They found Colt’s trail in the last place anyone expected — not hidden in Marley’s crumbling territories, but embedded quietly within Historia’s own delegation, posing as a translator who’d joined the Aeldrin envoy three months earlier.
"He’s good," Armin said, staring at the forged credentials Historia had pulled from her own staff records, hands shaking slightly with the violation of it. "These aren’t crude fakes. Someone with real Aeldrin knowledge helped him build this identity."
"Which means he’s not working alone," Zeke said grimly. "This isn’t just old Marleyan loyalists anymore. Someone inside your delegation wanted this peace to fail too, badly enough to help embed him."
[Sub-mission "Identify the Aeldrin Collaborator" — Suspect pool: Historia’s delegation, 14 members.]
Historia’s face had gone pale, old fear and fresh betrayal tangling together. "I brought these people myself. I trusted every one of them with my life, let alone this treaty."
"Trust isn’t proof either way," Mikasa said, not unkindly. "We investigate. Carefully. The same way we did with Zeke."
[Trust Established — Historia’s delegation members: Individual tracking initiated. This will take time the mission clock may not allow.]
"Five days," Eren said, watching the number with mounting dread. "We don’t have time to individually vet fourteen people."
"Then we don’t vet them," Armin said, an idea sparking behind his exhausted eyes. "We set a trap instead. If Colt’s collaborator is feeding him information about our investigation, we control what information they’re able to feed."
The plan, once assembled, required more careful theater than any battle Eren had fought — a deliberately leaked, false lead suggesting the investigation team believed Colt had already fled the coast entirely, designed to draw out whoever was still in contact with him.
"If the collaborator believes we’re chasing the wrong trail," Armin explained to the assembled group, "they’ll relax. Maybe reach out to Colt to confirm the false lead, or to plan their next move assuming they’re safe. Either way, it gives us a thread to actually follow."
[Sub-mission "The False Lead" — Deception planted. Awaiting collaborator response.]
It took two days for the trap to spring, and when it did, the revelation landed harder than anyone expected.
"It’s Petra," Historia said, staring at the intercepted message with an expression of devastated betrayal. "One of my oldest council advisors. She’s been with the Aeldrin cause since before I was even born."
[Suspect confirmed: Petra Voss, Aeldrin council advisor. Motive: Unknown — investigation ongoing.]
They confronted her that evening, in a private room away from the wider delegation, Historia’s hands visibly shaking despite her attempt at diplomatic composure.
"Why?" Historia asked, voice raw. "After everything we’ve survived together, after the binding ritual itself—"
Petra’s composure cracked slowly, old grief surfacing beneath decades of careful control. "Because you’re giving away everything we protected for two thousand years," she said, voice bitter. "This treaty doesn’t just end a war, Historia. It exposes us. Opens our borders, our people, our secrets, to nations that spent centuries hunting anyone who carried what we carry. I watched my own mother die protecting the location of our sanctuary from Marleyan scouts. And you’re simply handing it over, in the name of peace you can’t guarantee will actually hold."
[Motive confirmed: Fear-driven protectionism, not malice. Trust Established — Petra Voss: 30% (context reduces hostility assessment, does not excuse actions).]
"That doesn’t justify murder," Mikasa said flatly. "Whatever your fear, an innocent diplomat is dead because of the plan you helped Colt execute."
"I didn’t know he’d kill anyone," Petra said, horror finally breaking through her earlier resolve. "He told me it would be sabotage — forged documents, delayed communications, nothing worse than making the treaty look unstable enough to collapse on its own merits. I didn’t know he’d gone this far."
[Evidence Gathered: 4/5. Petra’s testimony provides Colt’s current location: abandoned lighthouse, two hours north.]
They moved that night, a small team — Eren, Mikasa, Zeke, and Armin — racing against the treaty’s rapidly approaching deadline to reach the lighthouse before Colt could execute whatever final act he’d planned.
They found him on the lighthouse’s upper platform, surrounded by the scattered evidence of weeks of careful, patient sabotage — forged documents, a small vial of the Titan-derived serum still half-full, and something worse: a detonation device wired to the lighthouse’s aging structure.
"You’re too late," Colt said, voice carrying the particular calm of someone who’d already accepted his own likely death as the price of his mission. "The treaty signs tomorrow, at the trading post, exactly where every delegation will be gathered. This lighthouse overlooks the harbor. When it falls, when the explosion’s visible from the signing ceremony, everyone will assume it’s the first strike of a new war."
[CRITICAL: Explosive device detected. Disarm attempt required. Combat resolution unavailable — direct engagement risks triggering detonation.]
"You don’t have to do this," Zeke said, stepping forward carefully, old familiarity coloring his voice. "Colt. I trained you. I know you believe in something larger than this, but this isn’t loyalty. This is just more death, the same kind you always claimed to be fighting against."
"You abandoned us," Colt said, voice cracking with old, complicated grief. "Left everything we believed in for people who spent generations trying to destroy us. I’m just finishing what you should have had the courage to see through."
[Trust Established — Colt Grice: 12%. Rapid negotiation window closing. Recommend immediate action.]
Eren stepped forward, slowly, hands visible and empty. "You lost someone," he said quietly, an old instinct guiding the words. "Somewhere in this war. I recognize that kind of grief. It’s the same grief that almost let an ancient, anchorless power convince a sixteen-year-old girl she needed to disappear into something larger than herself, just to matter to someone."
Colt’s composure flickered, something raw surfacing beneath his careful control.
"My sister," he said finally, voice breaking. "She died in the Trost attack. The one your defection made possible, Zeke. I’ve spent two years believing if I could just stop this treaty, stop the peace that let her death mean nothing—"
"Her death already means something," Eren said, moving another careful step closer. "It means we’re trying, desperately, imperfectly, to build something that stops more people from dying the same way. Blowing up this lighthouse doesn’t honor her. It just adds more names to a list that’s already too long."
[Trust Established — Colt Grice: 34% and climbing. Negotiation window: OPEN.]
For a long, suspended moment, Colt stared at the detonation trigger in his shaking hand, old grief and fresh doubt warring visibly across his exhausted face.
Then, slowly, he set it down.
[Sub-mission "Disarm the Threat" — Complete via negotiation. Evidence Gathered: 5/5. Timeline Integrity: Preserved.]
They took him into custody rather than combat, Colt’s resistance finally, fully broken, the weight of his grief and his failed sabotage settling into exhausted, tearful silence.
By dawn, with the explosive device safely disarmed and the collaborator network fully exposed, Eren stood on the lighthouse platform watching the sun rise over a harbor that would, in a matter of hours, host the signing that might finally, properly end a war two thousand years in the making.
"We did it," Mikasa said, exhaustion and relief tangling together in her voice. "Not through fighting. Through actually understanding why he was doing it in the first place."
[Active Mission: "The Signing" — Threat neutralized. Treaty signing proceeding as scheduled. Final objective: Attend ceremony, ensure completion.]
"One more objective," Eren said, watching the sunrise paint the harbor gold. "The easiest one yet, hopefully."
"Don’t jinx it," Mikasa said, though her voice carried real hope for the first time in days.
Above them, the lighthouse stood intact, its light still turning steady and patient over waters that would soon carry three delegations toward a peace built not on victory, but on the harder, more fragile work of actually choosing to understand each other instead.
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