The Shifter Titan (Annie Leonhart x Male Reader)

15: Being the Tree

AN: sorry for the long wait. I had this written a while back but I struggled with that last part so it was never finished. Life hasn't been all that great, but you know, just have to get through it. Also, these past few episodes of the final season have been sick. Bummed out if there's a movie coming, but hopefully it'll be good. Anyways sorry for the delay and I hope you guys like this chapter!

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One moment he was listening to Annie talk, and the next he was laying in the sand. Countless stars were seen in the dark sky, yet it was not clear if it was truly night. Surrounding Y/N were only dunes of sand, countless miles of sand, and stars.

As he turned his head around, the orange-haired soldier noticed a teal blue light on the sky; it was a light that stretched from a center far in the distance all the way to infinity. For some reason, it gave him comfort and a sense of power, as if the light was calling for him to go towards it.

But he couldn't move. In place of his legs, a small girl was molding sand in a way that it seemed that she was creating his legs. But that was impossible; his legs were flesh, not sand.

"Hey, little girl, what are you doing with my legs?" Y/N asked, distraught at the girl kneeling down and molding his extremities. A moment of silence passed, making it clear to the soldier that such a girl was not going to answer his question.

"She can't talk." A male voice said in front of him. The ex-warrior candidate jumped from the abrupt appearance of the strange voice. He lifted his gaze and saw an older man, probably around his 40s, standing there in some old-fashioned garments. He had a well-trimmed chestnut beard and brunette hair, with blue eyes that sparkled under the teal light of the sky. "But I can tell that she's making your new legs."

Y/N furrowed his eyebrows and tilted his head. "I'm sorry, who are you? And how the hell did you appear out of nowhere?"

"I didn't appear out of nowhere." The man said suddenly from beside Y/N, startling the soldier. "I just moved along the realm of the paths."

"Gonna take a wild guess and say that's where we are now?"

The man pointed at Y/N and winked. "Correct! Your prize for guessing right is...bragging rights."

Y/N rolled his eyes. "Wow, thank you, weirdo. Now for reals, tell me what the fuck is going on. Like, why am I here? Why is this little girl making my legs? And who are you?!"

With a sigh, the bearded man took a seat across from the soldier and began drawing a little girl and a monster/giant on the sand. The scene was familiar for Y/N—he had seen it somewhere before, but he didn't know where.

"Long ago, a slave named Ymir received a gift from an unknown source. This gift was the gift of turning into a Titan, which is now known as the Founder. Of course, at the time it was the only titan, so it had the powers of all Nine Major Titan Shifters."

"Aren't there ten?" Y/N interrupted.

"I'll come to that. The original Titan had the power of all Shifters: the size of the Colossal, the Agility of the Jaws, the hardening power of the Warhammer, so on and so forth. After Ymir's death, her three daughters—Maria, Rose, and Sina—were forced to eat her, thus successfully gaining her power. This custom passed on and the power got divided into the nine shifters we now all know and love.

"That part is not very well known, but it's still standard knowledge for some. What few know is that centuries later, out of nowhere, an Eldian baby was born with a titan power. The curious thing about it was that no shifter had died at the time of birth.