Armin’s letter arrived by fast courier three weeks into his voyage, and Eren read it twice before the mission tracker even updated, because some of what it contained mattered more than any system notification could capture.
Eren — Historia’s homeland is real, and it’s stranger than anything her fragment-memories prepared me for. They call themselves the Aeldrin, refugees who fled two thousand years ago carrying a splinter of the same power your Founder holds. They’ve spent two millennia building an entire culture around containing it safely — rituals, checks, an actual council whose only purpose is preventing exactly the kind of uncontrolled break we’re now racing against. I’ve attached their council’s formal assessment. It’s not good news, but it’s honest news, which I think we’ve decided is worth more right now.
The attached assessment, translated in Armin’s careful hand, laid out the truth plainly: the unbound vessel wasn’t a person who’d lost control. It was a fragment that had never had a willing host at all — stolen from its original bearer generations ago, passed hand to hand through conquest and theft until it existed now as something closer to a wound that never properly closed. Raw power with no anchor, no personality to reason with, expanding outward like fire through dry grass.
[Sub-mission "Diplomatic Bridge" complete.][Reward applied: Intelligence gained — Unbound vessel classified as "Anchorless." Cannot be reasoned with. Can be contained only through forced binding by a willing, compatible vessel.][New mission unlocked: "The Binding" — Objective: Identify method to forcibly contain Anchorless entity without requiring its consent. Reward: Unknown — high-risk, high-value.]
"Forced binding," Mikasa repeated, reading over Eren’s shoulder with a frown. "That sounds like exactly the kind of thing that just got done to you for two years."
"I know." Eren rubbed at his temple, the uncomfortable irony not lost on him. "I fought so hard to reclaim my own agency from something that used me. Now the system’s suggesting the answer to this is doing the same thing back to something else."
"Not the same thing," came a voice from the doorway — Historia, having returned with Armin, still travel-worn but sharper now, more settled into her role than the frightened diplomat who’d first stepped off that ship. "The Founder used deception. What we’re describing is a binding ritual my people have performed exactly twice in two thousand years, always with full transparency about what it costs, and always with a fully willing vessel volunteering to carry the anchorless power afterward."
"Meaning someone still has to become its cage," Eren said slowly.
"Meaning someone still has to choose to become its cage," Historia corrected. "That’s the entire difference your fight on the cliffs already taught everyone watching. Consent doesn’t erase the cost. It just means the cost isn’t stolen from someone who never agreed to pay it."
The mission tracker’s next update came with weight none of the earlier ones had carried.
[Sub-mission "The Binding" — Requirements: 1) Compatible vessel candidate. 2) Ritual components, held only by Aeldrin council. 3) Willing consent, verified.]
"Compatible vessel," Armin said slowly, already flipping through his notes with the particular dread of someone doing math he didn’t want to finish. "Eren, you’re the only confirmed Coordinate-compatible bloodline within these walls. If compatibility works the way Historia’s people describe—"
"Then it’s me," Eren finished. "Again."
Mikasa’s hand found his instantly, grip fierce enough to hurt. "No. Absolutely not. We are not doing the cliffs again, where you decide alone and I find out after the fact."
"I’m not deciding anything alone," Eren said, meeting her eyes steadily. "I’m telling you what the mission is showing me, the same second I learn it. That’s the whole point of the change, Mikasa. Transparency. I promised you that."
Her jaw tightened, fear and fury and love all tangled together, but she didn’t pull her hand away. "Then we find out if there’s another option before you volunteer for anything. Historia said two vessels in two thousand years. That means someone else has done this before. I want to know what happened to them."
Historia’s expression flickered, old grief surfacing briefly. "The first survived. Lived a long, difficult life carrying two powers instead of one, protected fiercely by people who loved her." A pause. "The second didn’t survive the binding itself. The ritual isn’t guaranteed. That’s the truth, and I won’t dress it up prettier than it actually is."
The gacha system offered something that evening Eren hadn’t expected — not a mission update, but a direct, unprompted message, quieter than its usual clipped efficiency.
[Additional information: Host retains full right to decline candidacy. This mission will remain open, unfulfilled, if host chooses not to pursue it. No penalty beyond the Anchorless threat continuing unaddressed. This choice belongs entirely to host.]
He read it aloud to Mikasa, watching something in her shoulders ease slightly at the confirmation.
"It’s actually giving you room to say no," she said, quiet disbelief coloring her voice.
"I think that’s the whole point of what it’s trying to become," Eren said. "Something that presents the choice honestly instead of engineering the outcome." He looked at her, weighing the fear in her eyes against the mission’s terrible necessity. "I’m not deciding tonight. I promised you that too."
They sat together on the wall that night, the mission log glowing faint and patient in the corner of Eren’s vision, refusing this time to push him toward any particular answer.
"If you choose it," Mikasa said finally, voice low, "I need to be part of the ritual somehow. Not standing outside it, waiting to find out if you survive. Whatever the binding actually requires, I want to be close enough to fight for you if it goes wrong."
"I’ll ask Historia if that’s possible."
"It needs to be possible." Her voice cracked slightly, the first real crack in her composure since the news arrived. "I didn’t survive everything we’ve survived together just to lose you to a ritual I wasn’t even allowed to stand beside you for."
He pulled her close, holding her against the cold night air and the mounting weight of an impossible choice still weeks from needing to be made.
"Whatever I decide," he murmured into her hair, "you’ll know every step of it before I take it. That’s not changing. Not this time, not ever again."
[Mission "The Binding" — Status: Pending. Awaiting host decision. No timer imposed.]
Below them, Shiganshina slept on, unaware of the choice quietly forming above it, while somewhere across a vast, unfamiliar ocean, something ancient and anchorless continued its slow, hungry drift toward shores that had only just begun learning how to face it honestly, together, one transparent choice at a time.
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