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The world was a screaming, sonic hell.
Savage; Eren; was losing. The mutated Vulpimancer was a phantom of pain and fury, its form was flickering in and out of his senses. One moment it was a roaring corona of distorted sound, the next it was nothing but a vacuum of silence before rematerializing with a bone-jarring impact.
He'd tried to hold his ground, to project a sense of calm as Armin had theorized. It was a fool's hope. This wasn't a creature that understood reason. It understood dominance.
A clawed swipe he barely dodged tore a deep furrow in the earth where his head had been. The force of the passing blow whipped against his fur. He tried to counter, lunging for a leg, but his jaws closed on empty air as the creature phased, becoming intangible smoke.
Where is it?!
His canine like head whipped around, sonic senses straining, painting the bushes in frantic, swirling colors of heat and vibration. The silence was more terrifying than the roar.
A low, guttural growl sounded directly behind him.
He spun, but too late.
It materialized not as a whole, but in parts; a massive, clawed paw first, solidifying out of the night air to slam into his side. The air left his lungs in a choked yelp. A second paw, then the full, terrifying bulk of it, the five good eyes burning like malevolent blue stars.
It was on him. Its weight, immense and crushing, pinned him to the forest floor. The stink of ozone and blood filled his nostrils. He thrashed, a frantic, panicked animal, but he was utterly overpowered. This was an adult, and he was just a juvenile. Its jaws, dripping with acidic saliva, opened wide, descending towards his exposed throat.
This was it. The plan had failed. He was going to die here, torn apart in the dark, and the Omnitrix would be lost to the dirt.
7 days ago…
The sun was a pale forgiving gold, washing the refugee camp in a light that almost managed to hide the scars. The walk back from the water pump with Mikasa had been… different. The silence wasn't a wall anymore; it was a shared, weary space. The confession had been a poison drained from a wound, and while the injury was still tender, it was no longer septic.
Eren placed the now-full bucket by the shack's door, his movements less brittle than they had been in weeks. The simple chore had been a grounding anchor, but his mind was still a storm. He could still feel the ghost of Mikasa's arms around him, the solidity that had kept him from shattering. But one chasm had been bridged only to make the other feel deeper and more silent.
"He's not going to want to see me…" Eren muttered, scuffing his boot in the dirt.
Mikasa appeared beside him, her own bucket empty. She didn't speak, just looked at him, her grey eyes asking the silent question. "He's Armin," she replied, as if that answered everything. And in a way, it did.
He glanced at her and received a small, almost imperceptible nod. It was time.
"We're going to see Armin," Eren announced to his mother, his voice quieter than his usual defiant declarations, but steadier.
Carla looked up from her mending, a genuine, relieved smile touching her lips. "Good. It's been too long. Give him my love."
The walk to Grandpa Arlet's new, more secluded shack was a study in fragile normalcy. They didn't speak much, but the oppressive weight between them was gone. Eren found himself actually looking at the camp; not as a monument to his failure, but as a place where life, stubborn and resilient, was pushing through the cracks. He saw children chasing a ragged ball, women trading scraps of cloth, men patching roofs with salvaged wood. The guilt was still a cold stone in his chest, but for a moment, it didn't feel quite so heavy.
When they arrived, Armin was outside, sitting on an upturned crate, not sketching, but just poking listlessly at the dirt with a stick. He looked up as they approached, and for a fraction of a second, Eren saw the same flicker of uncertainty he'd seen in Mikasa's eyes; the ghost of a violation that wasn't his fault, but was his doing.
"Eren. Mikasa," Armin said, his voice cautiously neutral.
"Hey," Eren replied, stopping a few feet away. The distance felt like a mile. He scratched the back of his neck, a nervous, boyish habit. "We, uh… we came to see you."
"I'm fine," Armin said automatically, his eyes dropping back to the dirt.
An awkward silence descended, thick and heavy as a blanket of snow. The unspoken thing hung between them, larger than any Titan. Eren shifted his weight from one foot to the other. Armin's poking became more deliberate, digging a small hole.
'This is a waste of time.' Eren thought, the cold stone of guilt in his chest growing heavier. 'He can't even look at me. He knows. Why did I think I could just come back?'
Mikasa watched them, her heart aching. They were like two towns trapped in the same wall, unable to touch. Eren, drowning in a guilt he thought was his alone to bear. Armin, lost in a void of missing memories, terrified of the shape of the monster that had carved them out. This careful play of avoidance was a pain all its own, and she…could no longer stand to witness it.
She took a single, decisive step forward, placing herself squarely between them, forcing them to acknowledge her presence.
"You're both being idiots." Mikasa said, her voice flat. It wasn't an insult, just a simple, devastating statement of fact.
Both boys flinched, startled by the bluntness.
"What?" Eren mumbled defensively.
Armin finally looked up, his brow furrowed. "We're not—"
"You are," she interrupted, her grey eyes sweeping from one to the other. "Eren walks like he's on broken glass. Armin talks like he's reading from a book he hates. You're not friends right now. You're just... two people who are very good at being quiet."
Her words, simple and direct, stripped away the last of their pretense. The air went out of them. Eren's shoulders slumped while Armin's stick stilled.
"It's my fault," Eren whispered, the words torn from him. "I hurt him."
Armin's head snapped up, a spark of his old self flashing in his eyes. "You didn't hurt me! You saved me! Everyone keeps saying that, but no one will tell me how! I just have... this... this nothing in my head where something bad happened! And you... you look at me like you're waiting for me to remember and scream at you!"
The dam was cracking…fast.
"I don't want you to remember!" Eren shouted, his own frustration and fear boiling over. "Because if you remembered, you'd hate me! You'd know what I did! I held you down and I... I burned you! From the inside! I had to! To get him out! And I felt it, Armin! I felt you... I heard you..." His voice broke into a ragged sob. "I used you like a damn tool!"
The horrific, visceral truth finally erupted into the space between them, ugly and undeniable. Eren was trembling as tears streamed down his face freely now.
Armin stood frozen, his brilliant mind trying to process the unimaginable. He looked down at his own hands, as if seeing them for the first time.
"A purging fire..." Armin murmured, his voice became distant, the strategist in him latching onto the mechanics of the horror to avoid its full emotional weight. "...through a living conduit. It was the only way." He looked back at Eren, his anger gone, replaced by a dawning, horrifying understanding.
"You didn't hurt me, Eren. You... you scoured me. You erased him. That's why there's nothing there."
The realization didn't bring comfort. It only reframed the violation. But it shifted the blame from Eren to Zs'Skayr. The chasm between them was still there, but now they were standing on the same side of it, looking in at the same horror.
"I'm sorry," Eren choked out, his body shaking. "I-…I'm so sorry I had to do that."
Armin took a hesitant step forward, then another. He didn't hug him; wasn't sure if that would be the right moment for that. But he reached out and placed a hand on Eren's trembling arm.
"I know," Armin said, his own voice thick with tears he's desperately trying to hold back. "...Thank you. For bringing me back."
It wasn't a full healing, but it was the first stitch in a deep wound. After a long time, the tension finally broke between the two best friends. They stood there for a long moment, just breathing, the shared weight of their nightmare finally, truly, acknowledged between them.
The silence that followed was different. It was exhausted, but clean.
Eren, emotionally spent and desperate for any semblance of their old normalcy, wiped his face with his sleeve and gestured weakly towards the center of the camp.
"So..." he began, his voice hoarse. "You guys... wanna go see if that old creek is still there? The one with the flat stones?"
It was the most awkward, pathetic, and utterly Eren suggestion possible.
A beat of silence. Then, a wet, choked sound escaped Armin. It turned into a shaky, genuine laugh. Mikasa's stern expression softened into a small, relieved smile.
"Yeah," Armin said, sniffing and wiping his own eyes. "Yeah, Eren. Let's go see."
It wasn't much. But it was a start. And for the first time in weeks, walking away from the shack, the space between them felt less like a minefield and more like a path they could share.
Chapter 22-30 are already available on Patreon.com/Weeb Fanthom.