CHAPTER 1: Loop One

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ONE

At the end of your life, you watch the world crumble and reminisce growing up with Eren Jaeger.

At the end of your life, you watch the world crumble and reminisce growing up with Eren Jaeger

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"You have dirt on your face."

As the sirens reverberated throughout Shiganshina District, signalling the end of the world, you watched the skies turn gray as you recalled the first words Eren Jaeger had ever uttered to you. It had been here, so many years ago, when you were so young.

The memory of meeting Eren for the first time replays in your head like a crank losing control. He had angered you when you heard it the first time, but now, you would like to go back to when he was the only thing that incited emotions in you.

Paradis has fallen.

You don't know how it escalated to this. The battle of heaven and earth had been fought years ago, and yet, the remaining twenty percent of humanity that had been left unscathed somehow managed to bounce back and gather the forces to stage a counter-attack.

It had been all for nothing. Everyone had fought for nothing.

Eren had died for nothing.

The ground shakes beneath your feet, sending you scrambling to find the closest thing to hold onto, as the screams and pleas ring across Shiganshina. You've felt this despair before, a long time ago when you were a child watching Wall Maria fall for the first time in a century.

Pulling yourself together, you run from your house into the street, where the residents wail and point at the airships that are dropping bombs from the sky. Each impact with the ground sends an explosion rampaging through the earth, and it is not going to be long until flames engulf your home.

"Armin!" you shout over the fray, trying to find your friends. You shout for Mikasa, for Jean, for Connie, but your voice is drowned out in the screams of terror and the explosions.

You collide with someone's body and both of you stumble to the ground. When you make sense of your surroundings, you realize that it is Armin, blonde hair disheveled and his skin smeared with dirt. Your hands find each other and you immediately embrace bodies like it is the last thing you'll do. It probably is.

You can't tell if your hands are shaking, or if it is the bombs hitting the ground that are making everything shake.

"How could this happen?"

Armin shakes his head. "I don't know. I thought our peace talks with the survivors were successful all those years ago. I guess they changed their minds."

"Where's Mikasa and the kids?"

"Home with Jean," he answers. Another bomb goes off, and there are more screams. "They're together."

As in, They will not be alone when they die.

As more missiles rain from the sky, and fire burns around you, crowds shriek and run in hoards past you like Liberio when you ransacked it so many years ago. You realize that this is the karma from having done terrible things when you were young. The karma of following him.

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