Their eyes met.
Eren launched himself upward. Wind screamed past his ears. Below, the ground swarmed with nightmare shapes—grinning, reaching, their hands big enough to crush a carriage.
Eren landed on a rooftop and looked back. The armored titan hadn't moved. It was still watching him. Still waiting. opening 2 aot
The gear clicked. The gas fired.
The doors were fully open now. Beyond the walls, beyond the forest, beyond the fields of grain that would never be harvested this season—freedom waited. Or death. Or something worse. Their eyes met
"Jäger."
Levi appeared on Eren's left flank, blood spattered across his cravat. "Don't freeze, brat. You wanted to see the outside world? Fight your way there." It was still watching him
But the music never stopped. Not in their blood.
He thought of his mother, arms pinned beneath the fallen beam. Of Hannes, drunk and useless, unable to lift a spear. Of the colossal titan's bald, steaming head peering over the wall like a demon sun.
A titan unlike the others. Tall, but not colossal. Armored plates over its shoulders and down its spine. No skin, just dense muscle and bone. It wasn't shambling. It was waiting .
Eren's gear hooked into a rafter. He swung high, higher than anyone else, until the battlefield looked like a game of chess made of meat and mud.