Aaaand we continue!

For the next week or so we continued around the island. A few more Titans were found on the plains, but ones that had been unable to move properly, or gotten stuck, or simply given in. It was hard to say. But we killed them quickly, to perhaps allow them to be reborn into the cycle before we broke it. It seemed like the least we could do. But as we crossed onto the other side of the island, having passed the Northern peak where the most shipwrecks had been sighted, a change came. The winds bit the shoreline harder here, perhaps it was simply turning towards winter quicker than expected? It wasn't clear. But we remained vigilant. We left breadcrumbs as Hanji had requested, allowing those following behind to know of our findings and our wellbeing. And in all honesty, it was pretty blissful for the most part. Me and Levi simply existing together, riding across the plains, setting up camp as the sunset kissed the horizon, making love under the stars, twisting together in the biggest sense of freedom either of us had ever known or dared to consider a possibility.

So as we came towards the North East section of the island, we were both in high spirits. We had come across some fish in a small bay and caught a few, drying them and upping our supplies for another bout of travel. And then we came to the top of a hillock. Then we saw our newest Titan. And we both stopped dead in our tracks.

Stood at eight metres tall, quite lean, one shoulder a little sloped as it wandered around, but the shock of strawberry blonde hair was what stalled us. And as it turned to look at us, slowly, no sign of aggression, the bright hazel eyes stalled us, and I know we both lost our breath. Petra. It had to be. I couldn't take my eyes away, I couldn't even be sure if Levi had given an order or moved himself. Petra. Right there, in Titan form. Proof of the cycle, of the rebirth madness that had kept this island encased in its own self-fulfilling prophecy. But how aware was she? Eren had said Ymir spoke of it being a living nightmare. But there was no way of knowing if that was true for all of them, that all of their experiences were the same. Fuck I hope they're not. The eyes stared for a long time, burrowing into me, likely never to leave my mind again, not for a very long time. And yet she didn't approach. She just watched. Like she was waiting for us to make the first move. Either she wasn't an aggressive type, or she had some semblance of herself in there. I hoped, sickeningly, for the former. I didn't want Petra to know what was happening. I wanted her to simply be at rest.

And I wanted her to maybe live again.

I put a hand onto my blades and looked to my Captain, his eyes still locked on the Titan, his hand already inching towards his gear. His eyes flitted to me. His brows lifted in question. I nodded. We had to try to free her. We rode closer to the thicket of nearby trees, those bright eyes following us the whole way. Would she follow? Would we be able to make this a clean kill? Or would this be the attack to go horribly wrong and one of us would be consumed by Petra's Pure Titan? No. No it couldn't happen like that. We were going to break the cycle, crack open this broken world and free Humanity of its own mindless fear.

R-Right?

"Ackerman, you good?"

It was strange to hear that name for myself, but still, he was keeping it formal as the world became mad around us. Right. Soldier time. Cling to those lines when you can't hold onto anything else. I nodded. "I think so, sir."

"I need something more confident than that, soldier."

Soldier. Right. This wasn't Petra, not really, it was a Titan. A soul that needed freedom. Like any of the others we had dealt with, trying to get them back to a human life, and to stop them ever being driven to harming human lives in that form. Soldier. Not friend. Not fellow trainee. Not sister in every way but blood. Soldier.

"Yes, sir. Ready, sir."

"Good." He rode ahead slightly and indicated the trees to our right. "If you launch, I'll be able to see what the reaction is. Violent? We engage immediately. No change? We go from there, trying to lure her closer to the trees. I want this clean like the others."

To think that we Scouts were doing our damnedest to kill Titans with mercy now – if you'd told me that when I signed up, I'd have called you crazier than I am. Following orders, I fired into the nearby thicket. Again she watched closely, but no other reaction. At least, not at first. Her head tilted. Staring at the glint of my gear. Did she recall her time as a human? As a Scout? She approached slowly, Levi rode in an arc, giving her space, but staying in range. Observing. I stayed on the branch I'd landed on, it was high enough that she couldn't reach me without it being bloody obvious she was trying to, and I had plenty of escape routes as well. She got closer and stared harder. A low moan escaped her, as if it grew up from her belly, making her eyes shine before my own itched.

My throat ached. "Petra?"

She blinked, tilting her head in the other direction before she stopped as she came within a metre of the branch, looking up at me with those searching eyes. Was she in there? Did she know me? My hands shook. She blinked, and another low moan escaped, before she turned and sat down, facing away from me. My heart clenched. Was she…

Her head tilted forward – exposing her nape.

My knees quaked and I looked for Levi as he rode in his perimeter, his own expression as amazed and horrified as my own no doubt. She was submitting. On some level at least, she understood, and on some level she wanted this. I stepped to the edge of the branch and fired my anchors into the sturdy wood, glad of the steadying effect. Levi held his hand aloft and gave the go ahead. No doubt he didn't wish to call out, not wanting to spook her. But he agreed. It was time to save her.

"I love you, Petra." I said as clearly as I could, not yelling, but hopefully somehow she heard. No response came from the Titan, just that nape staring up at me, waiting for the strike. Inviting it. I jumped, swung, and sliced as clean and hard as I could. Done. In an instant. She slumped to the side, a final groan escaping with the steam as I released the anchors and landed beside her, the vapour shifting away from my streaming eyes thanks to the breeze. "S-See you soon… I hope."

It wouldn't be her of course, it would be some new bright-eyed newborn, with no recollection of who she had been in a past life. But maybe one day I would catch sight of strawberry blonde hair in a crowd, and maybe I could fool myself she was happy in her new life. Free from fear.

Levi rode up behind me and dismounted, pulling me back a little as the evaporation continued, but neither of us took our eyes away. I knew what we were both looking for, even if I also knew it wouldn't be the case. She had been a Pure Titan. No Pure Titan so far had shown any evidence of a human within the nape like with Shifters. But still we stared, and I know as we held hands as tight as possible, we both hoped.

There was nothing.

Nothing but bone and steam, and then nothing at all once the bones gave way.

I had already known it wouldn't happen, had already prepared myself for that disappointment, and still it stung like hell. My tears itched and my heart was clambering up my throat. Levi was very still, staring at the point the nape had been lying, and now the breeze shifted the dust left behind. Not a speck left.

We hadn't even found the source yet, so there seemed like a good chance she would be reborn into the cycle before we broke it. I guess even if she wasn't though, we had still freed her. Either way, we had done right by Petra.

The next two days were uneventful. I had begun to worry we would soon be headed homeward with no clue about the position of the source – not that the others would be angry or anything, but disappointed we wouldn't have progress. And then the next morning, we came across a strange mist. Early in the morning we thought nothing of it, but when it failed to burn off as we headed towards noon, we became wary. The sun was out, a pleasant breeze in our hair, but a mist crawled along about a metre deep. The horses grew skittish and the air had a strange pressure to it. I looked, but the shoreline was somehow murky all of a sudden. Like we'd lost track of it. I shook my head and rubbed my eyes, but the effect remained. It was like being smothered entirely in Titan steam, but without the dizzying heat to scald our skin. I rode closer to Levi, not wishing for us to get separated.

He had his sights set straight ahead into a small thicket of trees, where the light seemed to be swallowed by shadows. Usually there would at least be shifting shafts of light through the canopy, or a dappled effect as the leaves moved, but no. Nothing. Just a thin path and a darkness that seemed endless as we looked in.

His eyes tightened and he nodded. "Seems likely that this is our source. I suppose we tie up the horses, take some provisions, our gear and… Hope for the best."

"The best being we don't witness a newborn Titan who immediately gobbles us up?"

"Something like that." He smirked, getting down from his horse and tying to it a nearby tree but not too close to the strange darkness. They would be safe enough, even if a Titan was born in the next few hours, Titans didn't bother with horses or anything as long as there wasn't a human involved.

Our gear was ready, blades rattling as we stepped closer to the strange gloom. It wasn't clear if we would actually have room to use the gear in there or not, but simply having that familiar weight on my hips was a help. Kept me steady. I could only assume the same was true for my Captain, his hands resting against the casings as we entered the shadowed path. The chill I expected from the mist by our feet and lack of sunlight never took. It was mild in between the strange trees. Their bark was paling as we stepped further, a few metres in from the mouth of the path they were almost like bleached wood, and a few more metres after that they were pale as bone. I touched the bark lightly and found it as warm as everything else, and it otherwise felt totally normal. Levi's eyes were scanning all the while, ready for anything no doubt. The weirdest part was the lack of noise. Usually you would have birds, critters of all sorts around about, not visible maybe but certainly making noise. Same with the leaves. They shifted, but they didn't make a single sound.

My hand brushed Levi's and he brushed right back. It was tempting to take his hand in mine, to hold tight as this weirdness continued, but we had to be ready. The gloom seemed to peel back with every step. We could look back to the mouth of the path still thankfully, but until we took steps forward, in front of us was that strange oiled darkness. I had one of our crystal lanterns ready if we wanted, but instinct told me to keep it covered for the time being. Humans were not meant to be here. We were intruding. That much ran up and down my neck with every bated breath.

We had probably travelled a couple dozen metres when we saw the light. A pale blue at first, similar to that of the crystal in the caverns below the Reiss lands. But then it flickered to something warmer. It grew. It pulsed. I froze and grabbed Levi's arm, the back of my neck twinging in warning. Something was coming. The light fizzed, radiating further, growing brighter.

"We need to hide. Now."

"Wh–"

I dragged him to the side, between two of the bone pale trees, into the shadow beyond the path. The temperature dipped a little, but not so much to alarm. My hold on Levi's arm was too tight, I knew that, but he allowed it. Perhaps it was a comfort to him as much as me. I couldn't be sure. But it didn't matter in that moment. We had bigger problems.

A humanoid shape appeared in the light. It flickered like a dark flame at first, but became more solid as it stepped forward, emerging from the now dimming light. It groaned. Heat radiated from where the light had been all of a sudden, like a bonfire had been before us and we hadn't even known it. Another groan. A Titan, no mistake. But how big? How calm? If it was a normal Pure Titan it might simply wander past, not noticing us. If it was an abnormal, by their very nature we would have no idea what to expect. We could launch into the trees. I think. But it seemed like something to save until the last possible moment. Something about the trees, something based entirely upon instinct again, told me not to climb them. Like they weren't real. Or they didn't want me there. Like they were watching.

The Titan stepped along the path, slow and steady. I peered round the tree again to see what we were dealing with; a ten metre unfolded, apparently unimpeded by the canopy as it found its feet and took in a new existence. Was it an Eldian from our shores? Or one reborn here having died in Marley? Was that even possible? I had no idea. But it didn't seem to be aware of us at least, or of anything much else. It took one look down at where its toes sunk into the soft dirt before looking ahead to the path and continuing on, lumbering like any of the hundreds of others I had seen in my time. A newborn Titan, ready to go just like that.

It went past, not a single glance our way or pause to notice a damn thing. And after a few more moments of held breath and hammering hearts, it left the path outside and continued on into the plains of Paradis. With any luck we would be able to free the person within before the Source was dismantled, but I said a small internal apology if we didn't. And then we were alone again. The light had returned to a pale blue and was steady. How much time there was between one Titan emerging and another we had no idea, but first, we had to see what was going on over there.

We approached.

The air remained temperate, the fierce heat from before having faded like the light had. And as we drew closer, soon draped in that eerie glow, I found that it wasn't dirt beneath our feet anymore, but sand. As pale as the trees, gently moulding around our boots as we strode closer. The silence from before was broken as we stepped onto the sand, a whispering took hold. Levi had stilled, frowning and looking around, but there was no obvious source to the voices. It was just there. In the air. Like a scent drifting on the breeze, the sound fluttered around our ears, never clarifying to actual words, but definitely made of human voices. Hushed. Gentle. Soothing almost.

I squinted and realised the light was a small ball in shape, at least that was what I thought initially. But as my sight adjusted, it became clear. It wasn't a ball, more like a seed. It floated, unattached to anything around it, bobbing lightly. I didn't dare touch it of course, but I did kneel under it and wave my arm there. Nothing. No wobble of the seed, no shift of the light. It didn't give a damn about me or my presence. Fair enough. I looked at the sand closer while Levi made a wider arc in the clearing of trees. I laid my hand to the sand and found it as warm as the trees had been. Only here, beneath the seed, it wasn't so deep. A hardness was under a few inches of the sand, and as I pushed a little out of the way, I found myself touching stone. Carved stone.

Levi came back to my side having found nothing else of significance in the clearing, but his eyes narrowed as he saw the pale grey stone under my fingertips. He nodded. I brushed more sand away. The light continued, unbothered. Symbols became clearer as I shifted the sand away, the stone slab about a metre across, roughly carved, and probably ancient. But the symbols, while unreadable, were horribly familiar. My skin went cold. My heart hammered. My throat tightened. It was the same symbols that Vincent had been carving into my back all along, like a morbid mirror of my own flesh, I traced the symbols around the small podium and my eyes itched with tears. He had been doing some kind of strange Eldian magic? Some ancient thing that connected us to these beasts? Made sense on some level I suppose, but it still made me sick. Where had he even found evidence of the symbols? I'd never seen them anywhere else, on anything. Not in the cities, the churches, the walls. Nowhere. Did the Marleans have this information? Some old wisdom? Even if they did, to attempt such a thing on your own child?

His madness was all encompassing, clearly.

A wave of anger washed over me at the idea of that vile creature finding out about these symbols, of their significance to this so-called cycle of immortality, and trying to bend them to his will. I tried to brace myself, to let my mind settle, but as I laid my hand flat against the stone, it suddenly became incredibly hot. Unbearably so. I gasped and tried retracting my hand, but it was like the stone was drawing me in, holding me to it. I wriggled. No good.

"L-Levi–"

"The hells?" He tried pulling me back but I was stuck fast, the heat only getting hotter and the light above began to flicker. It didn't go yellow though, no it went purple. Like blood had been spilled into the blue, tainting it. "Shit."

My body was flooded with panic, of the situation obviously, but something else. An ache appeared at the base of my skull. A tingling. My heart sped up even more, my breathing erratic at best, my skin immediately covered in cold sweat, and my vision paling to white. I tried to cry out to Levi, but my voice was stolen, air ripped from my lungs. Images. So many. Too many. I screamed, feeling like the earth had given way from under me, allowing me to plummet, cascading past all these images of lives, places, people, times, worlds. What the hells was all of this? Red. I saw the fall of Shiganshina. I saw an island with no walls. I saw huge machines of war flinging boulders. Burning. I saw Titans fighting each other, mowing over entire cities. I saw chains. Blood. Madness. Families sat around tables too. Laughter. Singing. People getting married. Attending funerals. Watching the rain against a window. All of it constant, flowing, a torrent of information and emotion that was surely trying to drown me.

But as my fear peaked, so did an instinct, a sound came through clearer than the rest of the miasma. A voice I knew. Petra. It sounded like home. She was scolding me after training, we were brand new to the life and I'd been pushing too hard. As usual, as she tutted, pressing a cold towel to my head – making it all the more embarrassing as she was still just a kid and I was supposedly the older one. We were bunk mates. And from there, friends, until the day we lost her. My pain spiked through and clarified the rest.

Images of her from my own memories, but then from others as well. Some had to be fellow scouts, like Gunter or Oluo. And then some were clearly her parents, her siblings. I saw her as a little girl. A teenager. A cadet just graduated, celebrating at home. And finally I found myself being pulled towards a memory where she sat across from someone in the mess hall. I tried to breathe evenly.

A heaviness laid in the mind I entered. It wasn't my own, clearly. No, this person sat across from Petra was worrying over someone not present, someone who had left HQ in order to rest. I jolted. Me. The mind was thinking of me as it sat across from Petra. Was this Levi? I was thrown around some more, but I held onto the sound of Petra as she sat across from our Captain. She didn't seem impressed by him. She was confronting him. But about wh– oh, about me? He had been strange for the two weeks I had been gone, distant, extra grumpy as she put it. I'd been visiting the 104th after Sente attacked me. Right. And Levi's weirdness… According to Petra, was all because he realised he missed me. Wow. We really were foolish in the beginning weren't we? Levi being unable to admit his emotions, and me being so wrapped up in everything else I didn't notice a damn thing. But she did. Petra.

"You miss her, don't you?"

Like ice breaking, his resolve wavered. Those bright eyes bored into him, asking the question but already knowing the answer. My heart swelled, Petra you wonder, you'd seen it all from the beginning hadn't you? Were you why he took the chance in the first place? Why I ever even had the opportunity to be this loved?

And in Levi's mind, Petra was suddenly terrifying, because she was observant. Silly man.

The scene wavered and my concentration waned, the focus like a dead weight against the back of my skull.

Petra tilted her head. "And I get it, sir, I do. Robyn has a way of getting under people's skin without even really meaning to. Just part of her character, I guess. But I haven't ever seen her affect someone quite like she seems to have with you."

Petra really did see it all. And she wasn't willing to wait around for the rest of us to figure it out – Scouts rarely got a chance for such things, so being impatient to see others happy made sense. Especially for Petra. Her heart was bigger than any Titan.

And then came the sharp clarity of him admitting it out loud.

"I'm not sure when it started, but yes. You're… Well, you're totally correct, Petra."

And then something changed within the mind of my Captain, a warmth and a fear took root. He couldn't ignore the situation any longer, so of course he was terrified, but he also had a shred of something he hadn't felt since stood beside his two friends from the Underground. He had hope. Maybe something other than gore and duty were in his future. Maybe. It was concrete in his mind yet, more a hint of a notion. But present. And he found Petra utterly terrifying because of it, the observation as well as the ability to speak on it all so openly. She truly was brave, wearing her pure heart on her sleeve, the same sleeve that was as bloodied as anyone else's.

She smiled. She didn't let him wriggle. She definitely gave him that final push that he required. And from there everything else had followed; the leap of faith, the pleasure, the happiness, the love, the affection, the pain, the fear and worry, and the trust. Everything. It flowed from that conversation like wine from a freshly opened bottle.

My concentration slipped again and the image of my beautiful friend faded.

Thank you Petra. God dammit, thank you…

And then I was falling again, the warmth of that moment and the realisations that came with it stripping away as my terror re-emerged. What was happening outside my mind? Assuming this was only inside my mind and I hadn't somehow fallen through the world. No. It had to be some kind of mental connection; like the one between me and Eren when I got injured that time, or when he saw through his father's memories. Titans. Ymir. The cycle. Eldians. It was all connected, wasn't it? And maybe this was that connection. This was the Source. Maybe. Or I was finally falling into madness and Levi was holding some drooling ragdoll.

I tried to focus again, my mind as weary as it had ever been before. But I had to find a way back. And then I heard it, not a warm voice or a welcome memory, no. I heard laughter. Cold, mocking, laughter. I searched for the source of the haunting noise, finding a figure amongst the cascading images and noise; pale blonde hair pulled back in intricate braids, a simple dress pulled around her like a toga or something, her bare feet dangling in the air, surrounded by pale blue lights that danced like butterflies. But her eyes. They were hollow. And her smile, it was that bit too wide.

She laughed louder.

Fear. Panic. Revulsion. Every instinct I had was screaming at me to get away from that smile. I needed to run, to escape, to be rid of that image and that noise. I looked away and remembered the clearing, the stone, the light, the weight of Levi holding my shoulders. He had to be there. Still holding me. I trusted in that completely and reached for that connection to home, to reality.

And then I felt a weight on my shoulder, a steady hand holding strong.

Levi.

"T-Together." I choked out, hoping he could hear me wherever he was. And I counted to three, heaving myself backwards at the same time as Levi wrenched with all his strength.

The laughter stopped.

The pale light faded.

The images stilled and then became nothing but the darkness behind my eyes.

We landed in the sand.

"Holy…" I panted, lungs burning, body aching, mind reeling. "Fucking…"

"Shit." Levi concluded, sounding utterly out of breath. The hell had been going on out here while I was falling? Had it been as long as it felt? Or mere seconds?

He helped me sit up, my body so heavy but thankfully the aches were already fading. The clearing was the same, the pale blue light the same, the sand the same. Nothing had changed out here. I glanced along the path and found daylight at the other end. It hadn't been long at all, had it? He gave me some water to sip from his tankard.

It took a couple more moments, but once I had managed to take a steady breath, he tapped my chin to make me look at him. "Are you all right?"

"I think so?" I sipped again and leaned into his hold, him shifting to put an arm around my shoulder instead. "How long was I… Well that."

"Barely a minute. You went still, you gasped and then you kind of half-screamed but it came out choked. Then you just stared ahead blankly, breathing thin. I couldn't rouse you at all, or shift your hand from that fucking stone. Why? What did it feel like?" His hand moved along my arm.

"I was f-falling, and it was white everywhere, blindingly so…" I swallowed hard. "I saw… It was all so…"

My heart hammered against the idea of somehow having been connected to everyone in such a way, it felt so odd at the time but now it just felt wrong. I had snooped. Without meaning to, yes, but I had inadvertently snuck in and seen people's lives, I had watched Levi and Petra talk when I hadn't really been present. It was wrong. A violation. But aside from that, it was madness. Was every Eldian actually connected somehow? And who was that strange blonde girl? The laughing one?

Levi gave me a gentle squeeze. "Robyn? What did you see?"

"I… I saw…" I turned to him and put my head into the crook of his neck, my body beginning to shiver as the adrenaline gave way to the shock. "I saw everything…"

Aaand there we have it, they have found the Source! And yes, as I previously mentioned, this is NOT following the canon version of how this whole magicky thing works, but it is my own version as I personally had some narrative 'hmm' with how things played out. I go into this plenty in an earlier note. But all that aside, thanks for reading, cya next time!