fingers drumming against the table being a clear sign. The bandage over his ruined eye had been replaced with an eyepatch while his remaining blue eye was fixed on the map.
Beside him, Agil and Gideon sat like two mismatched bookends. On the bright side Gideon finally wore clothing better than the MP uniform disaster. The big man's face was a roadmap of bruises and half-healed cuts, souvenirs from the 103rd that he wore thanks to underestimating children.
And then there was the Silent Knight.
He stood apart from the table, as he always did with his white featureless mask. He had not spoken a word since entering the chamber. He never did actually speak to begin with.
And lounging at the far end of the table with his boots propped up on the polished wood and his hat tipped forward over his eyes, was Kenny Ackerman. He was the only person in the room who looked relaxed. That was, in itself, deeply unsettling for the occupants beside him, the Ackerman was already unpredictable enough.
"The people are frightened," Rod Reiss began the meeting. "Despite our best advances to ease down the paranoia, the whispers are growing louder. They're calling it a conspiracy. They're questioning why the Military Police have taken over the investigation. They're asking questions we cannot afford to answer."
He gestured to a stack of newspapers at the end of the table, their headlines visible even from a distance. Casualty reports of the cadets, bandit attack and the main stage center; Obsidian himself.
"The crystal creature is becoming a symbol. The people are calling it the 'Wall Guardian.' They're saying it saved cadets. They're saying it fought the demon dog, praising its name. They're saying it's on our side." He spat the last words as if they were poison. "We cannot allow this narrative to take root. If the people begin to worship a Titan; a Titan that we cannot control not to even begin time its unusual appearance—the consequences for the throne would be... catastrophic."
Aldric's golden eyes did not waver from the map. "The people are like sheep My Lord. They will worship whatever we tell them to worship. The question is not whether we can control the narrative; it is whether we can do so before the Knights' failure at the 103rd becomes public knowledge."
The word "failure" landed like a slap to a certain trio in the room.
"If I may Sir. The 103rd was not an absolute failure." Valerius said quietly. "It was a setback. The purge was interrupted by variables we could not have anticipated—"
"Variables," Aldric interrupted, his voice flat. "You mean the crystal creature. The winged beast and the boy." He finally turned his head, fixing his gaze on Valerius with an intensity that made his squire shrink. "You had a company of knights. You had advanced weaponry. You had the element of surprise. And yet, somehow, you allowed a group of children and a handful of Scouts to rout you. Explain to me, Ser Valerius, how that is not a failure."
Valerius opened his mouth, then closed it. His remaining eye darted to the Silent Knight, as if seeking support, but the masked figure offered none.
"It was the boy," Agil interjected on Valerius behalf. "The shapeshifter. The one with the device. He turned into—into that titan. He tore through our men like they were made of paper. The crystal creature, the flying beast even the smaller demon dog—they were bloody distractions. He was the real threat."
"And yet you let him escape." Aldric reminded flatly. "You let him escape, and you let the Scouts see too much. And now, we are forced to clean up a mess that should never have existed. Forget it, this all started with the knights assigned to monitor the scouts in the first place, jeopardized their entire cover in a single week."
Rod Reiss cleared his throat nervously. "Aldric enough. We are not here to assign blame. We are here to discuss solutions. The people are frightened. And demand for food is getting higher than what can be supplied to the masses thanks to the influx of refugees from wall Maria over the past 6 months. And we still have no idea who this boy is, or where he came from."
A knight backed up this testament. "We along with the interior have searched the records of Wall Sina and Wall Rose. There is no bearer of 'Eren' in any of them. No family by that name. No birth records, no tax records, no military conscription records. It's as if he appeared out of thin air."
"He could be from Wall Maria." Valerius said. "He has to be. The only records we have from Maria are incomplete; many were lost in the fall. If his family was from one of the outer districts, it's possible he simply... slipped through the cracks."
"Or he's hiding around the walls, or in the refugee camps" Agil added. "Think about it. There are thousands of them. It would be easy for a boy to disappear among them."
Aldric's fingers drummed once against the table. "Then we draw him out."
The words hung in the air like a blade.
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