Chapter 67: The Last Ordinary Morning
They returned to Trost the next morning, the forty-eight hours Shadis had granted them ticking down toward the same deadline as everything else, and found the training grounds humming with a different energy than when they’d left — sharper, more focused, the kind of readiness that came from soldiers finally being told, in some official capacity, to take a threat seriously.
"Shadis briefed the instructors while you were gone," Sasha reported, catching them at the gate with unusual gravity in her voice. "Didn’t say much. Just that readiness drills were being accelerated, and that anyone with family near the southern wall should consider making arrangements." She studied their faces carefully. "You three already know something, don’t you. Something bigger than what’s been officially said."
Eren exchanged a glance with Mikasa and Armin, old caution warring against two years of learning, slowly and painfully, that secrets carried alone rarely helped anyone.
"We do," he admitted. "I can’t explain all of it. Not safely, not yet. But if you have anyone near the southern wall, Sasha, get word to them. Today, if you can manage it."
Sasha’s easy humor drained from her expression, replaced by something more serious than Eren had ever seen from her. "That serious?"
"That serious."
She nodded once, already turning to find Connie, and Eren felt the strange, heavy weight of watching warning spread outward — no longer contained to their small circle, but rippling now through the wider fabric of people who’d need every available hour to prepare.
Reiner found him that afternoon, expression carrying a new, raw urgency that immediately set every instinct on alert.
"Tomorrow," he said, without preamble, voice barely above a whisper. "I overheard enough to be certain. The attack comes tomorrow, at dawn, timed to catch the district before full readiness."
"Tomorrow." The word landed like a physical blow, despite two years of preparation, despite every warning building toward exactly this moment. "That’s — that’s barely any time at all."
"I know. I’m sorry I couldn’t get you more warning." Reiner’s jaw tightened, guilt and fear tangled together in his exhausted expression. "Eren, I need to tell you something else, and I need you to actually hear it, not just react to it. When it happens — when Bertholt transforms, when the wall breaches — I won’t be able to stop him. I’ve tried, for months now, to find another way. There isn’t one. Not one that doesn’t cost people we both care about more than either of us can afford."
"Then what do we do?"
"You survive it. You get as many people clear as you possibly can. And when the moment comes that actually matters—" Reiner’s voice cracked, something breaking open behind his careful control. "When you have the chance to actually stop what’s coming, at whatever cost it demands, you take it. Even if that cost is Bertholt. Even if it’s me."
Eren stared at him, the weight of the request settling heavy and terrible in his chest. "You’re asking me to be ready to kill you."
"I’m asking you to be ready to protect what actually matters, whatever that requires." Reiner met his eyes, steady despite the visible cost of the admission. "I’ve spent two years hoping there was a version of this where nobody I’ve come to respect has to die. I don’t think that hope survives tomorrow, whatever happens. I just wanted you to hear it from me, honestly, before it’s too late to matter."
He walked off before Eren could respond, leaving him standing alone with a truth heavier than almost anything the countdown had demanded of him so far.
He told Mikasa and Armin that evening, the three of them gathered in their corner for what might, though none of them said it aloud, be one of their last ordinary evenings together before everything changed irrevocably.
"Tomorrow," Armin repeated, absorbing the weight of it. "At dawn."
"That’s what Reiner says. I believe him."
Mikasa’s expression had gone carefully, deliberately calm — the same steady focus she brought to every crisis, the mask she wore when fear threatened to overwhelm useful action. "Then we prepare tonight for everything we can control, and we accept what we can’t. We warn Shadis immediately. We make sure every recruit who can reach family does so tonight, not tomorrow morning when it might already be too late."
"And Bertholt?" Eren asked quietly. "Reiner’s basically told me I might need to kill him, if it comes to that."
Silence fell over their small circle, the weight of that request settling heavy over all three of them.
"Then we hope it doesn’t come to that," Armin said finally, voice steadier than his expression suggested he felt. "But if it does — Eren, you have to be able to make that choice, without hesitation, when the moment demands it. Not because Bertholt deserves it. Because everyone else who’s still alive to protect deserves your full commitment to protecting them."
Mikasa’s hand found Eren’s, grounding him against the terrible weight of the coming decision. "Whatever happens tomorrow, you won’t be facing that choice alone. None of us will be facing any of it alone."
Shadis received their warning with grim, immediate action — full alert status ordered for the entire southern garrison, evacuation procedures activated district-wide under the guise of a "critical structural assessment" that fooled almost no one but provided enough official cover to move quickly without inciting full panic.
"Dawn tomorrow," he confirmed, reading Eren’s report with hands that weren’t quite steady despite his controlled exterior. "You’re certain."
"As certain as I can be, sir."
"Then we do everything humanly possible tonight to prepare for it." He looked up, something almost like respect in his tired eyes. "Whatever you three actually are, whatever secret you’ve been carrying all this time — I’m grateful for it tonight, more than I know how to properly express. Go. Rest, if you can manage it. Tomorrow’s going to demand everything any of us have left to give."
Later, alone with Mikasa on their strip of ground behind the barracks for what might be the last time before everything changed, Eren found himself unable to look away from her, memorizing every detail with the desperate focus of someone who understood, finally and completely, exactly how fragile tomorrow’s survival actually was.
"Whatever happens," she said quietly, reading the fear in his expression without needing it explained, "I need you to remember something, before dawn arrives and changes everything."
"What’s that?"
"That I don’t regret a single day of this. Not the fear, not the danger, not any of it." She took his hands, steady despite the enormity of what tomorrow held. "You gave me a family when I had nothing left. You gave me two years of love I never expected to find, in a world I once thought only capable of taking things away from me. Whatever tomorrow costs either of us, I want you to know that already, before it has the chance to happen."
He pulled her close, holding her like he could physically anchor both of them against whatever storm dawn was about to unleash.
"I love you," he said, voice raw with everything the coming day demanded he say now, while he still had the chance. "Whatever happens tomorrow — survive it. Please. Whatever choice I have to make, whatever it costs, survive it and find me on the other side."
"I will." No hesitation in her voice at all, the same unshakeable certainty that had carried them both through every impossible thing this second life had demanded. "And you’ll do the same. That’s not a request, Eren. That’s an order, from someone who’s spent two years making sure you understood exactly how much you’re worth protecting."
He kissed her then, desperate and tender all at once, memorizing the shape of her against him, the warmth of her hands, the fierce certainty in her voice — every small, precious detail he intended to carry forward into whatever dawn actually brought.
Zero days remained on the countdown he’d carried for nearly his entire second life.
Tomorrow, finally, the fight he’d spent two lifetimes preparing for would arrive in full, undeniable force.
Whatever it cost them, he intended to face it exactly the way he’d learned to face everything else this year — with her hand in his, Armin’s steady presence at his back, and a fierce, desperate refusal to let this second chance slip away the way the first one had.