Where am I?
The last thing I remember is that I had just initiated the Titan transformation. After the success of that little experiment, Eren’s residual control over my body had weakened more than ever. I could have killed them exactly as I wished, but the moment the transformation started, I somehow entered this weird place.
I looked around. The sky was bluer than any sky I had ever seen, and the fields were lush, overflowing with green grass and vibrant flowers. A scene like this was something I had never witnessed in my entire life. What is this place? The beauty of it was absolutely breathtaking, but it also carried an underlying feeling that it was all just a dream—a reality conjured up by someone's imagination.
He looked around, but there was no one else as far as the eye could see.
Just as he was pondering what to do next, a sound came from behind. When I turned to look, my heart began to beat rapidly. But the acceleration of my heartbeat wouldn't have been triggered by just any person. I was certain I had never seen the woman standing in front of me before in my life, yet she felt simultaneously familiar and like a complete stranger.
As I stared, trying to identify the figure with the deep black eyes and silky black hair, something began to emanate from my own body. A mist, or perhaps a mirage—maybe a combination of both; that was the only description I could give for the phenomenon happening to me. It felt as though my very soul was splitting. Before I could grasp the situation or even think, that illusory figure began to take physical shape.
It was... it was a child. I looked down at the small boy. Driven by an impulse to check if he was real, I extended my hand to touch him. My hand passed right through him like smoke. In fact, there wasn't even the sensation of making contact with vapor; it was as if the boy didn't exist in this plane at all.
Ignoring me entirely—or perhaps unable to see me—the boy, with his small hands and legs, began to run toward the woman.
The woman looked at the boy sprinting toward her and smiled. Her smile was like a cool breeze blowing through blossoms in the stifling heat of a mid-summer noon. It felt as though the flowers brushing against my legs suddenly gained a new vitality, and a sense of comfort I had never felt before rippled across the vast, endless plains of the garden.
Then, her gaze fell upon me. She... she can see me. The thought flashed through my mind before the woman, with her watery black eyes and silky black hair, gently nodded at me.
I could read it in her eyes. They were asking why I was just standing there, inviting me to come closer. Then, her eyes shifted swiftly toward the running boy before snapping back to me, as if she were saying, Look, he is running so fast—why are you still standing there?
But I don't know her, nor the child running toward her, I insisted in my mind as I watched them. But to my surprise, it was as if she could understand exactly what I was thinking, or perhaps she was reading the thoughts right through my eyes.
Regardless of my thoughts, my legs began to move toward her entirely on their own. Before I knew it, I was running. If anyone were to see me running like that, they would think I was fleeing for my very life, as if some terrifying monster were pursuing me.
Yet even then, my desperation was nothing compared to that of the child, who ran like a madman—as if the woman in front of him was his entire existence. I watched him trip and fall, only to push himself back up and sprint toward her even faster than before.
My eyes widened as I noticed something else. The small child was no longer a child. He was growing right before my eyes. The boy with the black hair and dark eyes rapidly matured into a teenager. His speed increased. No one could truly understand the profound shock and wonder of the scene I was witnessing. In front of my eyes, he transformed from a young teen into his late teens, and now, into an adult. His face began to alter, as if someone had peeled back the skin around his chin and eye sockets. He looked hunched, heavily burdened.
He was Eren. This was his entire journey—the child, the boy, everything. He was Eren.
The moment Eren closed the distance between them, the woman opened her arms in an inviting embrace. Eren, looking utterly tired and exhausted, threw himself into her arms. Like a lost wanderer who had finally found his path, or a soldier returning from a war having lost everything but finding a shred of hope, he nestled deeply into her embrace. The woman sat down on the ground, gently pulling Eren’s head onto her lap.
She began to softly stroke his hair. With a hand gentler than any feather, she traced the prominent, exposed muscle lines on his chin and face.
I just stood there, a silent specter watching everything unfold before my eyes. Who was she? I couldn't recall a single character like her appearing in the final arc of the story.
After some time, Eren raised his head and looked directly into her eyes.
"Mother..."
Then it hit me. She was Carla Yeager.
She smiled, looking back into his eyes. "Hmm," she hummed softly, nodding to encourage him to say whatever he needed to say. Eren, like a battered boat that had finally found its harbor, simply muttered, "Mother," again and again.
Carla lowered her head and kissed his forehead. As if his soul had suddenly returned to his body, Eren began to speak. Like a young child returning home after school, he began to tell his mother everything that had happened. Every single event, every grievance, and every ounce of suffering he had endured was poured out from the depths of his heart to the first woman in his life who had ever loved him.
He spoke and spoke, detailing every event down to the smallest nuance—from every tragic death to every calculated act of revenge. He told her everything.
She held his head tightly against her, her own eyes growing moist. She didn't blame him. She couldn't. If there was a hell waiting for him, she was entirely ready to go there just to share the weight of his sins. As a mother, her love would never allow him to face any punishment alone; if anything, she felt responsible for the monster he had become.
In the end, his voice cracked, reduced to a raspy, broken whisper.
"They left... they all left," Eren said.
"Who left?" Carla asked in a low, gentle voice.
"Mikasa and Armin... them, and all my other friends. They all left me alone. They hate me. No one... no one stayed with me."
"Why are you crying? Weren't you the one who wanted it that way?" Carla asked softly.
But Eren didn't answer. It is the same for almost all human beings: even when we choose to sacrifice everything for the sake of others, we secretly hope that they will ultimately know what we have done for them. It isn't about demanding gratitude; it is about love. We desperately want them to understand just how much we cared, and exactly how far we were willing to go out of love for them.
Even when we claim we want them never to know, we still, with a lingering shred of selfishness, hope that they might love us with the same intensity that we love them.
It is much like the tragic illusion harbored by a fish. The fish believes that because it suffers so deeply for the water—because its very existence depends on it—the water must need the fish in return. But the moment the fisherman's net closes and breaks the surface, the water effortlessly slips away, leaving the fish behind to suffocate the very second the net leaves the stream.
Even if fish leave, water will remain same, although it would become empty for a while but after some time new fish will come and start leaving in there, maybe there would be trials of fish remain on rocks in the water, but rocks are rocks, water will never leave with the fish, when net close.
You could call it the selfishness of the fish to demand that the water feel the exact same agony. But to the fish, it is the cold selfishness of the water to abandon it so quietly. Whether the water leaves in absolute silence or the fish itself tells it to go, the agony remains unchanged. The fish will suffer, gasping for breath, until its very last second.
continue—