Promise Me | Book Three

Chapter Twenty-One

Eren's POV

The image forever plays through my head, over and over... Armin choking on his own blood.
Nothing stabbed him, nothing touched him, and yet, he suddenly transformed into that state.

My heart still pounds fast, and I feel in my head and hear it in my ears. I want to reach him, but I feel too weak, and the doors locked in front of me.

Armin still lies there: body sprawled across the stone floor, laying in his own blood, and a painful look on his face.
I don't know if he is dead or alive; that's what is hurting me the most.

If he is dead... The world has taken possibly one of the last things I care about in this world.
Armin has always looked out for me, and ever after all of this, he been here.
Now, no one else is here, except for me, and his limp body on the floor.

I watched somebody close to me die, again.

I turn away from him, and force my eyes shut. I try to isolate myself from the world, but the images of Armin 'dying' keep persisting: keep showing up.

Where did that guard go? He could've helped him... He could've helped him...

I try to clench my fists, but I feel too weak to even do that much.

Damn it.
I'm so useless, yet again.

Mikasa died saving me, and for what? Now, I just sit around in this cell, doing nothing but breathe and think about her, and how I killed her.
They should've have killed me, instead.
And now, Armin...

Nothing can hurt me anymore.

Then I remember, Armin came here for a purpose. He wanted to tell me about dad's journal... I might as well take a look.
I turn over and pull the journal through the cell and lean against the wall. Turning to the first page, I begin to scan-read through, trying to find where Armin was talking about.
'My mind must have been wiped in order to protect their game.
This is not real. This world is not reality.'

His mind was wiped? By what? By who? He doesn't write in enough detail for me to know, but I trust him.
A while before Armin came, I received some sort of vision. I didn't understand it, like the ones in my nightmares so long ago.
It was just flashing images of... I don't know.
I saw green lights of some kind, I heard so many voices, I saw more things, but things I'd never seen before.
Things that I didn't see long enough to possibly describe.
However, I saw Mikasa. She was the last thing I saw. But, she looked different; very different.

Since I discovered my Titan ability, some of the things I saw stopped surprising me, but this one... This one is so off.
I'd never seen anything like this vision. What I want to figure out is: what was the catalyst of this vision? Was there even one?

I read a bit more of his journal.
'Break the code. You have to break the code for freedom. When the code is broken, everyone will be freed.'

The code... Armin was trying to tell me the code, because he figured it out. He tried to explain, but he was 'attacked'.

Suddenly, something clicks inside my mind, like the cogs in the clockwork finally begin to turn, one after the other.
My father's mind was wiped because he found out, about the code? He was breaking the system to the world?
It this world isn't real, then what is the real world?

Armin tried to tell me the code, but then... His mind was wiped... In order to protect the game.

My heart jumps as I feel the blood trickle from my nose.
The same process is going to happen to me. I'm going to lose my mind.