The timeline was clear now—somewhere between 845 and 850, post the fall of Wall Maria. The breach in the Wall as shadowy form behind him.
The air carried a faint tang of rust and rot, the remnants of a massacre long past. He scanned the ruins, eyes narrowing. No Titans lumbered through the streets, no human voices.
Shiganshina was a ghost town, abandoned to time and nature.
"Gotta move," he muttered. He needed a plan, a base, and most importantly, information.
Meeyn's gaze drifted upward to the towering Wall Maria, its cracked surface stretching into the sky.
Slipping into human society as a guy who could punch trees in half and make Titans run screaming wasn't going to be easy. He needed to blend in, at least until he figured out how to harness more of Knull's power.
"First things first," he said, cracking his knuckles. "Find a way inside Wall Rose. Then figure out who's who and what's what."
He moved cautiously through the ruins, sticking to the shadows of collapsed buildings. The streets were a maze of debris—overturned carts, shattered rooftops, and the occasional skeleton picked clean by time.
The ruins stretched before him like a graveyard, but Meeyn walked through it without hesitation. One hand casually stuffed into his pocket, the other swinging loosely at his side, he moved as if he owned the place.
His boots crunched over shattered stone and splintered wood, each step steady, unrushed. A stray breeze stirred the empty streets, whistling through hollow doorways and broken windows, but Meeyn paid it no mind.
Ahead loomed the ruined inner gate. Beyond it, the open plain stretched toward Wall Rose.
He stepped through the breach without slowing down, head tilted slightly up, eyes half-lidded, almost bored.
Meeyn stood in the middle of the open plain, the endless expanse of grass stretching toward the faint outline of Wall Rose in the distance.
The morning sun glared down, its light a faint annoyance against the Living Abyss pulsing within him.
Trost District, nestled behind that towering wall, was his next stop.
His red-glowing eyes scanned the horizon. At first, there was nothing but wind and grass. But after a few minutes of walking, Meeyn noticed them—small shapes moving in the distance, shambling awkwardly across the plains.
Titans.
Dozens of them.
Their grotesque bodies wobbled as they stumbled toward Wall Rose, driven by blind instinct. Some were barely the height of a house, others loomed like towers against the sky. Their deformed faces twisted into mindless grins, arms swinging uselessly at their sides.
And all of them... were heading the same way he was.
Toward Trost.
Meeyn slowed his pace for a moment, watching. The Titans weren't moving fast—none of them ever did unless something provoked them—but there were a lot of them. A herd.
He shoved his hand deeper into his pocket, letting out a breath through his nose.
"Figures," he muttered. "Nothing's ever easy."
The wind shifted, carrying the faint, sour stink of the Titans toward him. The air itself seemed heavier now. Somewhere behind the mindless horde, he caught glimpses of birds fleeing the area, black dots scattering against the pale sky.
Meeyn tilted his head slightly, thoughtful.
The faint rumble of cannon fire echoed across the plains, dull and scattered. His eyes, sharp against the morning glare, picked out figures moving atop Wall Rose — soldiers, scrambling to load and fire the bulky, primitive cannons mounted along the battlements. Puffs of white smoke burst into the sky with each shot, the iron balls crashing down into the oncoming Titans with little effect.
A few Titans stumbled. One even lost an arm. But none of them stopped.
The wall defenders were desperate, firing wildly. Commands were shouted, banners waved, signals given.
Meeyn's gaze shifted lower.
Near the base of Wall Rose, he spotted it — a gaping wound in the stone. Fresh, edges still crumbling. Easily big enough for a Titan to step through.
The Colossal Titan's work, no doubt. A clean, brutal hole punched straight through humanity's last defense.
Smoke drifted up from inside Trost District — fires burning out of control. Screams carried faintly on the wind, swallowed by distance. Titans had already made it inside.
Meeyn tapped his fingers against his thigh once, thinking.
No way he could just walk through the breach. Not without every soldier on the wall raining cannon fire down on him.
"Guess it's time to stretch a little," he muttered.
He knelt in the tall grass, one hand pressing against the earth. A ripple of black, viscous matter bled out from his palm, sinking into the ground, spreading like ink dropped into water. The Living Abyss responded to his will, weaving into the shadows, masking his presence, dulling the sound of his steps, even distorting the light around him.
Not true invisibility — but enough. Enough to make a man moving through smoke and chaos look like nothing at all.
He rose, rolling his shoulders once, and started forward again.
Each step was silent now. Grass parted for him without a sound. The Titans, obsessed with the wall and the humans beyond it, didn't even glance his way.
Meeyn approached the breach, slipping between two distracted Titans.
He slipped through the hole, swallowed by the smoke and chaos inside Trost.
Nobody saw him enter.
And now, he was inside.
The smoke inside Trost was thicker than it looked from a distance. Fires crackled somewhere deep in the district, blackening the sky.
Titans lumbered through the outer streets, smashing anything that moved — humans, carts, entire houses.
Meeyn stood still for a moment, surveying the chaos through half-lidded eyes.
Too messy to figure out much from here.
He exhaled slowly.
Meeyn's body lifted from the ground, carried upward by thin tendrils of black that wrapped around his boots and legs like invisible threads. His form rose smoothly through the smoke, weightless, effortless.
Within seconds, he was level with the top of the wall, his boots lightly tapping down against the stone without a sound. The wind tugged at his clothes, carrying with it the mingled scents of gunpowder, blood, and burning wood.
From this height, the full scale of the disaster revealed itself.
Trost District was a mess of smoke and fire. Tiny figures darted through the streets, soldiers in the brown jackets of the Garrison, their ODM gear flashing as they tried — and mostly failed — to push back the incoming Titans.