Reborn as Eren Yeager: The Gacha System

Winter arrived hard that year, snow piling thick against the shutters within the first week of the season, and with it came a change in Eren that even Carla, for all her warmth, couldn’t tease her way past.

"You’ve stopped sleeping properly," she said one morning, setting a bowl of porridge in front of him with more concern in her voice than her usual breakfast banter allowed. "I hear you in the warehouse some nights. Past midnight."

"I lose track of time out there sometimes."

"Eren." She sat across from him, waiting until he looked up to meet her eyes. "I’m your mother. I notice things. You’ve been different since summer — since before that, if I’m honest with myself. More careful. More watchful. Like you’re bracing for something the rest of us can’t see."

He wanted, badly, to tell her everything — the countdown, the walls, the fate he already knew was coming for her specifically, the fragments the system doled out one careful piece at a time. He wanted to warn her the way he’d never gotten the chance to the first time around.

Instead, he said the only true thing he could afford to give her. "I love you. Whatever happens — I need you to know that first, before anything else."

Carla went very still, something uncertain flickering across her face. "Eren, you’re scaring me a little."

"I don’t mean to." He reached across the table and took her hand, the way he used to as a much smaller child. "I just don’t say it enough. I wanted to make sure you knew."

She studied him a long moment, motherly instinct warring with whatever answer she wanted to press for, and finally just squeezed his hand back, soft and warm. "I love you too. Always. Whatever’s coming, whatever you’re carrying — you don’t have to carry all of it alone, you know. That’s not a rule you have to follow."

It was, uncomfortably, the second time in a season someone had told him exactly that. He wondered, not for the first time, if the people who loved him saw more of the truth than he gave them credit for — even without the words to name it.

The snow kept the training field mostly empty that week, which meant Eren, Armin, and Mikasa claimed the old barn instead, sword-drills and footwork practiced in the relative warmth of hay-scented shadow.

"You’re improving," Mikasa said, watching Eren run through a defensive sequence for the third time, sharper and faster than it had been a month ago. "That’s not just reflexes stacking anymore. You’re thinking three moves ahead."

"Good teacher."

"Flattery."

"Accurate observation." He caught his breath, leaning against a support post. "You’ve taught me more of this than any Garrison instructor could."

"I had good reasons to make sure you could actually defend yourself." She tossed him a practice blade, wooden and blunted, expression turning serious in the particular way it did when something real sat underneath her words. "Whatever’s coming, Eren — I want you ready. Not just lucky. Ready."

Armin, sprawled in the hay nursing a bruised shoulder from his own significantly less successful drilling attempt, groaned theatrically. "Some of us are still working on ’not immediately falling over.’"

"You’re better than you think," Mikasa said, without looking away from Eren.

"I appreciate the vote of confidence, but I’ve fallen over four times today, and once was into an actual pile of manure, so I feel my self-assessment is fairly evidence-based."

"You’re improving your falling technique, at least."

"That is the least comforting compliment I have ever received."

Eren laughed, the sound easing something tight in his chest that had been sitting there since breakfast, and for a while the barn filled with the easy, familiar rhythm of practice and teasing that made the coming winter feel, briefly, survivable.

The flicker hit that evening without warning, sharper than it had ever come before — not a stutter this time, but something closer to a full vision: fire, distant screaming, a shape too large moving through a broken street.

Eren dropped the water jug he’d been carrying, gasping, the barn walls swimming back into focus around him.

"Eren!" Mikasa was at his side instantly, hands steadying him. "What happened? What did you see?"

"Fire," he managed, voice shaking. "Screaming. Something — big. Moving through a street I didn’t recognize."

"Here? Shiganshina?"

"I don’t know. It didn’t feel like now. It felt—" He struggled for the words, chest tight. "Later. Closer than it used to feel."

Mikasa’s grip on his shoulders tightened, grounding him. "How much closer?"

"I don’t know exactly. But the flickers have never shown me anything that far ahead before. Just seconds. This was — longer. Bigger."

Armin, pale, had gone very still nearby. "You’ve been having these? For how long?"

Eren hesitated, the old habit of protecting them from the full truth warring against months of promises to stop doing exactly that. Mikasa’s eyes, steady and unflinching, waited on his answer without pushing.

"For a while," he admitted finally. "I should have told you both sooner. I’m sorry."

"We’re not upset you had them," Armin said quietly. "We’re upset you thought you had to have them alone."

Mikasa said nothing, but her hand found his and held on, the same steady anchor it had been since the woods, since the well, since a hundred moments where words weren’t necessary because her presence said everything instead.

That night, alone with the compass and the weight of what he’d seen, Eren allowed himself the daily draw with a hand that wasn’t quite steady.

[Daily draw available.]

"Spin it."

[Result: Titan Physiology — Fragment IV (Tier 3, Rare). Partial memory resonance detected. 4 of an unknown total fragments collected. Warning: fragment accumulation may trigger destabilizing visions. Proceed with caution.]

He sat with the warning a long time, the pieces finally starting to form an uncomfortable, coherent shape. The flickers were getting stronger because of the fragments — not a coincidence, but a cost, some deeper connection between the system’s gifts and the price of carrying them.

Four fragments, he thought. And the visions are only going to get worse from here.

One hundred and twenty-six days.

For the first time since the countdown began, Eren wondered if he was running out of room to keep secrets at all — from the people who loved him, or from himself.

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