Reborn as Eren Yeager: The Gacha System

Leave ended too quickly, the way it always seemed to now, and the walk back to Trost carried a different weight than the trip to Shiganshina had — lighter in some ways, heavier in others, three friends returning to training that no longer felt like preparation for a distant, theoretical future.

"Squad assignments post in two weeks," Armin said, falling into step beside them as the walls of Shiganshina faded behind. "Shadis mentioned it before we left. Given everything, I don’t think any of us are surprised where we’re headed."

"Survey Corps," Eren said. "Same as we always planned."

"Same as we always planned," Mikasa agreed, though something in her voice carried a fresh certainty that hadn’t been there a month ago — not just a decision made out of stubborn determination anymore, but one made with clear eyes about exactly what it would cost.

They reached Trost by evening, the training grounds settling into the familiar exhausted rhythm of a class in its final stretch before graduation, though the atmosphere had shifted noticeably in their absence — a tension running underneath every conversation, every drill, like the whole barracks had begun, without quite naming it, to sense the same storm gathering that Eren, Mikasa, and Armin already understood too well.

"Something’s different," Sasha said at dinner that first night back, glancing around the mess hall with unusual wariness. "Instructors are jumpier. Extra patrols at night. Connie says he heard Shadis arguing with a Garrison commander about reinforcement priorities."

"Probably just standard end-of-training jitters," Armin offered, carefully neutral.

"Maybe." Sasha didn’t look convinced, though she let the subject drop, returning her attention to dinner with the same easy hunger she brought to everything — a small, ordinary comfort in the middle of mounting tension that Eren found himself unexpectedly grateful for.

Reiner found Eren alone two days later, expression carrying a new, tighter urgency that immediately set every instinct on alert.

"It’s soon," Reiner said without preamble. "Days, not weeks. I don’t know the exact hour, but the administrative noise has stopped being administrative. Supply caches are already positioned. Personnel I don’t recognize have started arriving in the district disguised as merchants and travelers."

"How many days?"

"I don’t know exactly. Five. Maybe seven." Reiner’s jaw tightened. "I need you to understand something else, too. Bertholt’s been pulled into direct planning discussions the last two days. Not me — I think they’ve started to suspect my loyalty’s compromised. Which means whatever comes, I might not have the same freedom to warn you again."

"Then warn me now. Everything you know."

Reiner hesitated, old caution warring visibly with something that had grown, across months, into genuine care. "The colossal," he said finally, voice dropping to barely above a whisper. "The one that breached Wall Maria in your visions, if that’s truly what you saw — that’s not a rogue Titan. That’s Bertholt. His shift-form, the largest of the three of us by far. If the attack comes the way I fear it will, he’ll be the one who opens the wall."

The revelation landed like a physical blow, old dread from a hundred nightmares crystallizing into something horribly, finally confirmed.

"He doesn’t want to," Eren said slowly. "Does he."

"No. He doesn’t. But wanting and doing aren’t the same thing, when the alternative is watching people he loves back home suffer for his refusal." Reiner’s voice cracked with something like genuine grief. "I don’t know if there’s a version of this where he chooses differently, Eren. I’ve watched him agonize over it for months. I don’t think agonizing is the same as actually finding another way."

Eren relayed the conversation that night, the weight of confirmed prophecy settling heavy over their small circle.

"Bertholt," Mikasa repeated slowly. "The one who held your hand while you talked, who seemed the most frightened of all three of them. He’s the one who breaches the wall."

"That’s what Reiner says."

"Then we know what to prepare for now, at least." Armin’s voice carried grim, focused clarity despite the devastating weight of the revelation. "Five to seven days. A specific target. A specific shifter responsible for the initial breach. That’s more concrete than anything we’ve had to work with all year."

"It doesn’t change what happens to Shiganshina if he does breach the wall," Eren said quietly. "Whatever we know, whatever we prepare — if that colossal form appears where I saw it in my visions, people are going to die. My mother might still—"

"Then we make sure she’s not there when it happens," Mikasa said, cutting through the spiraling fear with characteristic directness. "We write to your father tonight. We tell him everything we can safely put in a letter. We get your mother out of the southern district, whatever excuse it takes, however suspicious it looks to the neighbors."

"And if he can’t convince her? If she doesn’t believe the danger’s real enough to abandon her whole life over an unconfirmed feeling?"

"Then we find another way," Mikasa said, unshaken. "We’ve found another way through every impossible thing this year has demanded, Eren. We’ll find one through this too."

The letter went out that night, careful and urgent in equal measure — Get Mom to the eastern district, whatever it takes. The danger is real and it’s close, days not weeks. Please, Dad. Whatever you have to tell her, whatever excuse works, just get her out of the house near the southern wall before the week is finished.

They didn’t get a response before lights-out, the letter’s fate resting now entirely in Grisha’s hands and whatever persuasion he could manage against a wife who’d spent her whole life in that house, near that wall, never imagining she’d need to abandon it on such short notice.

Later, alone with Mikasa on their narrow shared patch of ground behind the barracks, Eren finally let the fear he’d been holding back all evening surface fully.

"What if it’s not enough?" he asked quietly. "What if the letter arrives too late, or she doesn’t believe it, or the attack comes faster than even Reiner’s warning suggested?"

Mikasa didn’t offer easy comfort, didn’t pretend the fear was unfounded. She simply took his hand, steady despite everything, and let her presence say what words couldn’t quite manage.

"Then we’ll face whatever that outcome actually is," she said finally, "the same way we’ve faced everything else. Together. Without illusions, but without giving up before we’ve even seen how it unfolds." She squeezed his hand. "You’ve already changed so much from what you once told me was inevitable, Eren. The attack still might come. But it doesn’t have to come exactly the way it did before. You’ve spent two years making sure of that."

He held onto her words, and her hand, through the long, sleepless hours that followed — the countdown he’d carried since childhood no longer an abstract number, but a handful of days, ticking down toward an ending he’d spent his entire second chance trying, desperately, to rewrite.

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