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Erwin and Levi had walked in silence through the marble halls of the MP headquarters. Guards snapped to attention as they passed. Clerks hurried by with armloads of paper, not meeting their eyes.
Levi waited until they were outside, standing in the courtyard where their carriage waited, before speaking.
"They're lying through their teeth."
"Yes."
"And you just... let them."
Erwin turned to face him. The afternoon sun caught the lines of exhaustion on his face, the weight of command etched into every feature. "What would you have me do, Levi? Accuse them openly? Refuse to cooperate? Give them the excuse they're clearly looking for to disband the Survey Corps entirely?"
Levi's jaw worked. "They're covering up a massacre. They're protecting whoever did this, and they are doing a shitty job at reframing news of a monster's rampage in the walls that had been running around for a whole week now."
"Yes."
"And you're just going to let them?"
Erwin was quiet for a long moment. Then he said, "Do you remember what I told you, after the fall of Wall Maria? About the nature of truth?"
Levi scowled. "Something poetic, probably."
"That the truth is like fire. It can be hidden. Smothered. Contained. But given time and fuel, it will always find a way to burn through whatever's covering it." Erwin looked up at the white stone walls of Stohess, at the pristine facades hiding unknown rot. "These people think they can bury what happened at the 103rd. They're wrong. They just don't know it yet."
"They've got the evidence. They've got the bodies. They've got the narrative."
"They don't have the witnesses. Eighty-three cadets saw what happened. Eighty-three families will hear the truth from their children. You can't contain that forever."
Levi considered this. "So we wait."
"We gather information. We watch. We prepare." Erwin climbed into the carriage. "And when the time is right, we burn…"
The rider at the front started the horses setting the carriage in motion back to wall Trost.
'…No matter how many strange obstacles are being thrown at us.'
Earlier that morning...
The sun had long since cleared the horizon when the Survey Corps contingent arrived back at their headquarters late morning. The ride from Trost had been grueling; hours in the saddle, bodies aching from wounds barely bandaged, minds reeling from the nightmare they'd witnessed.
Hange had fallen asleep on her horse twice, kept upright only by Moblit's steadying hand. Mike rode in silence, his enhanced senses overwhelmed by the constant assault of smoke, blood, and psychic residue. The rest of Hange's squad followed in a battered column, their injuries freshly wrapped, their expressions hollow.
Levi rode at the front beside Erwin, his grey eyes scanning the road with habitual vigilance. But even he was exhausted; the kind of exhaustion that went bone-deep, that no amount of cleaning could scrub away.
The gates of the survey corps headquarters came into view. Standard procedure. Guards on duty. Everything normal.
Except it wasn't.
A figure came running from the main building; a young scout, one of the new recruits assigned to guard duty. His face was ashen, his eyes wide with something beyond fear.
"Commander! Captain!" He stumbled to a halt, nearly collapsing. "Something... something happened. The prisoners—"
Levi was off his horse before the man finished speaking. "What about the prisoners?"
"They're dead, sir. Both of them." The recruit's voice cracked. "And... and it's not... it's not normal. You need to see."
The scouts followed and descended into the interrogation level. The air grew colder, damper. The torches on the walls flickered as if trying to escape their sconces.
The recruit stopped outside the heavy door. His hand trembled on the handle.
"I should warn you, sir," he whispered. "It's... it's bad. I've never seen anything like it."
Levi pushed past him and threw open the door.
The smell hit first; copper, rot, and something else. Something acrid and unnatural. Then the sight.
The two prisoners; Harlan and Phil, the Forever Knights, were dead. That much was obvious. What was less obvious was how.
They had been torn apart.
Not cut. Not stabbed. Torn. Limbs ripped from sockets. Flesh shredded in long, ragged strips. The walls were painted with blood in patterns that suggested violence beyond comprehension. One body was missing its lower jaw entirely. The other had been... crushed. As if by immense pressure applied from all sides.
But the worst part; the detail that made even hardened scouts turn away; was the teeth marks.
Near human teeth marks.
Someone; or something; had been eating them.
Hange, who had pushed her way in despite Moblit's protests, made a sound that was half-gag, half-strangled scream. "What... what did this?"
Levi's face was carved from stone, but his eyes burned with cold fury. He turned to the two guards who had been stationed outside; both pale, both trembling.
"You were supposed to be watching them."
"We were, sir! We never left our post!"
"Then how did this happen?"
The first guard came forth and stammered, "It was... it was magic, sir. Sorcery. A girl; a woman; she came out of nowhere. There was a light, purple light, and then... then we were on the ground. We couldn't move. We couldn't even scream."
Levi's eyes narrowed. "A girl?"
"Hooded," the second guard added. "Young, maybe mid-teens. She walked past us like we were furniture. Went straight to the door. Opened it like she owned the place."
"And you did nothing?"
"We couldn't move!" The guard's voice rose, cracking with terror and shame. "It was like our bodies weren't our own! We were frozen, watching, and then... then we heard the screaming and growls. From inside. It went on for... for minutes. And then it stopped."
Erwin had entered silently, taking in the scene with the cold analysis that made him who he was. "How long was she in there?"
"Maybe ten minutes, sir. Felt like hours."
"When she came out, what did she do?"
The guards exchanged a look. The woman swallowed hard. "She... she looked at us. Smiled. And then she was gone. Just... vanished. Like smoke."
Mike pushed past the gathered scouts, his nostrils flaring as he sampled the air. His face, already grim, darkened further.
"Stone," he muttered.
Everyone turned.
"What?"
Mike moved deeper into the cell, crouching beside a patch of floor that looked... different. The stone was darker there. Almost black.
"Stone. And something else." He inhaled deeply. "I can't pin point it, but it feels fresh, and strong."
Levi's boot scraped against the floor. He looked down. A patch of sand; dark brown, almost black; had been scattered near the door.
"Sand?" Hange leaned in, her scientific curiosity momentarily overriding her horror. "In a stone dungeon? That's not—"
"It's not sand," Mike said quietly. "It's residue. From whatever she used to... do this."
Levi stood, wiping his glove on his pants with exaggerated disgust. "Tch. First knights. Now witches. What's next, dragons?" (Don't jinx it Levi)
The room was silent. No one had an answer.
Erwin stood at the threshold, his single hand clasped behind his back, his blue eyes taking in every detail. The shredded bodies. The bite marks. The dark sand. The lingering sense of wrongness that permeated the very air.
"We have enemies we don't understand," he said quietly. "Operating in shadows we can't penetrate. Killing with methods we can't explain." He turned to face his squad. "And now, they've taken our only witnesses."
Levi met his gaze. "So what do we do?"
Erwin was silent for a long moment. Then, softly, he said, "We prepare for the possibility that whatever's coming is worse than anything we've faced." His eyes moved to the bodies, to the evidence of violence so personal, so intimate, it defied comprehension. "That is if we know what hit us first."
No one disagreed.
Erwin was brought back from his thoughts as the carriage jostled, watching Stohess's pristine streets give way to the rougher roads leading back to Survey Corps territory. Levi was silent across from him, his gaze fixed on nothing.
"Stone residue," Erwin murmured. "Dark sand. A girl in a hood."
Levi grunted. "You're thinking about the bite marks."
"I'm thinking about everything. The knights. The creatures. The crystal Titan. The winged thing. The demon dog. And now... whatever she was." He shook his head. "We've spent a hundred years believing the Titans were the only threat beyond the Walls. We were wrong."
"We were wrong about a lot of things." Levi's voice was bitter. "The knights. The masks. The fact that people can just... walk into our headquarters and kill our prisoners while our guards watch."
"The guards couldn't move. They said so."
"Doesn't matter. They should have died trying."
Erwin said nothing. He understood Levi's anger; shared it, even. But anger without direction was just noise.
The carriage hit a rut, jostling them both. Erwin's empty sleeve swung with the motion.
"We need more information," he said finally. "About everything. The knights. Their origins. Their goals. The creatures; where they come from, what they want. And now, this girl."
"The girl who eats people, apparently with sand."
"Yes." Erwin's voice was calm, but his eyes were distant. "Hange will want to study that sand."
"Let her. Maybe she'll figure out what it is before we all end up like those knights." Levi gritted his teeth as he folded his arms more inward to himself. "Knights, monsters, crystal titan, and a strange girl…I'm going to make strong tea for this shit as soon as we get back."
Erwin didn't comment on that as he set his gaze downwards.
A girl. Young. Powerful. Connected somehow to the knights; or opposed to them. She'd killed their prisoners with savage efficiency. Why? To silence them? To send a message? Or for some other reason entirely?
The questions multiplied faster than answers.
The carriage rolled on. The Walls loomed ahead, gray and massive, containing secrets they were only beginning to uncover.
Chapter 30-31 are already available on Patreon.com/Weeb Fanthom.