Titan Soldier Salute Exclusive - Attack On

Mikasa closed her eyes. Raised her right hand. Pressed her fist over the left side of her chest—where her heart beat, steady and stubborn, refusing to stop even when everything else had.

Before the fall of Wall Maria, the Garrison, the Survey Corps, and the Military Police each had their own sloppy gestures—a nod, a heel-click, a lazy palm to the forehead. Discipline was weak because the enemy was abstract. Titans were monsters, yes, but they were distant. A threat behind three concentric rings of limestone and mortar. attack on titan soldier salute

Viktor survived. Barely. His right leg was crushed beneath a collapsing horse. As his soldiers burned the dead (no time for coffins; the smoke would attract more Titans), he watched a young corporal named Ilse Langnar kneel beside her dying squad leader. The man couldn’t speak. His throat had been torn. But he clawed at his own chest, fumbled for Ilse’s hand, and pressed it over his heart. Then he pointed at the sky. Mikasa closed her eyes

Eren stared, confused. It looked like they were handing something over. Not to Shadis. Not to the crowd. To the sky. Before the fall of Wall Maria, the Garrison,

Present hearts.

“What are they doing?” he whispered to Mikasa.

The Survey Corps lost sixty-seven soldiers in a single afternoon. Not to a horde. To one abnormal—a crawling, rib-thin Titan with a grin carved into its face like a wound. It tore through three squads before Levi’s predecessor, Captain Viktor Hersch, drove a blade through its nape. But the damage was done. Bodies lay scattered across a wheat field that had been trampled into a mud pit of blood and chaff.