Chapter 77: What Sleeps in the Blood
The dream came the night after Annie’s awakening, and it wasn’t a flicker this time — it was something deeper, something the system itself seemed almost reluctant to grant him.
Eren stood in a golden field that didn’t exist, under a sky the wrong color, and a girl with white hair sat waiting for him beneath a single, ancient tree.
"You’re taking longer than the others did," she said, voice layered strangely, as if a thousand voices spoke through her at once. "To find your way here. To me."
"Who are you?"
"You already know." She tilted her head, something ancient and sorrowful behind her young face. "I am the first. The one your ancestors bound in chains two thousand years ago, and never fully released since. I am the Founder. And you, Eren Yeager — you are the first vessel in generations who might actually be strong enough to set me free."
Eren woke gasping, drenched in sweat, Mikasa already sitting up beside him with alarm etched across her face.
"Eren? What happened, you were shaking—"
"The Founder," he managed, voice hoarse. "I saw her. Ymir Fritz — not our Ymir, the original one. She’s still there, somehow, still bound after two thousand years." He pressed a hand to his temple, the weight of the vision settling heavy and strange. "She said I might be strong enough to free her."
Mikasa’s expression sharpened with old, familiar caution. "Free her to do what, exactly?"
"I don’t know. She didn’t say. The dream ended before I could ask."
Grisha’s journals, when they finally cross-referenced the vision against every fragment of knowledge his father had left behind, offered only partial answers — the Founding Titan’s power, bound by royal blood and ancient covenant, capable of rewriting the very memories and biology of every Eldian alive, if ever fully unleashed by someone with the will and blood to command it.
"That’s not just powerful," Armin said, voice hushed with the weight of the implication. "That’s civilization-altering. If you actually gained full control of the Founder’s power, Eren, you could reshape the entire world’s understanding of the Titans, of the walls, of everything Marley’s built its entire ideology around."
"Or I could become exactly what Marley’s always feared an uncontrolled Eldian becoming," Eren said quietly. "A weapon capable of ending everything, in the wrong hands, or even in hands that mean well but choose wrong."
Reiner, listening from the corner of the tent with grim understanding, finally spoke. "This is what Zeke’s been building toward this whole time. Not just testing you, not just trying to retrieve or eliminate you. He wants the Founder’s power activated. I don’t know why yet, but I’d stake everything I still have left that this is the true shape of his plan."
The training that followed consumed every spare hour Eren possessed — not gear drills or combat forms this time, but something stranger, more internal, Armin and Grisha’s combined knowledge guiding him through careful, controlled attempts to reach that golden field again, to understand exactly what dormant power actually slept within his borrowed blood.
"You’re pushing too hard," Mikasa said one evening, finding him exhausted and shaking after another failed attempt, sweat soaking through his shirt despite the cool evening air. "You’ve collapsed twice this week alone."
"I need to understand this before Marley forces the issue for me."
"You need to survive long enough to actually use whatever you learn." She knelt before him, taking his trembling hands in hers, old fear and fierce love tangling together in her expression. "I watched you almost die reaching for this power tonight, Eren. Your heart stopped for nearly ten seconds. Armin had to restart it manually."
The revelation landed heavy, old guilt joining the exhaustion already weighing on him. "I didn’t realize it was that close."
"It was. It keeps getting that close, every single time you push further." Her voice cracked, raw honesty bleeding through her careful composure. "I can’t lose you to this, Eren. Not after everything we’ve already survived together. Please — find a way to grow into this power without destroying yourself trying to rush toward it."
He pulled her close, guilt and love tangling together in his exhausted chest. "You’re right. I’ve been so focused on understanding the threat, I stopped paying attention to the cost of preparing for it." He pressed his forehead against hers, drawing strength from her steady presence the way he had through every impossible thing this year had demanded. "I’ll slow down. I promise. Whatever this power turns out to be, it won’t matter at all if I destroy myself reaching for it before I’m actually ready."
That night, exhausted but calmer, they found their way to a quiet stretch of rebuilt wall overlooking the garrison, stars stretching vast and familiar above them despite everything strange the day had revealed.
"I keep thinking about what she said," Eren admitted quietly. "The Founder. That I might be the first vessel in generations strong enough to set her free. I don’t know if that’s a blessing or the beginning of the worst mistake I could possibly make."
"Then we figure it out together, the way we’ve figured out everything else." Mikasa leaned into him, her earlier fear settling into quiet, steady resolve. "Whatever this power actually is, whatever Zeke’s truly planning to do with it — you’re not facing the decision of what to do with it alone. Not the discovery, not the danger, not the choice of how to use it, if it ever comes to that."
He turned to look at her, moonlight catching the fierce, unwavering love in her expression despite the mounting danger of everything still ahead, and felt something in his chest ease at the familiar, grounding certainty of her presence.
"How did I get so lucky," he murmured, "carrying all of this and still somehow ending up here, with you?"
"Luck had very little to do with it." A small, tired smile, warm despite the day’s revelations. "I chose to stay, that first day you shared your bread with me, long before either of us understood what carrying any of this would actually cost. I’ve kept choosing it every single day since. That’s not luck, Eren. That’s love, deciding again and again that the choice is still worth making."
He kissed her then, slow and deep and full of gratitude for every single day they’d managed to claim together despite the war’s relentless demands, the golden dream of a bound goddess and the terrifying power still sleeping in his blood fading, for a little while, beneath the simpler, steadier truth of her presence beside him.
"Whatever the Founder’s power actually is," he murmured against her lips, "whatever Zeke’s plan ultimately demands of me — I want to face all of it exactly like this. Slowly. Carefully. With you beside me every single step of the way."
"Then that’s exactly how we’ll face it," she promised, fierce and certain beneath the star-scattered sky. "However long it takes. However much power still sleeps in your blood waiting to be understood. We do this together, the same way we’ve done everything else."
Above them, the stars continued their ancient, indifferent watch, carrying silent witness to two people choosing, once again, to face an impossible destiny together rather than let its terrible weight pull them apart.