Sarah's Return to the Palace: The Beginning of Tension
Night had begun to draw its curtain over the family palace,
its dim lights casting long, heavy shadows of anticipation.
Everyone was waiting for her.
A suffocating silence filled the hall,
as if time itself had frozen before a door yet to be opened.
And then—
the sound of the door, opening slowly.
Sarah entered alone.
Her steps were heavy, measured—
as though she had returned from a war no one had announced.
Her face was not sad…
but it was not calm either.
It was like an unfinished painting,
touched by wind and ash.
She lifted her eyes for a brief moment
and met all of theirs at once:
worry in Mikasa's gaze,
tension tightening Armin's brow,
a charged silence behind Jean's and Connie's eyes,
and a flicker of confusion beneath Sasha's smile—
a smile that never quite formed.
Hange stepped forward, two quiet steps,
her eyes shining with a rare mixture of understanding
and restrained tenderness.
"Sarah…"
Her voice was closer to a plea than a question.
"We were worried about you."
She paused, then added, her tone cracking softly:
"I knew you would go alone,
but my heart hasn't stopped pounding since you walked out that door."
Armin stood beside her.
He didn't move closer,
yet his face reflected pure concern.
"We didn't know if you would come back," he said quietly,
"not because we feared for the plan…
but because we couldn't bear the thought of losing you."
Mikasa remained silent.
But her gaze said enough—
the look of a soldier who knows that returning from the Tybur estate
means passing through a hell wrapped in silk.
But Sarah… did not speak.
She looked at them all,
as though swallowing something bitter,
then continued up the stairs,
her steps steady—yet slow.
She left behind her a weight of unease
no words could erase.
Layla had remained silent the entire time.
Until then.
She spoke softly, but with quiet certainty:
"Sarah only stays silent when words would hurt."
Hange placed a hand on Layla's shoulder
and nodded calmly.
"Let her catch her breath," she said.
"We're here.
And we'll still be here when she's ready."
❖ The Corridor: When a Footstep Speaks Louder Than a Voice
Sarah climbed the stairs slowly,
hiding beneath her heavy steps wounds that were still bleeding—
unseen, yet painfully alive.
She made no sound,
but her black dress seemed to drag behind it a long shadow of silence,
heavy as a grave not yet sealed.
One step…
then another…
As though the air itself had grown dense around her—
not to accompany her,
but to prevent her escape.
"Sarah."
A low voice—
yet it pierced her like an arrow.
She did not turn.
There was no need to see him.
That voice, in the way it carried her name,
could never be mistaken by her heart.
She stopped in the middle of the corridor.
Her body still,
but her shoulders trembled—
as if an unspoken question echoed within her,
without words.
Levi approached, his steps heavy, tense,
as though the ground itself recoiled beneath his feet.
He was not the captain in that moment…
he was the man who had arrived too late.
"Why did you go alone?"
He said it—but it was not an accusation.
It was a cry for help.
As if he were asking her to free him from this new, unfamiliar, terrifying feeling:
helplessness.
"You wanted to deceive everyone…
but I am not everyone, Sarah."
She turned to face him—slowly.
In her eyes were shadows of places beyond description.
No fear lived there…
only something far crueler:
the nakedness of standing before the one who loves you
while you are threatened.
She whispered,
"You weren't there, Levi…"
Then her voice trembled as she continued,
"I didn't have the luxury to refuse…
nor the courage to scream."
He stepped closer, his voice sinking low,
as though the air itself punished him for asking:
"What… did he do?"
She did not answer at once.
Her lips began to shake.
And then, finally, the words came—
as though she were dissecting herself alive:
"He said… that any man who comes close to me
will share Matthis's fate."
The name fell like a stab from a past that refused to stay buried.
Levi's eyes widened—
not at the name itself,
but at what it meant.
"And he threw your picture onto the table."
She said it while still looking at him,
her eyes pleading for something unspoken:
forgiveness…
for her silence.
"He made me certain…
that anyone who loves me
will pay the price."
Levi's heart gasped without sound.
For the first time since he had known war,
he felt his weapons were useless.
All his training—
worthless here.
She lifted her gaze to him and finally screamed—
without a sound:
"I'm afraid, Levi…
not of you.
But for you."
Silence.
Then he stepped forward—
once…
then again.
He was no longer a soldier.
Nor a captain.
Nor a guard.
He was a man who loved…
and lost,
without battle.
"Do you think I only see you when you're strong?"
he said, like a prayer spoken for the first time.
"I'm afraid, Sarah.
Because for the first time… I love.
And I cannot save the one I love."
He lifted his hand and held her face with a tenderness
unlike anything she had ever known—
as though he were rearranging the world
through her exhausted features.
"Even if there is nothing left of me…
I will always find my way to you.
Because I do not know how to survive…
without you."
Then he pulled her into his arms.
It was not an embrace.
It was protection.
As though he had chosen, in that moment,
to become her shield—
even while everything around them whispered
that the war
had already begun.
Levi stepped closer, until his voice nearly dissolved into the palace night.
Levi (in a whisper, sharp as a sword being sheathed):
"I'm here, Sarah.
As long as I'm breathing… no one will touch you."
They were not words.
They were a vow.
Her breath caught for a moment.
Her tears did not fall—
they froze in her eyes, as if afraid to weaken beneath the tremor of his voice.
She lifted her head, staring into his eyes, asking a question she did not dare speak.
Sarah (in a trembling whisper):
"But… why?
Why do you care about me like this?"
He did not answer at once.
He raised his hand and brushed away her tears with his thumb, slowly—
as though erasing from her face the traces of wars only the two of them could see.
Levi (in a calm voice, like the silence before a storm):
"Because you deserve to be cared for…
without a reason.
Without conditions."
She could have broken.
But she didn't.
He stepped back, as though coming any closer might drown him.
Levi (quiet, yet deep as a confession):
"If you're afraid of Willy… don't be.
I won't let him touch you—neither him nor anyone else.
But remember one thing…"
He paused, then added, his voice closer to a prayer spoken by a man unskilled in words:
"No one has the right to make you weaker than I am…
not even your own heart."
Then he turned—
and left in silence.
But he did not leave her empty.
He left behind something unseen—
as though his heart had spoken everything his tongue could not.
And Sarah?
She stood there beneath the dim corridor light,
touching the place where his hand had been,
and whispered to herself without a sound:
"Perhaps… I never needed someone to save me—
only someone who truly sees me."
Tybur Estate — Beyond the Inheritance
In the ancient Tybur estate, grandeur did not live in the marble columns,
nor in the oil paintings that watched visitors with eternal eyes—
but in the heavy silence that filled the library that night,
as though the walls themselves feared what was about to be spoken.
Willy sat behind his desk, leaning into a chair that did not resemble him.
Between his fingers, a small leather-bound notebook turned slowly,
as if secrets were leaking from its pages.
When the door opened softly, he did not look up—
yet he felt her presence.
Lara.
His sister entered with quiet steps and stopped before him without a word.
There was no accusation in her eyes—only plea.
Lara (warm, yet cautious):
"May I speak with you?
Not as part of your plan…
and not as its opponent."
Willy closed the notebook calmly and lifted his gaze to her.
Willy:
"Sit, Lara.
This conversation is long overdue."
She sat across from him, her eyes searching for the brother she knew—
not the shadow she had been seeing lately.
Lara:
"You met Sarah tonight… didn't you?"
Willy (without denial):
"Yes."
Lara (softly):
"Do you know how much she respects you?
Even after everything that happened with Mathis,
she never spoke a single ill word about you."
For a moment, Willy's expression shifted.
Sarah was not absent from his mind—
she lived within it.
Lara (continuing):
"Why do you insist on dragging us into a conflict like this?
Why do you cling to her,
when everything in this world urges you to let her go?"
A long silence followed.
Then Willy stood and walked to a nearby shelf, retrieving an old leather-bound book with care.
He returned and placed it between them.
Willy (low voice):
"Because what Sarah carries in her blood is not merely inheritance…
it is a curse—or a miracle."
Lara stared at him, caught between disbelief and fear.
Lara:
"What do you mean?"
Willy opened the book and showed her a page etched in an ancient script.
Willy:
"Centuries ago, it was written that there exists a bloodline untouched by the Paths—
one that does not answer the Founding Titan,
and does not forget.
A rare blood… one the earth itself cannot erase.
A resistant bloodline—
carried by the Arabs."
Lara (in a stunned whisper):
"The Arabs… outside the influence of the Paths?"
Willy:
"Yes.
Even the Founding King could not break them.
He exiled them—not to protect humanity…
but to protect his throne."
Silence fell again—heavier this time.
Willy (his voice fractured):
"Sarah is not only Arab…
she descends from the royal Arab bloodline.
Her father was not merely a scientist chasing Titan secrets—
he was the heir to a lineage the Founding King tried to erase from history.
Jalal Abdeljalil…
the last bearer of the original manuscript that revealed the only weakness
within the Three Commandments of the Founder."
Lara gasped silently, as though the words had awakened a forbidden memory.
Lara (trembling):
"The manuscript that was forbidden to read…
the one said to have been burned?"
Willy:
"It was never burned.
It was smuggled into Marley…
and reached his hands.
From that day on, he became a target for execution."
Lara:
"So everything Marley did to Sarah…
was fear?
Not politics?"
Willy (with a choke in his voice):
"Fear—
of a woman who carries a memory that cannot be silenced,
and a bloodline that cannot be manipulated.
Fear that she might be…
the one being who does not kneel."
Lara looked into her brother's eyes
and saw something she had not seen in a long time:
Torn resolve.
Lara (softly):
"But you love her."
Willy:
"I do.
And every time I touch her hand…
I feel as though I'm touching the beginning of the end of an entire era."
She stepped closer, placed her hand gently over his, and said calmly:
Lara:
"If you truly love her—
let her choose.
And do not fear being the end of that era yourself."
He slowly withdrew his hand and turned toward the window,
where the moon reflected on the glass like a scene he had replayed in his nightmares.
Willy (a voice steeped in regret):
"I thought I could save Marley through her…
but the closer I get,
the more I realize I'm trying to save myself."
He paused, then murmured:
Willy:
"Sarah carries freedom in her blood—
a freedom no one has ever known.
And if she loves another…
I will never forgive this world."
Lara left in silence,
leaving behind a man standing at the edge of inheritance—
between a merciless legacy
and a woman who will never bow.
❖ Flashback — The Library of Shadows and the Legend of the Unyielding Blood
(Ten years earlier — Tybur Estate, the abandoned western wing)
On one of those autumn nights when the moon looked like an open wound in the sky,
Willy Tybur stepped into a forgotten wing of his family's estate—
a place the servants whispered about as "The Library of Shadows."
The library was not merely a room of books…
It was a mausoleum of his great-grandfather's madness—
the last man who had dared to approach the legacy of the Arab blood
before being declared insane and dying in isolation.
It was said that he had spent his life searching for a lost Arabic manuscript,
written centuries ago in rare ink, on deerskin,
containing a secret capable of dismantling the very legacy of the Founding Titan.
Willy lit a small candle and walked between shelves buried in dust and spiderwebs.
The air smelled of burned paper and time itself.
He stopped before an iron cabinet,
as though something inside it were whispering to him:
Open… and pay the price.
Inside, he did not find the manuscript.
Instead, he found a faded leather book—
apparently translated from ancient Arabic,
its text written in a trembling hand.
Its title read:
"The Unyielding Blood… That Does Not Submit to Forgetting."
He opened it carefully.
Some of the letters crumbled, as though they had taken their first breath in centuries.
At its center, a passage was marked in red ink:
"From beyond the sands came the man whose name was never recorded in the memory of the Founding Titan.
He did not kneel, nor did he ask for power—
instead, he asked Ymir about her freedom.
And when he drew close to her secret, the thrones trembled and had him killed.
Yet his blood passed on through his daughters alone—
carrying a heart that cannot be broken… and does not forget."
Willy gasped as he read,
as if the text itself were pulsing between his hands.
He then turned toward a painting hanging in a dark corner.
It depicted an Arab man with a dark beard,
dressed in a royal cloak embroidered with gold threads,
holding the hand of a young girl with long hair,
her gaze fixed on the horizon.
Beneath the painting were the words:
"The Stranger Sage… who taught Ymir how to choose, not how to obey."
Willy whispered:
"This is the manuscript…
the one history deliberately buried.
The Arab sage wrote it, the thrones tore it apart,
and everyone has been searching for it ever since."
He fell silent, staring into the flickering flame of the candle,
which trembled like his own heart.
"If Sarah carries that blood…
then we must not rule her—
we must fear her."
He stood there, shock burning in his eyes.
No longer did he fear Paradis,
nor the walls…
He feared the rise of a woman
who carried the memory of a man
who had never knelt.
Who do you believe truly threatens the world's balance?
🩸 Sarah — the blood that cannot be controlled
👑 Willy Tybur — the man who knows the truth
⚔️ Levi — the heart that refuses to stay silent
🌍 The world itself — built on lies and fear