The mission log had become part of morning routine now, the way checking the weather once was — Eren pulling up the tracker before he’d even finished waking, Mikasa reading over his shoulder with her coffee cooling untouched beside her.
[Active Mission: "The Binding" — 52 days to entity’s projected arrival. Anchor Stability: 81%. Target: 90%+][Sub-mission "Weapons Preparation" — 40% complete][Sub-mission "Evacuation Contingency" — 15% complete][New sub-mission unlocked: "Know Your Enemy" — Objective: Gather three additional data points on Anchorless entity behavior. Reward: +5% Anchor Stability projection]
"’Know Your Enemy’ feels ominous for a mission with a reward attached," Armin said, joining them at the table with his own copy of the tracker Historia had helped rig up as a shared viewing crystal — a small mercy, since it meant the whole group could finally see the same information instead of relying on Eren relaying it secondhand.
"Everything about this feels ominous," Mikasa said. "At least now it’s ominous with a plan attached."
The data points, when they finally gathered them, came from an unlikely source — Zeke, summoned from his quiet exile to consult on something only he, among all of them, had any real frame of reference for.
"I encountered something similar once," he admitted, studying the readings Historia had recorded from the training incident. "Not the same entity. A smaller fragment, decades ago, during my time still fully under Marley’s command. It wasn’t purely instinctual either. It negotiated."
"Negotiated how?" Eren asked.
"It offered things. Power, mostly. Sometimes something more specific — an end to whatever pain the potential host was carrying at the time." Zeke’s jaw tightened at the old memory. "I watched a fellow soldier nearly succumb to it. She was grieving a lost child. It promised her the child back, in some form, if she let it in." His voice went quieter. "She didn’t take the offer. Barely. But I watched how close it came to working, and I’ve never forgotten how precisely it aimed for exactly what she needed most."
The room went very still.
"So it’s not just aware," Historia said slowly. "It’s perceptive. It reads what a person’s missing and offers exactly that, dressed up as salvation."
[Data point 1 recorded: Entity demonstrates targeted psychological manipulation based on host’s unresolved grief or desire.]
"That means during the ritual," Mikasa said, dread creeping into her voice, "it might try the same thing on Ymir. Or on any of us, if the connection’s open wide enough."
"Then we prepare for it," Eren said, though his own chest had gone tight at the implication. "We know what it’s going to try before it tries it. That’s an advantage most of its previous targets never had."
The second data point came from Historia’s own fragmented inheritance — a memory surfacing unprompted during meditation, sharper than usual, as if the coming proximity of the entity was somehow sharpening the old, inherited signal.
"It has a shape it prefers," she reported, shaken but steady. "Not physical — a kind of emotional shape. It gravitates toward people who feel like they’re incomplete without something taken from them. A missing piece it can offer to fill." Her eyes found Ymir’s. "That’s not an accusation. It’s a warning. If it senses that in you specifically—"
"It’ll try to convince me I need it," Ymir finished, voice steady despite the weight of the observation. "That whatever it offers is worth becoming its vessel instead of resisting."
[Data point 2 recorded: Entity targets sense of incompleteness. Recommend candidate approach ritual with clearly affirmed sense of self, free of felt lack.]
"That’s actually useful," Armin said, scribbling notes with renewed focus. "It’s not a vague warning. It’s specific. We can actually prepare Ymir’s mental state deliberately, instead of just hoping she’s resilient enough in the moment."
The third data point took longer, and cost more, than either of the first two — Reiner finally, reluctantly, admitting something he’d kept buried since his defection.
"I felt it too," he said quietly, the group gathered again around the fire that had become their unofficial council space. "Not during training. Before. Back when I still served Marley, before I ever met any of you. There were rumors of an anchorless fragment loose somewhere on the continent, causing localized devastation nobody could properly explain. Command dismissed it as instability in an unstable region." His jaw tightened. "I think now they knew exactly what it was, and simply decided it wasn’t yet worth the resources to contain. I think that’s partly why it’s grown strong enough to sense us rehearsing a binding from this far away."
[Data point 3 recorded: Entity has been active and growing, unaddressed, for an extended period. Current power level likely exceeds initial estimates by significant margin.]
[Sub-mission "Know Your Enemy" complete. Anchor Stability +5%. Current: 86%.]
The number should have felt like progress. Instead, the room sat heavy with the fresh understanding of exactly how much larger the threat had grown while everyone assumed they had more time than they actually did.
That night, Eren found Ymir alone near the training clearing, staring up at the stars with an expression carrying more weight than her sixteen years should have had to bear.
"You’re thinking about what it might offer you," he said, settling beside her without needing to ask permission.
"I keep wondering what it’ll find, if it looks closely enough. What incompleteness it thinks it can fill." Her voice was quiet, honest in a way she rarely allowed herself to be. "I spent years in that camp believing I was only valuable as leverage. Even now, free, sometimes I still feel like I’m defined by what Marley took from me, more than by anything I’ve actually chosen for myself."
Eren considered his words carefully before answering. "I understand that more than you’d think. For two years, I believed my entire purpose was shaped by a system using my love for my family as a lever. Discovering that nearly broke something in me — the fear that maybe none of my choices were really mine."
"How did you get past it?"
"I didn’t, entirely. I just found one thing that predated all of it — a memory of choosing kindness before any system ever touched me — and I held onto that as proof I existed underneath the manipulation." He met her eyes steadily. "You have that too, Ymir. The choice to volunteer for this ritual, freely, wasn’t given to you by Marley or the camp or anything that ever tried to define you. That was entirely, completely yours. Whatever the entity tries to offer you, that choice already happened. It can’t take it back."
Ymir was quiet a long moment, something steadying visibly in her posture.
"Thank you," she said finally. "For understanding exactly what I needed to hear, instead of just telling me to be strong."
[Sub-mission "Candidate Psychological Preparation" — New objective automatically generated. Progress: 40%.]
Eren huffed a tired laugh at the notification’s timing. "Even the system’s taking notes now, apparently."
Ymir managed a real laugh at that, the first genuine one he’d heard from her in days, and the two of them sat together beneath the wheeling stars, fifty-two days ticking steadily down toward a fight that had grown larger and stranger than anyone had first understood, but which, piece by piece, data point by data point, they were finally, properly, learning how to face.
Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!
Use arrow keys (or A / D) to PREV/NEXT chapter