The floor is yours, Mr. Arlert."
They were all gathered within one of the Parliament's large boardrooms no more than half an hour after Armin made the call, looking amongst each other apprehensively as they took their seats around the massive table, with all eyes locked on their visibly shaken commander. There were a handful of President Wohl's advisors in attendance alongside Armin's team, as well as several high-ranking military officials and a court transcribe.
Jean and Connie shared a nervous look, and Gabi squirmed restlessly in her seat. This was it: the pivotal moment where they would finally get some sort of answer for whatever was going on; though judging by the look on Armin's face, they probably didn't want to know. He was staring off into space now, not hearing the President's prompt, and Mikasa nudged his shoulder gently. His head snapped up, looking around as if he hadn't even heard them come in.
President Wohl cleared his throat when Armin didn't respond, raising his bushy eyebrows. "I must say, I'm looking forward to shedding some light on this whole situation." He said expectantly, though frowning slightly as Armin dipped his head and stared down at the piles of parchment on the table.
"Once you hear what I have to say, I'm sure you will come to regret those words, Mr. President."
Arya shifted uneasily, and she leaned forward onto the table that separated her from where Armin sat. He reluctantly met her eyes, and she tried to give him an encouraging smile.
"Just start from the beginning, Armin."
He nodded slowly, seeming to come back to himself a little. His expression cleared, and with a new sense of drive he rummaged through the stack of papers, pulling out half a dozen pages that were cluttered with writing.
"Yes, I suppose the beginning is a good enough place to start." He muttered, opening one of the Marotsara texts and giving the members of his team a long and searching look.
"So, we already surmised that these books, along with the settlement they were found in, belonged to an old community that lived on the island before the walls were built. Well, as it turns out, they are a much more ancient people than we could have ever imagined, though these records indicate that they didn't originate on Paradis. According to these books, they existed well before the Founder Ymir gained the power of the titans… 2000 years ago."
He paused for moment to read over his notes, then continued.
"If my translation is close, this tribe went by name "Children of Light", or some variation close to that. There wasn't much I could decipher on the finer points of their history, though it seems that they were a dying breed even before the move to Paradis, thanks to their persecution from Royal family. Around the time they ended up stuck between the mountain and the walls, there were less than 200 of them."
"God, what did this community do to bring down the wrath of the old Eldian royals?" Oz asked, scratching his beard thoughtfully. "It's not like they posed much of a threat being as small as they were."
Armin shook his head. "It wasn't something they did; it was something they had." He opened one of the books and turned it around to show the group a large illustration spread out across one of the pages. It showcased a drawing of an enormous tree with an arch in its base, surrounded by foliage.
"This reclusive race lived peacefully inside the massive forests that covered most of the Southern region of what was once the country of Eldia. As King Fritz expanded his territory in the early years of the war against Marly, these people were forced deeper into the unclaimed lands; save for one faction who, against the pleas of their people, remained to safeguard this tree."
"They risked the lives of their people to protect a tree?" Connie chimed in, looking confused. "But… it's a tree?"
Flipping to another section of the book, Armin showed them a different picture.
"That's the same sigil that was carved onto the doors at the village." Levi said, peering closely at the drawing of a more simplistic tree, whose tendril-like branched reached back in a circle to connect with its roots.
"Right. These members of the Children of Light worshiped the tree the same way the Church of the Walls did on the island, considering it a gift from the gods. At first, I couldn't fathom why they thought this tree was special enough to warrant that kind of reverence, but then I dug a little deeper.
Now, take this with a grain of salt if you will, but these texts suggest that it wasn't exactly the tree that they revered but rather what lied beneath it: a large underwater cavern that is said to have held some kind of mystical power. The Children of Light appointed themselves the protectors of this power, ritually drinking from the waters of the tree which, if you were to believe their legends, gave them feats of incredible strength and vitality."
"Like a fountain of youth kind of thing?" Reiner asked.
Armin didn't respond as he laid the book flat and reached for another, skimming over the strange writings quickly with a dark look.
"It looks like King Fritz had little to no interest in these people at first, since I'm sure he considered himself above any power our world possessed, and the thought of one group of people having more than human strength was laughable back then. How could a small forest community withstand the might of the entire Eldian nation?
It wasn't until after Ymir's unwitting discovery of titans that the King began to take the existence of the Children of Light more seriously; so serious in fact that he near wiped them out within the first year of his prosecution."
He met the eyes of his friends one by one, taking in their wary expressions like a teacher surrounded by his students.
"Can any of you give me an explanation for why the King would suddenly be so desperate to destroy these people, but only after they found the power of the titans?"
It was clear that they all understood what he was getting at, but the tense atmosphere in the room was weighing heavily on their desire to speak up. Eventually Historia leaned forward, looking at the illustration of the tree with awe.
"The place that these people were worshiping… that's where Ymir found the Titan organism."
Armin nodded. "Yes, I believe so."
Pointing to the picture showing the crest, he ran his finger along the edge. Cleverly hidden in the negative spaces where the branches met the reaching roots was a familiar looking creature; one the group regarded with trepidation.
"Just to be clear for the records, you're saying that this "Children of Light" group had known the whereabouts of the titan organism years before it was discovered by the founder?" President Wohl reiterated, letting of a huff when Armin confirmed. "Then why the blood hell didn't they take advantage of that?"
"Because they didn't know." He said, shrugging. "To them, the creature swimming in their sacred pool was a god, blessing their lives with divine power. Knowing now what it truly was, I wouldn't be surprised if they really had acquired inhuman gifts from drinking the water."
Jean was frowning now, looking back and forth between the images of the crest and the tree itself.
"I don't get it. After Ymir took on the titan's power, why would the King feel the need to eradicate the entire bloodline of these people? It's not like they could hold a candle to the Founder, even if they did have some kind of super-human ability."
"I'm sure they couldn't, but being the greedy bastard that he was, he probably hated the fact that some other group had a deeper connection to "his" titan than he did." Reiner said, pulling the book with the crest on it closer to him for inspection.
Pieck agreed. "From what I understand, the location of where the Founder encountered the titans was lost a millennia ago. Tons of people went looking for it, but as the Eldians started dominating Marly in their war, they pushed farther North to claim the territory. The South was practically abandoned."
"I bet these Children of Light people knew where it was." Mikasa countered, looking between the two. "That would give King Fritz a great reason to hunt them to extinction."
"That was my thought as well." Armin said, running his hand through is hair. "Whatever the reason was, the King succeeded. The line was completely wiped out, ending with the settlement in Marotsara; though how they went about that I'm still not sure."
The room was quiet for a moment as everyone tried to digest the information Armin had provided for them. It was a lot to take in, and no one could deny that it was intriguing, but to the leaders of Veritas this topic of conversation apparently wasn't moving things along as fast as they would have liked.
President Wohl sat up higher in his chair as he regarded Armin curiously.
"All this is very interesting my boy, but I don't believe that this alone was enough to warrant a full-scale government meeting. Now, if there is some other importance to this that you failed to mention, than I would care to-"
The President's sentence was cut off when a sudden, gurgling choke rang out around the quiet room. Armin closed his eyes tightly, dread washing over him once more as he reopened them to look at Reiner, who was gripping the book that contained the crest in front of him. His eyes were wide, and his mouth was hanging open in a grimace of pure terror as he stared down at the ancient image.
"Reiner, what's wrong?!" Gabi said in a quavering voice as Falco got up and rushed over to him, looking between the book and Reiner frantically. Whether he was choosing not to answer or that he simply couldn't they weren't entirely sure, though he tore his sights from the pages to stare at Armin when the latter sighed heavily.
"Put the book in the middle of the table, Reiner, so I can show them." He said in an exhausted tone that made him appear years older than he was. Reiner complied and the occupants of the room all stood, leaning forward to inspect the image that had caused so much panic.
"The real reason I asked you all to this meeting was not for a history lesson, President Wohl." Armin said finally, once again running his finger over the branches of the tree, only this time on the opposite side. "It was because of this."
Several gasps echoed around the table, but the sound felt muted; like a lead blanket had been thrown over them and covered the company in a deadly hush. Jean gripped the table with all his might, and Connie's eyes nearly bugged out from his skull as Gabi let out a strangled sob.
Arya took one glance at the object of their outcry and ripped her eyes away: staring endlessly into Armin's pained face with tears rolling down her cheeks.
Just as it had when they encountered the colossal beneath the earth, it felt as though the entire world had come to a grinding halt, dousing them all in a frigid and dark nightmare that had finally awoken from its slumber. The vague fear they held onto during the long years of their lives crumbled under the weight of this new horror; ripping away the effort they had expended in the last decade and soundly burning it to the ground.
This new fear was so consuming that when Armin spoke again it sounded like he was at the far end of a long tunnel, buried under the weight of the truth.
"Although Light may hold more power, Darkness always comes in pairs."
There, nestled in the grey spaces between the dark roots, was another organism.
"A second Founding Titan."