Reborn as Eren Yeager: The Gacha System

They found her three days later, in a stone-walled alcove near the outer district, curled into herself and hardened over in a crystal shell that no blade, no fire, nothing the Survey Corps possessed could crack.

"She trapped herself," Armin said, running a hand along the strange, glass-smooth surface with equal parts horror and scientific fascination. "Deliberately. This isn’t damage — it’s a defense. She chose this over facing us, or facing whoever’s threatening her sister."

Eren stood before the crystal, staring at the barely-visible shape of a girl frozen mid-flinch, and felt something complicated twist in his chest — not quite anger, not quite grief, something tangled between both.

"She could’ve killed me," he said quietly. "She had the opening. She chose not to take it."

"She also chose this instead of surrendering," Mikasa pointed out, though her voice carried less hardness than her words. "Whatever her reasons, she’s out of the fight now. That’s one less immediate threat, even if it doesn’t feel like a victory."

Reiner arrived a moment later, expression carrying a devastation that had settled into something quieter, more permanent since the attack. He hadn’t spoken much in three days. He didn’t speak much now, either, just stood before the crystal for a long moment, one hand pressed flat against its cold surface.

"She used to talk about her father," he said finally, voice rough. "Constantly. Everything she did, every drill, every mission — it was always for him. To make him proud." He pulled his hand back slowly. "I don’t think this was really about her sister. I think Marley just found the one lever that would actually move her, and pulled it without mercy."

"We’ll get her out," Eren said. "Somehow. Whatever it takes."

"You don’t know that."

"No. But I’m saying it anyway, because giving up on her feels like exactly what Marley’s counting on us to do." Eren met Reiner’s eyes, steady despite the exhaustion of the past three days. "You stayed. You chose us, even after everything. I don’t see why the door should already be closed on the possibility she might choose the same, eventually, if we give her a reason to."

That night, back at the temporary garrison outpost near the wall, Commander Erwin called the surviving Survey Corps leadership together for a debrief that left the room heavier with every passing minute.

"Casualties: forty-three confirmed dead, sixty-one wounded," Erwin read, voice flat with the particular control of a man who’d delivered too many similar reports to let emotion show anymore. "The Armored Titan’s attack was targeted, precise, and clearly informed by insider knowledge of our formation. This wasn’t a probe. This was Marley testing exactly how much force it takes to reach Eren Yeager specifically."

"Then they’ll try again," Hannes said grimly, present now as part of the reformed southern garrison liaison. "Smarter, next time. More prepared for what we showed them today."

"Undoubtedly." Erwin’s gaze swept the room, settling finally on Eren. "Which means we need answers faster than we’ve been gathering them. Yeager, your father’s knowledge of Marley — however incomplete — has become the single most valuable resource this organization possesses. I need you and Arlert working through every fragment of it, systematically, starting tomorrow."

"Understood, sir."

The meeting dissolved into logistics after that — resource allocation, wounded transport, the grim, necessary business of an organization absorbing a devastating blow and preparing to keep moving anyway. Eren sat through it feeling the weight of the day pressing heavier with every passing minute, until finally, mercifully, it ended, and he found himself alone in the cold night air outside the outpost, exhaustion finally catching up in full.

Mikasa found him there, wrapping a blanket around his shoulders without a word before settling beside him, her presence steady against the bone-deep exhaustion of the past three days.

"You’re blaming yourself," she said. Not a question.

"Forty-three people died because Marley wanted to reach me specifically."

"Forty-three people died because Marley chose cruelty as a strategy," she corrected, firm despite the gentleness underneath. "That’s not the same thing, Eren, whatever guilt you’re currently trying to carry alone." She took his hand, lacing their fingers together with the same fierce certainty she’d offered through every hard moment this fight had demanded. "You didn’t choose this war. You’ve spent two lifetimes trying to prevent exactly this kind of devastation. Don’t let today’s horror convince you that trying was the mistake."

He turned to look at her, moonlight catching the steady, unwavering love in her expression despite everything the day had cost, and felt something in his chest crack open — not with grief this time, but with overwhelming, desperate gratitude for her presence through all of it.

"I don’t know how you keep doing this," he said quietly. "Staying steady, when everything keeps getting worse."

"I’m not steady because things are getting easier, Eren. I’m steady because I decided, a long time ago, exactly what I was staying for." She reached up, brushing a strand of hair back from his face with the same tenderness she’d shown him a hundred times across two years. "You. Whatever this war costs either of us, I chose you before I understood how large the cost might eventually become. That choice hasn’t changed, whatever today revealed about how far Marley’s willing to go."

He pulled her close, kissing her with a desperation that spoke of grief and fear and fierce, unshaken love all at once — the kind of kiss that came from two people who’d stared down devastating loss and chosen, again and again, to hold onto each other rather than let horror win.

"I love you," he murmured against her lips. "However dark this gets. However much Marley proves willing to sacrifice to reach me. That’s not changing."

"I know." She kissed him again, slower this time, full of quiet promise. "Neither is this. Whatever tomorrow demands, whatever fight still waits beyond tonight — we face it together. Same as always."

They stayed there long into the night, wrapped together against the cold, drawing whatever strength they could from each other before the coming days demanded everything they had left to give.

Beyond the wall, somewhere in the vast unknown Eren had only just begun to glimpse, Marley’s true campaign was only beginning to reveal its shape — crueler, more calculating, and far more devastating than anything the countdown of his childhood had ever prepared him to face alone.

But he wasn’t facing it alone. He never really had been.

Whatever came next, he intended to meet it exactly the way he’d learned to meet everything else this impossible second chance had demanded — with Mikasa’s hand fierce in his, and a love strong enough to weather even the darkest days still waiting on the horizon.

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