"I'm fine."
Zeke's voice was calm, almost detached, though half of his body was gone beneath the rubble.
Carla's eyes filled with tears at the sight of him still speaking. "You're okay… that's so good!" But even as the words left her lips, they twisted into sobs. "How can this be good? We're trapped under the house! We'll be eaten by the Titans at any moment… woo… woo…"
"Don't cry," Zeke said evenly, his tone sharper than her despair. "We will be fine."
Carla stared at him, trembling, her tears spilling unchecked. "How can you know that? How can you say that at a time like this?"
Zeke hesitated.
He couldn't explain—not without revealing too much. Instead he answered simply, firmly: "Trust me. Don't make noise.Don't attract the Titans.Give me a little time, and I'll get us out."
Carla's voice broke. "How? How will you get me out of here?"
"I have a gun."
Her brows knit in confusion. "A… gun?"
"Yes." Zeke's grip tightened around the weapon he had never once let slip from his hands, even as the house collapsed. "Give me ten minutes. I'll take you away from here."
He said no more after that. Words wouldn't dig them out. Only action.
…
Zeke focused on healing, summoning every ounce of his Titan-born regeneration. His flesh reknit in waves of white steam, muscle crawling back onto shattered bones.
Each second felt like an eternity, but he endured it with cold determination.
Once whole enough, he could use the rifle. With its massive firepower, blasting through collapsed beams and stone would be child's play.
That was the plan.
Yet another path tempted him. He could transform outright, tear the ruins apart as a Titan, and carry Carla to safety.
But no—that would reveal everything. Worse, it would make the anti-Titan rifle meaningless. Someone had deliberately placed this gun and its fresh rounds beside him.
Someone wanted him to protect Carula's family as a human, not as a monster.
His jaw clenched. What were those brats thinking? Reiner, Bertolt, Annie… causing chaos within the Walls.
Were they mocking him, leaving him weapons as if daring him to intervene? Did they truly want him to shoot one of them in the head?
The thought made his blood boil.
But beneath the anger was clarity. None of that mattered.
What mattered was Carla.
She couldn't die. Not here. Not now.
Her death was the spark that set Eren ablaze with hatred, the chain that dragged him into darkness. If she lived, then perhaps—just perhaps—Eren might never fall so far. Family ties could anchor him.
Keep him human.
Carla's survival was more than one life. It was the bErence point of the future.
…
The ruins above shifted with a dreadful grinding sound.
Carla shrieked in terror. "It's a Titan!"
Of course.
Only a Titan had the strength to casually overturn the wreckage.
Zeke's chest tightened. Was it Reiner? Bertolt? Annie? One of the three had to be responsible.
But no—he remembered the laughter from last night, the warmth of dinner, the way even Annie's frosty expression had softened under Carla's roof. Could they really kill her? Could they truly harm Carla?
He wanted to believe not.
But then—
"Help! Help me! Someone… please, help!"
Carla's cry of despair cut through him like a blade.
No. He couldn't just wait.
Zeke braced himself, ignored the pain still lancing through his half-healed body, and lifted the rifle. He fired upward.
BOOM.
The blast tore through the rubble. Wood and stone vaporized into dust. The recoil slammed him down, shrapnel and gunpowder embedding in his flesh. Agony flared, but he gritted his teeth and let Titan healing knit the wounds even as smoke billowed around them.
His vision blurred through the haze, but he aimed again.
Through the white mist, a towering shape loomed. Blonde hair, the faint outline of a female Titan.
Zeke steadied his breath. His finger pressed against the trigger.
Don't blame me, Annie.
Her words haunted him. "Captain, will you take us home? Will I ever see my dad again?"
I wanted to take you home, he thought bitterly. I wanted to reunite you with your family. But you… you chose this path.
All he could do now was whisper in his mind: I'm sorry.
The trigger tensed.
And then—
A breeze.
Gentle, impossible within the smoke, yet there it was. It swept the steam aside like a curtain, granting him a clear view.
The Titan's face came into focus.
Not Annie.
Not a Warrior at all.
Zeke's heart stopped.
"…Mother."
The word slipped from his lips, broken, trembling.
Before him stood the face he thought he had buried with his past.
Dina Fritz. His mother.
The nightmare wasn't Reiner, or Bertolt, or Annie. It was her.
The Titan who had destroyed Carla's home, who now threatened to take everything from Eren—
Was his own mother.