Return from the Ashes
In one of the palace's upper chambers, beneath dim light filtering through heavy curtains, time itself seemed suspended above a body that had returned from death—
or from something far worse.
Kasper.
A name no one yet knew.
He lay on the bed like someone pulled from the depths of hell, no longer Titan, no longer truly human—just a frail body trembling, as if it had not yet learned how to live again.
His face was pale, like a blank page stripped of memory.
His hands moved unconsciously, clawing at the air as though searching for a buried past.
His lips trembled, forming weak, nearly inaudible words—yet the weight of them struck hard when the physician caught them:
"…Grisha… Grisha…"
Kasper whispered the name in a hoarse voice, as if exhaling something buried in his chest for decades.
His body convulsed violently once more, rattling the medicine bottles on the nearby table.
The doctor, watching with rising alarm, needed no further confirmation.
He spun around, flung the door open, and shouted to the guard:
"Inform Commander Hange and Queen Historia immediately! And the Scout Captain—
and Miss Sarah, if she's able to stand.
The man… is beginning to wake."
The long moment of waiting had begun to end.
The man they had believed to be nothing more than an experiment
was beginning to reclaim himself.
Whispers After the Absence
In the silent room—heavy with the scent of old disinfectant and history—the body that had reclaimed its humanity two days ago remained imprisoned in a struggle deeper than words.
Kasper.
Returned from a darkness that had lasted twenty-five years inside a Titan's body.
His frail form shook as if every cell screamed in protest.
His face looked like a battlefield long abandoned: half-lidded eyes, trembling lips, breaths tearing painfully from his chest.
Then—like a blade cutting through the present—his dry lips moved again:
"…Grisha…"
The word struck the room like a flaming projectile.
Everyone froze.
No one spoke.
He repeated it a second time… then a third, his voice breaking with deeper anguish, as though the name itself reignited an ancient fire within him:
"…Grisha… Zeke betrayed us… Zeke betrayed us…"
The doctor stopped writing.
Mikasa's hand went instinctively to her sword.
Eren's eyes widened—on the verge of shattering.
"What did you say?" Eren asked, his voice choked as he stepped forward.
But Kasper did not see them.
He was not with them.
He was trapped inside a transparent prison of memories—
breathing through the wounds of the past, suffocating under a betrayal that had never faded.
"He betrayed us… we trusted him… he was our last hope…
he betrayed us… Grisha… you were wrong…"
The air in the room grew unbearably heavy.
And between each broken sentence, hearts began to fracture.
He had returned from twenty-five years of silence not to ask for water,
not to ask where he was—
but to deliver an accusation.
And a name.
Zeke.
❖ The Collapse of Time in a Narrow Room
Silence thickened the room—
heavy as dust settling over forbidden history.
Every gaze was fixed on Kasper…
the man returned from a hell that had lasted twenty-five years.
The physician wiped sweat from his brow, nerves betraying him.
Mikasa's hand drifted unconsciously to her sword.
Pixis exhaled sharply, while Connie and Jean couldn't even swallow.
And Eren—
Eren froze.
As if time itself had halted around him.
On the bed, caught between past and present, Kasper's eyes opened halfway—
a lost stare, groping for the world through the gaze of a man who had just climbed out of a grave.
Then he murmured, as though speaking to a ghost standing beside him:
"…Grisha…?"
It wasn't a call.
It was the voice of a man breaking—
searching for a friend he had lost a quarter of a century ago.
Eren's shoulder trembled.
He stared at Kasper with a look no one could decipher.
He didn't speak.
He couldn't.
He knew that name.
He had seen it.
He had heard it.
He had lived it—within the Paths.
But this—
This was not something he had seen.
This face was never meant to return from time itself, as if fate had decided to defy its own laws.
Then came the quiet explosion that split the air apart:
"Zeke betrayed us…
…he deceived Grisha…
…he deceived us all…"
The words fell like silent bombs.
Eren's hand clenched so tightly his veins surfaced beneath his skin—
yet his expression remained stone.
Mikasa met his gaze, worry tightening her chest.
She thought he was shaken by his father's name.
But the truth was far darker.
Eren wasn't stunned by memory—
He was stunned by the gap.
A voice echoed in his mind, unheard by anyone else:
"This wasn't here…
In the Paths…
This man… did not return."
A horrifying sensation crawled up his spine,
as though history itself were twisting—
shedding its skin before their eyes.
What happened tonight was not part of the Founding Titan's future.
It was a rupture.
A fracture.
An impossible change.
And in that moment, Eren turned slightly toward the doorway—
where Sarah stood in the corridor, leaning against the wall, her hand pressed to her injured ribs.
Her eyes were wide.
Watching.
Unaware of what she had done to the Paths.
Eren whispered inside himself, his lips unmoving:
"You…
You broke time."
For the first time since touching the Founder,
Eren no longer felt like he alone commanded fate.
There was another butterfly now—
And the Path had begun to tremble.
Sarah approached quietly and sat beside Kasper.
His body still shook, his breathing heavy, but his eyes began to follow her—confused, scattered.
She rested her hand gently on the edge of the bed.
"Don't worry…" she whispered.
The doctor handed her a cup of water.
She moved slowly to the table and poured warm broth from a small pot.
"I brought you something light. You'll need it to regain your strength."
She smiled softly, as if trying to pull his heart back from the edge of an abyss.
Then she leaned closer, meeting his eyes.
"You're not in Marley… and you're not on a battlefield.
You're safe—here, on Paradis Island."
Confusion flickered across his face,
but something in her voice steadied his shaking—if only for a moment.
"My name is Sarah. And I… was the reason you came back."
She gave a small, gentle laugh, as if chasing sorrow from the room for a few seconds.
"Believe me… being a Titan didn't suit you."
She glanced at Hange, then stepped back quietly, giving her space.
Hange moved forward, her tone measured and calm:
"You're human again."
She paused.
Then added slowly:
"You've returned."
Seconds passed before Kasper whispered:
"How long…?
How long has it been…?"
Hange answered after a heavy silence:
"Almost twenty-five years.
You were a Titan the entire time."
Kasper slowly lifted his hand to his face,
as if his features didn't belong to him.
Then he spoke in a voice reduced to ash:
"Grisha…?"
Hange shook her head.
"He's dead."
Then, more softly, she gestured toward Eren standing in the shadows:
"This is his second son… Eren."
Something sparked violently inside Kasper.
He stared at Eren in disbelief and said, refusing the truth:
"His… second son?"
He shook his head slowly, whispering bitterly:
"Grisha only had one child…"
His voice rose slightly, as if the truth itself wounded him:
"Zeke."
"Zeke was his only son…"
Then his voice broke:
"Zeke… who betrayed us."
Eren stood motionless.
He didn't move—
but something inside him collapsed in silence.
The noise in his chest was louder than any scream.
"Kasper… I saw him in the Paths… but he wasn't in the future…
So Sarah… broke something in the Founder…"
Kasper whispered, choking on the words:
"Grisha… was my friend.
My brother in the revolution."
Eren's eyes filled with tears, but he didn't speak.
Something ancient inside his heart—named Grisha—had stopped beating.
And Kasper, upon hearing the name again, shattered.
Memories exploded like an unforgiving storm.
His body shook, his voice fractured, and he whispered in devastation:
"Grisha… my brother…"
And he couldn't endure any longer.
And He Could Bear No More
His composure shattered.
Tears burst from his eyes like a flood unleashed, pouring down relentlessly—as though every silent moment he had endured as a Titan had been killing him from within.
He wept with a sound that did not come from a man's mouth…
but from the heart of a betrayed child,
from a soul that had remained standing at the gates of farewell for twenty-five years.
His head fell toward his chest, words breaking upon his lips, twisting in his throat as if afraid to be spoken:
"We dreamed…
We planned together to save them…
But they took him from me."
In that moment, there were no commanders, no queen, no soldiers in the room.
They were all merely witnesses
to the collapse of a man—
the last remnant of a dream that time had buried alongside Grisha.
When the Monster Finally Learns He Is Human
Kasper's sobs slowly began to fade, as though his body—heavy with years—was finally realizing that he no longer roared, no longer was a beast.
Sarah approached quietly and knelt beside him without speaking.
She placed a cup of water and a bowl of warm soup on the small table next to him, then spoke softly, gently, as though coaxing his humanity back into place:
"Drink…
You'll feel better.
No one here will hurt you."
Kasper looked at her with unfocused eyes, then at the soup, then at his own thin, trembling hands.
He took a sip.
Then another.
Then another.
He was tasting life the way a child learns to speak—hesitantly, uncertainly.
As steam rose from the bowl, his gaze drifted across the silent faces surrounding him:
Hange, sharp-eyed and watchful.
Mikasa, rigid and alert.
Armin, filled with quiet compassion.
Eren, unsettled—fractured.
Then his eyes returned to her.
To the girl seated calmly beside him.
The one who had given him water.
Sarah.
He froze.
The muscles in his face tightened as if scorched by sudden flame.
He stared—unmoving, unblinking—just staring.
He whispered, as if to himself:
"No…
This isn't possible…"
He leaned forward slightly, disbelief flooding his eyes like a cry from the past.
"Your smile…
Your voice…
Your eyes…"
Then he said it—slowly, as though the word itself might shatter him:
"Jalal?"
Sarah recoiled.
She stared at him, confusion and shock crashing through her features.
"You… knew my father?"
It was as if lightning had struck him.
"Jalal…
The Arab scientist…
He was my friend—
more than a brother."
His voice broke, words tearing free from his chest:
"They feared him…
Because he wasn't Eldian.
They couldn't control his mind.
They never dared turn him into a Titan…
so they killed him."
Sarah gasped, slowly, pressing a hand to her chest as though holding her heart in place.
"I'm his daughter,"
she whispered—
as if saying it aloud was the only way not to fall.
Time stopped.
Everyone in the room felt it—that what had just been revealed could never be undone.
There was something sacred in this encounter,
as if history itself had chosen to tear open a page once sealed by force.
Kasper stared at her for a long moment.
Then he smiled—a smile broken by tears—and said:
"Now I understand…
The calm in your voice…
It doesn't belong to this era.
It belongs to Jalal."
The Inheritance of Fire
In the corner, Levi stood silent.
But he was seeing her differently now.
A part of her father lived within her—
and another part of Levi no longer wished to ever leave her behind.
Sarah looked at Kasper.
At history.
At pain given human form in a man freed from a twenty-five-year curse.
And in that moment—
she saw only her father reflected in him.
Her eyes were wet, but her tears were not born of weakness this time.
They were a declaration.
"I will continue my father's path."
Her voice trembled—not from fear, but from the force of decision.
"I will fight for everyone who was killed.
For those who were burned because they dared to dream of a world that doesn't divide by race, blood, or ash."
"I won't be a silent witness.
I won't let his sacrifices vanish as if they never existed."
Her words erupted from her heart, awakening something she had buried for far too long.
A question that had haunted her in silence:
Was she worthy of that legacy?
Now the answer stood clear—
loud, unyielding, pure.
In that moment, Sarah was no longer just the girl from Marley.
Not merely the foreign scientist.
Not the suspected spy.
She was the daughter of an Arab revolutionary whose dream was buried before it could be born.
She was the voice of a new generation—
one that chose to break the walls not only with war…
but with memory.
Everyone in the room felt it.
And this time—
no one doubted her.
Not Hange.
Not Eren.
Not even Levi.
She had claimed her place.
And chosen the side she would fight for—
with her blood,
her name,
and a heart that was no longer afraid.
The Palace Balcony — Smoke and Tears❞
The air above was cold—autumnal—
biting at the soul before it ever touched the skin.
Sarah left Kasper's room with steady steps,
even though she felt as if the world had been pulled out from beneath her feet.
She said quietly, without looking back at anyone:
"Don't follow me."
No one dared to move.
Not Mikasa.
Not Hange.
Not even Levi.
Alone, Sarah climbed to the highest balcony of the palace.
Smoke curled from her cigarette, as if she were emptying decades of grief into the air.
Her tears were not only tears of betrayal—
they were tears of a shattered identity.
"I am the daughter of a revolutionary…
killed in silence."
"I am a woman…
who nearly died accused of treason."
"I am a sister…
to a captive no one knows is alive—or already a corpse."
She placed her hand on the stone railing and gasped,
as though swallowing a scream that had been lodged in her chest since childhood.
"Even my father… even he…
died before I could tell him:
thank you for not being a coward."
Suddenly—
she felt footsteps behind her.
She didn't turn.
She didn't have the strength left—not even for anger.
Then she heard his voice.
A voice that had never sounded this honest before.
"Sarah…"
She turned.
Eren.
His features worn,
his eyes carrying every war the world had ever known—
and every regret that had never been spoken.
He approached slowly…
then, without warning—
he embraced her.
Held her as if searching for salvation.
As if holding not just a comrade lost to war—
but someone lost to the heart itself.
"We lost our fathers, Sarah…"
"We lost them for the same reason…
and the result is the same:
we are what remains of their memories."
He fell silent for a moment, then continued in a low voice:
"I was cruel.
I doubted you a thousand times.
I saw you as a threat—
only because you resembled them.
You resembled the world I wanted to destroy."
She lifted her eyes to him, tears still burning.
He said:
"But your father…
he was with us.
With my father…
in the same revolution.
The same dream."
"Does that mean…
that all these years, I was fighting beside someone who resembles you?"
Sarah inhaled sharply, silently.
She didn't know what shattered her more—
Eren's embrace,
his confession,
or her father's memory unfolding in the voice of someone who had once been her enemy.
She said, her voice broken:
"We were the dream…
but the world does not love dreamers."
And only then—
Eren closed his eyes.
As if hearing a voice he had never heard since birth.
The voice of hope—
broken.
Silence settled between them.
Not cold silence—
but one saturated with everything left unsaid,
with things that no longer needed words.
Then—
soft footsteps approached.
Levi appeared behind them.
As always, he needed no introduction.
He stopped a short distance away, observed the scene for a moment, then said in a tone she could not mistake:
"Eren… leave us."
Eren met his gaze—
a long look, filled with old respect—
then nodded silently and walked away,
as if handing her over to the only man he trusted to catch her if she fell.
Sarah remained alone with Levi beneath a pale autumn sky.
She tried to wipe her tears quickly—
but Levi noticed before she could.
He approached slowly, then said with calm, dry sarcasm:
"The palace balconies seem crowded with admirers tonight."
She looked up at him.
Her eyes were still swollen, but she smiled—
a faint smile, yet honest.
"Eren… he's like a younger brother.
He may not know it,
but our pains are similar."
Levi was silent for a moment, staring into the distance, then looked back at her.
"Does that mean I should be jealous?"
She looked at him—
that look that unsettles even the hardest men.
She laughed, though her tears hadn't fully dried.
"Oh…
are you jealous, Captain?"
He raised an eyebrow slightly—his familiar gesture—then sighed and deflected with practiced ease:
"No.
I'm just trying to understand this insane world…
a supposed spy who turns out to be the daughter of a revolutionary."
He stepped closer, standing beside her.
Softly, he said:
"Thank that man…
for bringing someone like you into this world."
She looked at him.
This time, she didn't answer.
But her heart did—
quietly,
firmly,
with a different kind of pulse.
Flashback — "Kasper and Grisha… A Dream That Never Came to Be"
Under a dim sun in one of Marley's narrow alleys, Grisha and Kasper stood beside a small river, speaking in hushed tones—as if the very air might betray them.
Grisha:
"We must break the chains. Our children will not live under the same injustice."
Kasper, his eyes shimmering with hope:
"I dream of a world where no one has to become a Titan just to have worth."
Jalal, approaching them with quiet steps, spoke gently:
"And that will never happen… except through knowledge.
Your blood—Dina's blood—is the key.
I will try… until my very last breath."
The three men united under a single purpose:
to overthrow Marley's tyranny—not by weapons alone,
but through truth and science.
They did not know betrayal was closer than they imagined.
And now, that dream resurfaces—
rising from Kasper's anguished whispers in a darkened room,
to tell the story history refused to write.
The moment the name "Jalal" was spoken,
this was no longer merely a mission.
It became a battle of identity, blood, and memory.
Now, Sarah is no longer just a fighter—
she is a witness to a great legacy,
and the heir to a revolution that never reached its end.
And Levi…
is no longer just a commander.
He is the guardian of a secret
that could tip the balance in a war that is far from over.
Prepare yourselves.
The next chapter is not merely a revelation—
it is an earthquake that will rewrite every rule of the game.
Questions for Readers
What is the secret behind Jalal and his Arab blood—and can it change the fate of the Eldian warriors?
Was Zeke truly a traitor… or does his betrayal conceal a far greater truth?
Will Sarah lead this newly awakened legacy—or will Marley's forces deny her even the right to breathe?