Reborn as Eren Yeager: The Gacha System

The days narrowed after Kessler’s visit, each one carrying the particular weight of borrowed time — training sharper now, conversations shorter and more purposeful, even Armin’s usual rambling theories trimmed down to only what mattered.

"I’ve been thinking about Zeke," he said one evening, the three of them tucked into their corner with a map of Wall Maria’s southern district spread between them, marked up with evacuation routes Grisha had sent by courier. "If he’s Marleyan military, and if he’s connected to whatever’s coming, he’s probably not just a foot soldier. Kessler’s caution suggested someone with actual authority."

"Meaning what?"

"Meaning if we do encounter him, it might not be in the chaos of a battlefield. It might be a deliberate approach, the way Reiner approached you at Trost." Armin tapped the map. "Which means we should think about what we’d actually say, if that conversation happens. Not just how we’d fight."

Eren stared at the map without really seeing it, the weight of a brother he’d never met pressing strange and unfamiliar against every other fear he’d learned to carry. "I don’t know what I’d say to him."

"You could start with the truth," Mikasa offered quietly. "The way you did with Reiner. The way you did with all of us, eventually."

"And if he doesn’t want the truth? If he only wants what Marley sent him for?"

"Then you’ll know that too, and you’ll act accordingly." She said it plainly, no comfort softening the words, only honesty. "You don’t have to solve this conversation before it happens, Eren. You just have to be ready for whichever version of it actually arrives."

The southern wall reinforcements Shadis had pushed through finally materialized that week — extra Garrison patrols, hastily reinforced gate mechanisms, and a noticeable uptick in drilled evacuation procedures that the district’s residents grumbled about even as they quietly, gratefully complied.

Hannes, overseeing much of the visible preparation, found a rare moment to pull Eren aside during a supply run home.

"Your letters have your father more spooked than I’ve seen him in years," he said, voice low despite the empty street around them. "I don’t know the full shape of what you three know that the rest of us don’t. But I trust you enough, after everything I’ve watched you survive, to take it seriously without demanding every detail."

"Thank you."

"Don’t thank me yet. Thank me if we’re all still standing on the other side of whatever’s coming." Hannes’s usual humor had gone quiet, replaced by something steadier and more serious. "I want you to know something, though, kid. Whatever happens — I’m proud of the man you’re becoming. Whatever weight you’re carrying, however heavy it’s gotten, you’ve carried it without losing the parts of yourself that make you worth following. That’s rarer than you’d think, in people twice your age."

Eren, caught off guard by the sincerity, found himself unable to respond properly for a moment. "That means more than you know."

"I know exactly how much it means. That’s why I said it now, instead of waiting for a moment we might not get." Hannes clapped him on the shoulder, old warmth returning to his expression despite the gravity underneath it. "Now go on. Go see your girl before curfew. Some things are worth prioritizing even during an apocalypse."

He found Mikasa on their rooftop that evening — the real one this time, back in Shiganshina for one last visit before returning to Trost, the familiar tiles worn smooth from two years of quiet evenings spent exactly here.

"Hannes told me he’s proud of me," Eren said, settling beside her. "Out of nowhere. Like he needed to say it before running out of chances."

"That’s not nothing, coming from him."

"No. It’s not." He looked out over the district, achingly familiar in the fading evening light — smoke from chimneys, children being called in for dinner, the ordinary rhythm of a town that had no idea how little time it might actually have left. "I keep thinking about everything we might lose. Not just people. This. The ordinary parts. Bread baking. Frogs at the well. Armin nearly falling off a climbing wall."

"We’re not losing it yet," Mikasa said, though her voice carried its own careful weight. "We’re preparing to protect it. That’s different."

"Is it? Kessler’s timeline keeps shrinking every time he updates it. Fifty-four days became forty-something in the span of a single letter."

She was quiet a moment, considering, then reached for his hand with the same steady certainty she’d offered across every uncertain moment this past year.

"Then we make sure whatever days remain count for something," she said. "Not just preparation. Not just fear. Actual living, Eren, the kind we’d want to remember if this really does turn out to be limited." Her thumb traced idle patterns across his knuckles. "I don’t want to spend our last ordinary evenings only talking about Titans and half-brothers and countdown numbers. I want to remember laughing with you too. Whatever else these days demand of us."

He looked at her, something in his chest easing at the simple, deliberate wisdom of it. "What did you have in mind?"

"Come with me," she said, already pulling him to his feet. "I want to show you something before curfew, and I refuse to let fear ruin the timing."

She led him down through the quiet streets to the old grain mill — not Kessler’s mill, a different one, closer to home, abandoned since before either of them were born — and up a rickety ladder to a loft that offered, unexpectedly, a clear view of the entire district spread out beneath the darkening sky.

"I found this place months ago," she admitted, settling onto the dusty floorboards. "Somewhere to think, when everything felt too heavy to process at home. I never brought anyone here before."

"Why now?"

"Because I think you need somewhere new to breathe. Somewhere that isn’t already carrying the weight of every hard conversation we’ve had this year." She patted the floor beside her, and he settled down, the view stretching out gold and quiet beneath the last light of evening. "I want this to be a good memory too. Not just another place we discussed danger."

For a while, they simply sat together in comfortable silence, watching the district settle into evening, and Eren found himself, despite everything, genuinely relaxing for the first time in weeks.

"Thank you," he said eventually. "For this. For dragging me somewhere new when I clearly needed it."

"You’d have done the same for me." She leaned her head against his shoulder. "You have, actually. More times than I can count, this past year."

He turned to look at her, moonlight beginning to catch in her dark hair, and felt the familiar warmth that had anchored him through every storm this second life had thrown at him.

"I love you," he said quietly, meaning it with the full weight of everything they’d survived together. "Whatever happens next — whatever Zeke turns out to be, whatever the attack actually looks like when it finally comes — I need you to know that first, before anything else."

"I know," she said softly, and kissed him, slow and unhurried despite the mounting dread waiting just beyond this stolen evening. "I love you too. However this ends, whatever it costs us — I don’t regret a single day of choosing this. Choosing you."

They stayed there long past curfew, the district’s lights slowly winking out below them one by one, two people stealing a few more hours of ordinary happiness before whatever storm still gathered on the horizon finally, inevitably, arrived.

Whatever days remained — forty-something, by Kessler’s latest count, though neither of them mentioned the number again that night — they intended to spend at least a few more of them exactly like this.

Together. Unafraid. Choosing joy deliberately, in defiance of everything still waiting to test it.

Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!