Chapter Text
It takes only a breath to recognize the silhouette and you freeze, the world narrowing until there is nothing left but that shape in the distance, impossibly familiar and utterly wrong.
A face you thought you’d never see again, not outside of memory.
Your magical blade trembles in your grip as the demon steps from the smoke, wearing your dead best friend's face, eyes too hollow, smile too wide.
It’s Aria, and it’s not.
But the demon doesn't care if your insides are sick. It lunges, and you meet it head-on, light clashing with shadow.
Every strike is fueled with bursting grief.
“You’re not her,” you hiss through clenched teeth, even as your vision blurs.
Your body ignites from within, a violent surge of power erupting through every cell, swallowing the demon, swallowing you. There’s no more ground, no more sky. Only light, endless and consuming. And just as you think you might disappear entirely, the world shifts. The light folds inward to nothingness.
It feels like you’re trapped inside it for an eternity, endless and suffocating. Worse than sleep paralysis. In truth, it’s probably only a few minutes, but your limbs ache like you’ve been twisted for hours. You lie curled in a fetal position on what feels like damp soil.
For a moment, you're content to stay that way. Maybe this is the Soul Gate. Maybe you finally died. Maybe you were consumed by demons. Either way, it’s over.
Then, a horse neighs in the distance.
Your eyes snap open.
Hooves. Multiple hooves.
You scramble upright, muscles groaning in protest. Your hand instinctively reaches for your sword but you hold back, not just yet. Your eyes scan your surroundings. Somehow, you’ve landed in the middle of a rustic-looking, eerily quiet town. The street you’re sitting in looks like it’s been bulldozed through by a massive truck.
In the distance, rising far above the rooftops, are towering walls. Gray and monolithic, it stretches across the entire horizon. It’s so tall it makes your stomach drop just looking at it.
With a sharp breath, you catch sight of two riders further up the road. They are not demons. Just humans, wearing cloaks of mossy green and armor with a medieval flair. They stop abruptly at the sight of you wearing worn out jeans, black hoodie and sneakers. One of them pulls back their hood.
Golden hair. Stoic face. Chiseled jaw.
“Magnus?” you shout, disbelief cracking your voice.
The leader of the Soul Squad couldn’t possibly be cosplaying on a horseback.
A legend in his own right, Magnus is your steadfast leader who led the war and triumphed over Gwi-Ma, the sadistic ruler of the Demon Realm who dared to unseal the Soul Gate in a mad quest for power. To the hunters, Magnus is a symbol of strength. To you, he is something more: a mentor, a compass, a reminder that even in darkness, purpose can still burn bright. But maybe it is only easy to look up to someone when you have camaraderie, friendship, something worth fighting alongside.
Magnus only tilts his head, puzzled.
“What’s this brat on about?” growls a sharp voice.
You glance sideways to find a pale man with jet-black hair steering his horse in front of Magnus, his eyes zeroed on you.
Confusion clouds your thoughts as you instinctively step back, eyes flicking between them. Your head spins. Whatever dream or nightmare this is, it’s not your reality.
They stare, lips pressed thin while your mouth hands open in utter shock. You hunch lower, feigning fear while your mind sharpens, calculating. If they strike, you’ll be ready. As expected, the pitiful way you shrink into yourself seems to soften their stance.
The not-Magnus finally speaks, his voice measured. “You’re not a soldier. You’re not from the Interior. Civilians have not been allowed in Shiganshina for years.”
Strangely, their presence doesn’t leave you entirely afraid. Maybe more curious than anything. They look…civilized enough. Maybe they could be your ticket out.
“She must be one of them,” the black haired man harshly interjects.
“We should take her to the base,” The not-Magnus orders, clearly frustrated by your tight lips.
The other man doesn’t waste time jumping off his horse, reaching over to grab your shoulders and plant you firmly on the ground. “Tch. Fantastic. Another stray to babysit.” His hands are quick and practiced as he binds your wrists tightly with a coil of rope from his pack.
He pushes you toward his horse, making a motion as if to help you mount. But you are faster. Reflexes kicking in, you engage your legs and core, summoning the Soul Wind, an energy that shimmers softly around you. The air here feels different, charged with a strange magic, but not hostile. In fact, it seems to flow with you rather than against you.
“What the hell was that?” he hisses, stepping back sharply.
“…a reflex?” you reply unconvincingly.
The men exchange a glance. They must have trained their facial muscles so intensely that it’s as if they’ve forgotten how to move.
You choose to believe the worst. They suspect you might be one of their enemies.
You're off to a terrible start.
From that moment, their demeanor only seems to grow more cautious, if their tensed posture is any telltale sign. The black haired man climbs onto the horse behind you, pressing close enough to corner you tightly as if to keep any sudden moves in check.
You ride through the shattered remains of the town with rows of destroyed houses and splintered wood framing the grim path.
Soon you arrive near the edge of town where those immense stone walls looming overhead like silent sentinels. Ahead, you see hundreds of soldiers gathered, shoulders slumped, and hands clutching their weapons a little too tightly. The air hangs heavy, thick with tension that seems to cling to your skin and settle deep in your bones.
You can only guess that this world is on the brink of war, bracing themselves for the worst. Anxiety settles in your chest for the first time since you arrived. You know you’re a skilled fighter, trained and ready for conflict. But in this strange world, you aren’t entirely sure you’ll get by without scratches.
Before you can take in more, you are led away from the crowd toward a smaller, secluded building patched roughly with salvaged wood and stone.
The horses come to a halt.
“I assume you can do that trick again?” Your captor snaps, glancing up at you. You notice his eyes are steel grey.
You nod and drop lightly to the ground, your feet barely making a sound as if carried by invisible wings.
A firm push guides you toward the building.
Inside, dust floats in the air, catching in narrow beams of light from a single high window. The air smells like old paper, sweat, and the faint, lingering tang of metal. A lone wooden table sits at the center, flanked by two chairs. With another rough shove, you are forced into one of them.
You hesitate as you wearily look around as though anticipating something else to jump on you. “Is this the part where I ask for a lawyer?”
Neither of them answers.
The black haired man closes the door with a solid click, then leans against the wall, arms folded.
The not-Magnus remains standing across the table from you, studying you like a strange artifact that might suddenly explode. “You appeared inside a locked-down, Titan-ravaged district,” he begins, voice calm but eerily cold that's giving you goosebumps.
Titans? You sit back slowly, keeping your tone even. “Yeah, I didn’t exactly come through customs.”
His eyes narrow.
“Erwin,” The other man cuts in, voice low. “She’s not ordinary. Whatever that trick she did back there.”
The not-Magnus, or Erwin, nods, gaze never leaving you. “That is what concerns me.” He steps closer. “Tell me. What are you? A scout for Reiner and Bertholdt? Another shifter sent to draw our attention? Or a distraction while something worse moves in from the other side of the wall?”
Your pulse jumps. Reiner? Shifter? You barely register the foreign words and names but you can definitely feel their suspicion settle like a blade at your throat.
“I’m not with anyone,” you say firmly, though the words sound small in the heavy air. “I’m just lost… alone.”
Erwin shifts his weight, breaking his statue-like form, and a low sigh slips past him. “You expect me to believe that someone just appears out of nowhere in the heart of Shiganshina, a high-risk territory, during a period of heightened surveillance, and it’s not a coordinated infiltration?”
“I don’t know what else to say,” your voice hardens. “I just woke up here. I don’t know how or why, but I’m not your enemy.”
“And yet your reflex says otherwise,” his steel-grey eyes lock onto yours, menacing.
You bit the inside of your cheek. You could explain your training, your world, but none of it would make sense to them. Not yet.
Erwin steps back slightly, folding his hands behind his back. “If this is a trap, we’ll uncover it soon enough. If you’re telling the truth… then the mystery is even more dangerous.”
You swallow. You aren’t sure which option he considers worse.
The tension in the room cracks open as the door suddenly slams wide.
“Erwin! We’ve discovered signs of Reiner! We may be close!” A woman with round, thick-lensed goggles bursts in. “Levi, get ready!”
Erwin’s eyes widen.
Levi, you finally learn your captor's name, is already moving, vanishing through the doorway like a shadow unleashed.
“Good,” Erwin nods. His eyes flick to you and back to the woman. “Hange, you’re in charge of her now until further notice.”
The woman called Hange is already looking at you, her eyes have been snapped on your form the moment she entered.
“She might be one of them,” Erwin notes. “Showed up out of nowhere, in the middle of Shiganshina. It could be a setup, something to distract us."
Before Hange can respond, Erwin is gone, boots pounding down the hallway with the urgency of a man who doesn’t have time for mysteries.
Hange turns to you slowly, tilting her head like she’s just discovered a new alien species. Though, you might as well be.
“Well,” she says, grinning. “Aren’t you interesting.”
She leans in, inspecting your hoodie with clinical amusement. “What kind of material is that? Some kind of flexible fiber?”
You blink. “It’s… a hoodie.”
She lets out a delighted cackle. It’s clear she’s just hearing a funny word. “Oh, I like you already.”
Something in her carefree tone lowers your guard. It’s the first moment here that you haven’t felt under immediate threat, and you relax back into your chair.
Hange continues, pacing. “You don’t seem intimidated at all. Could either mean bravado or stupidity. But most curious of all…” She stops. Her eyes widen behind her glasses. “You have no idea who Reiner is.”
You frown. “Err… why would you say that?”
“Because you looked utterly confused. I’d imagine any real comrade would at least flinch when their partner’s name gets thrown into a crisis.”
“So… who is this Reiner guy then? How dangerous does someone have to be for everyone to drop what they’re doing just to catch him?”
Hange blinks. “You really have no clue that he’s a Titan, do you?”
Again, that word. “What’s a Titan? Unless you mean the Greek ones who throw lightning bolts?”
There’s a long pause.
And then, laughter. Hange lets out a full-bodied cackle, doubling over as if you just told her the best joke she’s heard all year. It’s almost theatrical but somehow, you don’t mind the chaos of her energy.
She gives you a look, half amused, half exasperated, like she can’t believe she has to explain something so basic. “Titans are giant, humanoid creatures. They don’t need to eat, but they do eat people, purely out of instinct.”
You blink. Flesh eating demons? Great.
Hange continues to pace animatedly. “They regenerate fast. Slice off a limb, it grows back in minutes.” Then she lowers her voice. “Some Titans are actually humans. Shifters. Like Reiner. They can transform and think. The rest? Still a mystery. Welcome to our nightmare.”
You hesitate for only a beat. Then you say it.
“Well, that proves it more than anything. I’m not from here.”
Hange’s face goes blank for a heartbeat. Then her whole body perks up like she’s just had five shots of espresso. “Not from here here, or…?”
You take a breath. “Not from this world.”
The silence that follows is anything but tense. It’s buzzing, vibrant, alive with curiosity.
You press on, the words tumbling out before you can stop them, the need to explain yourself strangely jarring. “I come from a world where buildings scrape the sky, where people travel in fast, metal machines, not horses."
"Everything here, your clothes, your weapons, even the way people carry themselves, it’s like I’ve stepped into a history book I never got the chance to read. And the most obvious clue: there are no Titans in my world."
Hange steps closer, examining you like a puzzle piece that doesn’t quite fit. There’s a glint in her eyes, a manic sort of fascination, somewhat like a mad scientist.
“Assuming what you’re saying is true… why would you be brought here?”
“Absolutely no clue. Probably a mistake,” you admit, your voice dropping low. “But there was a fight before I landed here. Things got... intense.”
Hange’s gaze sharpens. “A fight?”
“I’m a demon hunter,” you admit quietly. “I fight corrupted souls, twisted by darkness. We seal them in the Soul Gate, where they wither slowly in a kind of hell. I was up against a strong demon,” you continue nervously, the memory still fresh. “It... got under my skin. And in a particularly bad moment… something cracked. A portal opened. Next thing I know, I’m here.”
For a brief moment, the manic curiosity in Hange’s face softens. Perhaps she caught something flickering in your eyes. Regret, grief, maybe both.
“A portal... a demon hunter,” she echoes, almost tasting the words. “What do these demons look like?”
“They look like… shadowy silhouettes of people. Black, dusty smoke swirling around them with web-like patterns on their skin. For ordinary humans, fighting one is like slashing against a wall of iron. But Demon Hunters have something special.”
You don’t elaborate. Instead, you raise your bound hands slightly, and with a flick of your fingers, summon your sword. The blade erupts into being with a soft hum, glowing with a radiant, silvery light, like moonlight infused with a pulse.
Hange freezes, her wide eyes locked onto the weapon. The light reflects off her glasses, and her breath catches for just a second.
She steps forward slowly, reverently, as if approaching something sacred or impossibly dangerous.
“It’s like it’s... alive,” she mutters, half to herself.
The sword hums in your grip like it knows it’s being watched.
Hange looks at you, a faint smile tugging at her lips as she slowly shakes her head.
“How fascinating.”