THIRTEEN • Eren Jaeger

CHAPTER 28: Loop Thirteen, III

You floated in the Coordinate for what felt like an eternity. You no longer existed in a plane of reality that was tangible. You were not human, a living being, nothing. You were a star on a Path, and stars burned.

You went wherever you were pulled, as though you were an omnipresent deity. A ghost gliding with the cold current of a haunted river. In the Path, you could feel every emotion from every Eldian in history like their memories were yours. You felt their happiness, their anger, and above all, their grief at not having the chance to be free. Their lives were intertwined in strings of fate, like branches of a tree.

You saw visions from all the lives you had lived.

There could only be one life, not thirteen, and that was why Eren was at risk and it was also why you had given yourself in his stead. After all, although Eren had died in previous lives, so had you.

Every time you died, the loop reset. You were not supposed to be dead in any reality.

You saw it all, memories that flashed through your head, so warmly familiar and subsequently painful. You saw the Titans, saw every moment you loved destruction.

Thirteen lives, you heard someone whisper to you. It sounded like Eren. You tried to say something in response, but you did not have a mouth or a body. Frightened, you flitted through the void of stars like a comet passing through. Nine Titans. An exchange.

Exchange me for you, you called into the void. I lived.

You died in those lives.

No, you said. You did.

Eren's voice went silent.

He manifested before you—not the scared, lost boy you last saw of him. You saw the Paths dimension version of him—the alternate, hidden prisoner he was in the Founding Titan.

Like in the Reiss cave from years ago, Eren's wrists were chained to what looked like the skeleton of his final Titan form. His body was slumped, like he was in deep slumber. Weak. Injured. Dying of a broken heart that needed yours.

Take my life, you said.

You lived thirteen times.

You had not just rewritten the fabric of reality, having lived thirteen times. Eren had been helping you in the Paths—waiting for you to what? Tell him you love him? No. It was not only that. It's not just a loop.

You had torn reality apart and stitched it together many times. You had altered the series of events that never should have been manipulated in the first place.

You had told Eren you loved him—that was something that was supposed to happen. A choice you willingly made in this life, fulfilling something that would free him.

After that, then what? You pondered.

There could not be thirteen lives. There could only be one. The thirteen universes were crashing into each other on the Paths' plane of reality—fighting to be the one real life. The trigger had been your confession to Eren.

Now, you were in the Coordinate. Under the tree, you carried Eren's weight and some of the Founder's power. You had the freedom to pick which realities you could sacrifice.

A lightbulb went off in your head. It was clear to you now. There was a loophole.

The sacrifice didn't have to necessarily be you.

The past lives you lived through were an ample number to choose from. Thirteen.

You and Eren had wanted each other badly enough to come this far. This fabric, a quilt made up of thirteen pieces, was trying hard to become one, but it could not. The Coordinate would not allow it—it did not fit in any plane of reality.