Note : This chapter serves as a glimpse between moments — a space where memory and reality blur before the next turning point. Fragments in the pulse isn't a direct continuation of the last scene, but rather a quiet bridge that reveals what the Pulse remembers before the story moves forward. Take this as a breath between storms. The next chapter returns us to where we left off.
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Light.
Endless, liquid light.
Eren's body floated — or maybe it didn't. The boundaries between skin and air had vanished. He opened his eyes and saw the city refracted a thousand times over, like shards of memory trapped beneath glass.
Every reflection was him.
And none of them were.
A voice whispered through the glow — soft, familiar, almost like Kael's.
"You were never meant to break the mirror, Eren. You were meant to become it."
The sound rippled across the space, bending color and shadow. Streets twisted into veins. Buildings pulsed like organs. Vareth was alive — but it wasn't breathing with him anymore. It was breathing through him.
He reached for something solid and felt his fingers sink into the light. When he pulled back, his hand shimmered with static — symbols glowing faintly beneath his skin. They pulsed in rhythm with his heartbeat.
Then —
A memory cut through.
Rain.
A rooftop.
Kael's hand reaching for him as the city below screamed with thunder.
"Don't let it take you," Kael had said once. "The Pulse gives, but it also remembers what it's owed."
Eren's throat tightened.
He tried to call out, but his voice scattered like dust in the current.
From the distance came another tone — softer, colder.
Draven's.
"You see it now, don't you? He didn't save you. He made you. You were his weapon before you were his heart."
Eren turned sharply, the light rippling with his movement. Shapes emerged — silhouettes of Kael, Lyra, even the Observer, flickering in fragments like ghosts caught between rewinds.
"Who are you?" he demanded.
"I'm what the Pulse hides when it loves too much," Draven's voice replied. "I'm what happens when creation forgets mercy."
The glow began to fracture. Each pulse of light became a heartbeat too loud, too human.
And through it all — Kael's voice, faint but steady:
"Eren… listen to me. You have to wake up."
Eren's vision flickered — two worlds bleeding together.
The Pulse.
Reality.
Himself.
He reached toward Kael's voice, the shards slicing through his hand, blood mingling with light.
And just before it all went black, he heard the Pulse whisper something new — something ancient and alive:
"Memory isn't truth. It's what survives after truth burns."
Darkness. Then — the faint echo of rain.