𝙴𝚌𝚕𝚒𝚙𝚜𝚎𝚍 𝙷𝚎𝚊𝚛𝚝𝚜~ 𝙰𝙾𝚃

14: Eyes Not Yet Seen.

                      

[The Night before the Counterattack]
(Part 1)

                     

                   AFTERWARDS, IT TOOK AN
entire day to purge Trost District of the remaining Titans, with the wall's repaired cannons firing relentlessly around the clock.

High-explosive shells obliterated the majority of the swarming Titans, while the Survey Corps dispatched the few that remained with precision.

Amid the carnage, a 4-meter-class and a 7-meter-class Titan were captured alive.

Yet, the victory came at a staggering cost: 207 soldiers were killed or went missing, and another 897 were left wounded.

Humanity's first decisive win against the Titans was historic—but the loss of so many lives left little room for celebration.

Trainees and Garrison soldiers worked side by side, cleaning up the devastation and the scattered corpses.

The air was heavy with grief; many mourned the loss of family, comrades, and friends.

Wide-eyed and trembling, Jean froze before a familiar body. "M-Marco…?"  he whispered, his voice breaking as horror and disbelief washed over him.

TIME SKIP.........

Darkness—
not the kind that comes with night, but an endless, suffocating void.

It swallowed sound, space, even time itself. There was no horizon, no sky, no ground—only nothing, pressing in so heavily it felt alive.

Then—
A light ignited in the center of that abyss.

He stood within it, alone, as if the world had decided he was the only thing worth illuminating.

Around him, the darkness roared.

A deep, thunderous rumbling rolled through the void, growing louder, heavier, until it felt as though the air itself was shattering.

He looked down—
And his breath caught.

Beneath him stretched an endless sea of Colossal Titans.

Thousands.

No—tens of thousands.

Towering bodies marched in perfect, merciless unison.

Steam poured from their flesh like boiling fog, hissing and screaming as it burned the air.

Each step they took sent violent tremors through the ground, cracks racing outward like veins in dying earth.

The rhythm of their march was deafening—doom made into a heartbeat.
The world shook.

He staggered, barely managing to stay upright as the tremor threw him off balance—

—and then pain exploded.

A spear tore through his chest.

White-hot agony ripped the breath from his lungs as blood soaked through his clothes, warmth spreading rapidly beneath the cold shock.

The force sent him reeling backward, vision blurring as the Titans continued their march below, uncaring, unstoppable.

The light flickered.