COTE x AOT: Ashes in The Sky

________________________________________________________________________________

Location: Reiss Feifdom, Wall Rose
Year: 845
Time: Late Afternoon

The orange hour.

That odd shade between day and night, where everything looks like it's been painted over with rust.

"...?"

Rust? Ike doesn't like that game, I'm pretty sure.

The horse clopped lazily over a patch of dirt, one wheel hitting a shallow stone with a thunk.

I leaned back slightly, rolling my shoulders, and let out a yawn. It was the kind that crept up slowly and left your jaw sore.

It was annoying.

I glanced at Grisha.

He hadn't moved much since we left Stohess. Back still a bit too straight, fingers lightly tapping his leg every now and then. His shoulders weren't high, but they weren't relaxed either. Like he was constantly waiting for something to happen.

The man looked like he'd just swallowed an ice cube whole.

I didn't ask about it.

He didn't offer anything.

Some people like their silences heavy, I prefer mine optional.

Still, one thing itched at me.

Chapel.

Why a chapel?

It had been on my mind since he mentioned it.

I wasn't exactly well-versed in the Church of the Walls—aside from that weird gala Frieda dragged me to—but in day-to-day life, I rarely saw signs of it. No clergy roaming the streets. No prayers at street corners. Not even a badge or a pendant.

People just... lived. Bought bread, traded goods, went to bed. It didn't feel feudal.

It felt empty.

"..."

A hollow religion, maybe.

I broke the quiet.

"So," I said casually, "your patient. A priest or something?"

There was a flicker.

But I saw it—his pupils shrank slightly, like something flared in the back of his head for just a second.

"No," he said. "Actually... they're a lord."

I nodded, but my eyes stayed on the path.

...Wait, what?

"That's a high-profile patient. Maybe that's why you've looked tense this whole ride?"

A soft laugh.

"No, no... it's not that." He waved a hand loosely, but his fingers were curled. "I've just been feeling a bit off lately. Queasy stomach. Maybe it's something going around—" he gave a short chuckle "—might need to check myself after this."

I hummed.

It was a bad lie. A thin one at best.

Grisha Yeager didn't strike me as someone who got rattled by bad food.

I kept the reins steady and let my thoughts drift for a moment.

A lord.

A chapel.

In this part of Wall Rose.

I let the names roll in my head.

Only a few noble families had holdings out here. The most notable... was the Reiss family.

The land here—timber, soft hills, no military installations—was part of their ancestral domain.

So if this "lord" was having Grisha visit a chapel instead of a nearby estate... then odds were good that this was Reiss family land.

Rod Reiss?

I glanced ahead. The forest cleared slightly, and through the thinning trees, I saw the silhouette.

A stone building.

Simple. Not very large. German-like in construction. No guards. No flags.

Didn't look like a chapel meant for noble use. And it definitely didn't look medical.

"...Strange place to get examined," I muttered under my breath.

The horse slowed as we neared the clearing.

"Here," Grisha said, pointing ahead. "Just near that post is fine."

I stopped the cart.

The wheels creaked as they settled into place.

"You want me to wait out here while you're inside?" I asked, glancing toward the chapel again.

There was a pause.

He was silent for about two seconds longer than he should've been.

"...Yes," he said. "That's fine."

Then he turned slightly.

"You'll be alright here? I've heard there are wolves in the forest."

I looked at him.

"Unless they start opening doors and forming packs with torches, I think I'll manage."

He blinked, then let out a short laugh. It wasn't fake, but more like he appreciated the effort.

"Right," he said.

Grisha stepped off the cart, brushed the dust off his coat, and stared at the chapel for a long moment. His shoulders squared slightly. Like he was preparing for something.

Then he walked forward.

Each step was slower than the last.

He reached the door and didn't knock.

Just opened it and slipped inside.

The door closed behind him with a soft thud.

I stared after it.

No guards.

No lanterns.

No one is watching.

Just me, the cart, and the trees whispering in the wind.

If this were Reiss land...

And Grisha was meeting a "lord" in that chapel...

Then, chances were that person was Rod Reiss.

And if Rod Reiss wanted to meet someone in private—in a chapel, of all places—it meant he didn't want anyone else hearing it.

I stared at the chapel door a while longer.

"Chapel," I repeated under my breath.

Once, then again.

Chapel.

Chapel.

A building meant for worship. Supposedly. But the size was off. The setting is too isolated.

Not a single mark of faith on the exterior. No candles in the windows. No carvings...

A facility without purpose.

Unless...

Unless it had a different purpose.

I tightened my grip on the cart's sideboard. As I stepped down, my boots landed quietly on the ground.

I glanced at the trees, the hills, and the quiet chapel door.

Then said softly to myself:

"Grisha Yeager is an odd person..."

I began walking toward the building.

"...Like he doesn't belong in these Walls either."

The chapel door opened with an old creak.

I stepped in, expecting—well, anything really. Someone. A flickering candle. Maybe a poorly hidden relic on an altar to make this all feel just a little bit religious.

But the place was empty.

Hollow.

Delightful.

I let out a small hum through my nose.

No Grisha. No patient. No walls lined with scrolls or shelves of medicines. Just smooth wooden pews.

A dusty smell clung to the air...

"So this is the famous medical facility," I muttered to myself. "Very hygienic."

My steps echoed quietly on the old floorboards. Dust kicked up with every shift of weight. I moved past the pews, eyes sweeping casually over everything—walls, windows, the crossbeam supports.

Nothing.

I stopped at the altar.

Or what passed for one.

A simple wooden table, worn around the edges. Candle stumps long dead at each corner. And behind it...

I tilted my head slightly.

A rug, a moved one. One that was covering something super important.

I knelt down and ran my hands against the trap door.

Of course.

"...This is what you came for," I said softly, eyes narrowing at the edges. "Not a patient. Not even a chapel. Just this."

I didn't know what was under it, but I didn't need to. Grisha's posture on the ride, the hesitation, the almost-panicked humour he tried to use to brush it off... This was important.

Too important.

I reached out—

Rumble~

And then the ground moved.

It wasn't a tremor, it was—

"Ah."

My body rocked to the left, thrown off balance, one knee skidding backward as my hand shot to the altar to keep upright.

Before I could catch my breath—

Pain.

White hot and in the middle of my back. There was no warning, no source, just—

My lungs seized like I'd taken a hit from a battering ram.

"Gah—!"

I staggered, knees buckling.

But something was wrong.

A voice. Mine... but not mine?

"Not one of my best plans. Now my back hurts..."

I froze.

No—everything froze.

The air shimmered and warped.

In front of me, the room seemed to twist into something else entirely.

The pews cracked. Splinters littered the floor. The walls were split in places. And the ceiling—

Gone.

A hole had been blasted clean through it.

And in this ruined chapel, two figures moved.

One of them was me.

Or close enough. Same face. Same hair. His body was bleeding from half a dozen gashes. A firearm in his right hand, half-raised, limping slightly as he staggered upward.

The other—

My eyes flicked up just as the echo came again.

"...Levi Ackerman..."

He was already mid-air, doing a preemptive turn to the left, gas canisters hissing as he launched off into a spiral.

The ghost-me turned:

Bang.

The gun fired, and a stone pillar exploded.

Levi blurred past, and the image snapped—

It was gone in an instant.

"What...?"

I stood there, hands braced on the wall, chest rising steadily as the vision bled away.

Gone.

The chapel returned to normal. It was unscathed.

No ceiling hole. No blood. No gunfire. Just the quiet creak of old wood and the slowly returning buzz of the wind outside.

"..."

I stepped back, the trap door now right in front of me again.

No more tremors. No more visions.

But something had happened. And I wasn't stupid enough to call it imagination.

That wasn't my memory.

I wasn't sure it was anyone's.

But whatever it was, it had played for me, and it wasn't random.

My eyes rested on the trap door.

I stayed still.

For maybe ten seconds.

I didn't move or blink.

I couldn't decide.

Go in, or don't?

There was no real reason to. Grisha hadn't asked for help. This was all off the books. But something about it...

Something about this chapel...

That wasn't just a fluke.

I looked down again.

Still, I didn't move.

The smart thing would be to leave.

But I don't think I'm that smart.

───

Location: Under Reiss Chapel, Wall Rose
Year: 845
Time: Late Afternoon

One year in another world teaches you a few things.

For one, expect the unexpected.

People can change faces. They can erase memories, alter perception, even manipulate entire social frameworks with a single word. If you can't open your mind to that, then you've already lost before the game even begins.

The second thing?

Sometimes, awe and danger come wrapped in the same package.

I stepped carefully beneath the chapel, the trap door sealing behind me with a faint thunk. What I found... was unlike anything I'd seen before. Even from the world I came from.

It was dreamlike.

Crystalline pillars lined the massive cavern, glowing a soft blue. Light refracted in odd directions, bouncing off mirrored surfaces to flood the cave in perpetual twilight.

It was too beautiful to exist.

And yet—here it was.

I moved slowly, each footstep echoing softly on the smooth stone floor, ducking behind one of the larger crystal pillars as voices echoed.

"King of the Wall! Please kill the Titans who are coming to destroy the wall! Before my wife and children, and all other people of the wall get eaten!"

Grisha.

He was down here.

I narrowed my eyes, peeking carefully around the pillar's edge.

There he was—arms spread, desperation bleeding from every word. His voice cracked under its own weight.

But that wasn't the strange part.

The strange part was who he was pleading to.

Frieda Reiss.

And her family.

I paused.

Frieda... Reiss... was the "King of the Walls"?

The words didn't make sense at first.

And then they made too much sense.

I closed my eyes for a moment, thinking back. The winter gala. The wine spilled on me. The people who looked at Frieda like she was a god... The way everyone in that room listened...

They listened to her. All of them.

Because she wasn't just another noble.

She was the monarch...The true ruler of these walls.

And somehow... she could manipulate minds.

Just like she did to Historia.

My eyes opened again, sharper now. My body pressed against the pillar as Frieda's voice began to speak.

"We must not run from our sins. The time has come for us, Subjects of Ymir, to face judgment."

Subjects of Ymir.

I locked onto those words instantly.

"Ymir..."

In Norse mythology, Ymir was the first being, the proto-giant from whose body the world was created. I remembered reading the texts in the White Room.

Giants.

Titans.

Could it really be that literal?

"Man is far too weak in the face of such massive power. The tragedy of the Great Titan War opened my eyes..."

Great Titan War? There had never been any mention of that. Not in any hi온라인카지노게임 I was given here.

She knew something I didn't.

"The power of the Titans must be protected from the hands of the people. If the power of the Founding were to again fall into the hands of the weak... the world would be turned into a hell once again."

The Founding.

That was the source. The ability to manipulate minds. Erase memories. Perhaps even more.

She was speaking from experience.

This...

"..."

I felt the breath leave my lungs as the pieces slid together.

If she can control memory...

If she's the one who erased Historia's memories...

If she holds this Founding power, and that power is tied to Titans...

"The power of the Titans..."

Then she can become one.

She is one.

And so is Grisha. His desperation... his knowledge of events yet to happen to my knowledge...

Time? Premonition? Memory?

And if they're all Subjects of Ymir...

Then everyone I've met inside these walls—

Everyone I've spoken to—

Everyone I've shared meals with—

They're all capable of becoming Titans.

All of them.

"In order to protect the world," Frieda says, "we must accept our sins. Our only choice is to perish."

Her voice was too calm.

That isn't the Frieda I built in my mind.

Cheerful. A bit strange. Odd, in the way she would sometimes stare at someone like she was trying to see their thoughts... But warm. Kind. Almost too soft for this world.

This person?

This wasn't softness. This was very... ideological.

Like someone had hijacked her body and poured centuries of guilt into it.

Grisha's voice snaps through my thoughts, still desperate.

"My house is right near the broken wall—and that's where my wife, my son, and my daughter live! No one within the wall knows about the sins our ancestors committed! Because you took away their memories!"

There it was.

Confirmation.

I knew Frieda could manipulate memories—now it was fact. And Grisha... he knew far too much.

Two anomalies.

Two forces on a collision course.

I should start leaving...

"Is having them be eaten by Titans without knowing anything what you call atonement?!"

His voice cracked on the final word. His fists were clenched. His feet kept shifting—half-ready to bolt, half-ready to fight.

Frieda shook her head slowly. Her eyes glowed faintly in the cave's light as she raised a hand to her chest.

"No... No matter how hard we reflect on ourselves now, we cannot give back the lives we Eldians have taken away. However... we can make sure never to take another life outside the wall again. So long as we remain ignorant and accept the world's rage... we Eldians will be the only ones who have to die."

So that was it.

Eldians. That's what they call themselves...

A people "willingly" vanishing.

Her ideology made no sense—at least not to me. She wasn't just passive. She was advocating collective suicide.

Too strange.

I needed to stay longer. Every word, every expression, was a key to understanding the gameboard. But if they could turn into Titans—and all signs pointed to that being true—then staying too long meant rolling the dice.

I began silently mapping the paths. Entry point. Crystal coverage. Possible blind spots.

Then Grisha's voice rang out again, louder, cutting Frieda off like a blade.

"I know that I can't use the power of the Founding."

Frieda blinked. "Eh...?"

A small, confused noise—like a child hearing a foreign word.

Grisha stepped forward, trembling with fury or clarity—maybe both.

"The Nine Titans each have their own characteristic. Including the one with me—the Attack Titan! From long ago, the inheritor of the Attack Titan never obeyed others. And I know why—!"

I shifted my weight slightly, preparing to move.

Grisha clutched his head.

"It's always been able to resist the self-righteousness of the king!"

If this turned into violence, the moment would be soon.

I stepped away from the pillar. One step. Then another.

Just enough.

Just in case.

"Yes... We've all been led to this memory for this one moment. The Attack Titan can see the memories of its future inheritors."

I stopped dead in my tracks.

"In other words..." Grisha's eyes glinted with something horrifying.

"It's capable of seeing the future."

I turned my head, only slightly—just enough to look back.

His hand rose.

And he pointed right at me.

"And that's how I can prove it. That person—Kiyotaka Ayanokouji—has been here from the very beginning!"

Silence shattered.

All eyes turned toward me. Even the crystals seemed to freeze.

Frieda's breath caught.

Her irises flickered from that otherworldly violet... back to her natural blue.

"Kiyotaka...?" she whispered. Her voice cracked like porcelain. "What are you doing here...? Are you here to... kill me too? After... everything?"

Her eyes weren't angry.

They were hurt.

I stepped forward, hands visible.

"...Its a coincidence," I said. "I didn't come here for any of this. Grisha—"

"No!" Grisha's voice cracked. "I know now! This is why the Attack Titan could see you! Every action you've taken since we met—it's been predetermined!"

The Reiss family backed away in horror. The mother pulled his youngest daughter behind her. Frieda stared at me like I was an executioner who'd kissed her cheek before swinging the blade.

I mouthed two words to them:

Run. Now.

And then—

Grisha pulled out a scalpel.

"I will eat the Founding Titan," he roared, his hand trembling, "and end the royal bloodline right here and now!"

"The future... is already set in stone!"

Show me then.

________________________________________________________________________________

Words: 2943

Author Notes:

Would you look at that?