N.B : If you'd like to get early access to the next chapters of Universal hope (Chapter 20-30) why not consider supporting me at Pa tre on.com (slash) Weeb Fanthom. Your donations will be very much appreciated. On my Pa tre on, supporters get the complete, uninterrupted chapters in full.

  Evening…

  Lightings from the moon was a cold, polished coin nailed to the velvet blackness of the sky. Eren sat on the rickety steps of the shack, his knees drawn up to his chest, staring at it. Five weeks, and the sight of a full moon still sent a phantom chill down his spine. It was the same moon that had witnessed Zs'Skayr's freedom, the same pale light that had illuminated the terror in Mikasa's eyes, the same silent observer to his own powerlessness. He flexed the fingers of his right hand, the one that had been torn off and regenerated. Still can't believe that it had been torn away just weeks ago, now it is here, staring right back at him.

  The soft creak of wheels broke the silence. Carla maneuvered her wheelchair beside him with a blanket draped over her legs despite the mild night. She didn't speak at first, simply following her son's gaze upwards, sharing the weight of the quiet.

  "You take after him so much, you know," she said, her voice soft but clear in the stillness yet carried a sense of longing. "Your father."

  Eren didn't look at her, his gaze still fixed on the moon. "Dad?" No matter how much he tries to bury it down, a ping of sadness sparked in his heart, just on that day he had left for work…he never came back again, nor had there been any reports for Grisha Yeager. It was like he disappeared, or most likely; the same conclusion he and his mother had come to; was dead (Bless his oblivious soul).

  "Yes. That burning need to see things fixed. To carry every problem on your own shoulders, as if the weight of the world is yours alone to bear." She sighed, a gentle, weary sound. "He was the same. He wanted to save everyone, to find a cure for every sickness. It's a noble, beautiful, and terribly lonely way to live."

  Eren finally turned his head, his green eyes shadowed. "Why are you telling me this now?"

  "Because I see it, Eren," she said, her voice firming with a mother's resolve. "I see the guilt eating you alive. You can't carry this by yourself. What happened… it wasn't your fault."

  A familiar, hot defiance flared in his chest. "But it was! The Omnitrix, my emotions, I was the one who—!"

  "You were a child handed a weapon you never asked for!" Carla interrupted, her voice sharp, cutting through his protest. She reached out, her hand covering his. "The fault lies with the monster who chose to use that weapon for evil. The fault lies with the circumstances that put it on your wrist. You fought back. You saved us. You saved Armin. Carrying the guilt for the battle itself is a burden you do not deserve."

  Her words, simple and fierce, struck a chord he'd been desperately trying to ignore. He looked down, away from the moon, and his gaze fell on the old, tarnished key hanging from a cord around his neck; the key to his father's basement. A secret. A mystery. A promise of answers he wasn't sure he wanted.

  His mother was right. Wallowing in the past, drowning in regret, was a cage of his own making. He couldn't change what had happened. He could only… keep moving forward. Just like the faction he looked up to; the survey corps. No matter how bleak their mission might seem, they always advance, never looked back.

  His shoulders, perpetually tense, slumped slightly. The fight went out of him. "What should I do, Mom?" he asked, his voice barely a whisper, the sound of a lost little boy.

  Carla's expression softened. "Start small. The world isn't saved in a single day. Start by mending the things close to you." She gave his hand a gentle squeeze. "Talk to your friends. Really talk to them. And… visit Armin. It's been days since you've seen him. That's not like you at all."

  The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  Eren thought about it. The strained silence with Mikasa. The unspoken chasm between him and Armin, built from the trauma of possession and the violent act of salvation. He nodded slowly. "Yeah," he murmured. "Yeah, that's a good idea." A flicker of his old resolve sparked, feeble but present. Things couldn't possibly get any worse. They had, after all, defeated a lord of ghosts and nightmares. What was a little awkward conversation compared to that?

  He managed a small, determined smile. "Okay."

  However elsewhere, far from the struggling refugee camp, in the opulent heart of Wall Sina, the fabric of reality itself groaned. In a deserted alleyway behind a row of manicured hedges, the air shimmered, warping like heat haze on a summer day. With a sound like tearing silk, a rift of violent red energy ripped open, spitting out a single, silhouetted form before snapping shut. The creature landed on all fours with a soft thud, its form sleek and predatory. It lifted its head, a low, pained growl rumbling in its chest as it sniffed the unfamiliar, cloying air.

  _________________

  Wall Sina, same evening…

  The streets of Sina's inner district were a world away from the grim reality of Trost. Gas lamps cast a warm, golden glow on clean cobblestones. Laughter and the clink of fine china (Metaphorically, I know they don't know shit about the outside world) spilled from expensive restaurants. A well-dressed couple emerged, the woman linking her arm with her husband's.

  "Oh, that was simply delightful, darling," she cooed. "You kept your promise. The foie gras (Well ducks are a thing in Paradis) was exquisite."

  "Anything for you, my dear," the man chuckled, patting her hand.

  They were unaware of the eyes upon them. Or rather, the lack of eyes. From the deep shadows of a nearby garden, the world was rendered in a swirling, painful sonar landscape. The couple were not people; they were walking, talking blobs of heat and vibration, their heartbeats a rhythmic, tempting thrum against a backdrop of distorted shapes and agonizing, high-frequency noise.

  The husband paused, frowning as something unusual caught his eyes. "Odd. I could have sworn I saw… a silhouette. Something… wrong with its shape."

  "Nonsense, dear," his wife trilled. "It's just a stray dog. This neighborhood is so much better than our last. Come along."

  Oblivious, they continued to their luxurious, walled-off home, where the sounds of the city were replaced by the quiet of wealth. At the rear of their property, near a line of decorative bushes, a small pen held a few prized sheep, their white wool glowing in the moonlight as they peacefully cropped the grass.

  A rustling from the bushes made one sheep lift its head. It stared into the darkness, ears twitching, before deciding it was nothing and returning to its meal.

  In the shadows, the creature's perspective was a nightmare of static and pain, its head throbbing with a desperate, gnawing hunger. The vision distorted, shapes melting into each other before sharpening again, locking onto the blissfully ignorant animals. It took one step, then another, its movements fluid and silent. Then, it sprang.

  The sheep had no time to react. One moment it was chewing grass, the next, a nightmarish form was towering over it. The creature was on all fours, its body that of a powerful, alien hound, but horribly wrong. Along its chest and spine, patterns in its fur glowed with a sick, deep light-blue, the light pulsing up into its eyeless face, illuminating a gaping, toothy maw. It was a Vulpimancer, but mutated, twisted by forces unknown.

  Before the sheep could even process the horror, the creature's jaws snapped shut on its neck with a wet, final crunch. The brief, terrified bleat was cut off into a gurgle. The creature began to feed, ripping and tearing through the carcass.

  The commotion brought the couple to their door. "Ugh, what is that racket?" the wife complained. "Hendricks! Deal with it! I will not have the neighbors complaining about our livestock again!"

  A weary servant named Hendricks hurried out, lantern in hand. He scanned the pen, his blood running cold as he saw one sheep lying still in a dark, spreading pool, its neck torn open. The other animals were huddled in a terrified, bleating mass in the farthest corner.

  "Damned foxes..." he muttered, though the violence seemed…excessive for a fox. He saw nothing else in the pen. Shaking his head, he turned to head back to the house, thinking to fetch a shovel and a sack.

  It was as he turned his back on the shadows that he felt it; a presence. A low, guttural breathing that wasn't his own. The hair on the back of his neck stood on end. Slowly, dread pooling in his stomach, Hendricks turned back.

  Something was there, It was there. Towering over him by a good two meters, having emerged from the deep shadows beside the pen. It stood on all fours, a sleek, monstrous hound from a fever dream. Patterns along its chest and spine still glowed with a sick, deep light-blue, pulsing with an unnatural rhythm. But the true horror was its face. As it focused on this new, larger prey, six slits tore open on the smooth flesh of its head. Six eyes, burning with the same malevolent blue light, snapped into existence, pinning him in place.

  Hendricks's own eyes widened in sheer, disbelieving terror. His jaw worked, but no sound emerged. This was no fox. This was a demon.

  The creature's massive, eyeless maw opened, revealing rows of glistening, needle-sharp teeth dripping with thick, clear slobber.

  More food.

  Hendricks had just enough time to take a half-step back, a choked gasp escaping his lips, before the monster lunged.

  What transpired next was a brief, wet cacophony lost to the night. The lantern fell from Hendricks's nerveless fingers, hitting the ground with a shatter of glass and a whump as the oil ignited, casting a flickering, hellish light on the scene for a single, horrifying second. It illuminated the spray of blood arcing through the air, painting the grass and the side of the pen a glossy, dark red. The light caught the creature's six glowing eyes as it fed, before the small flame sputtered and died, plunging the garden back into a silence broken only by the sound of tearing and the terrified, final bleats of the remaining sheep.

  The hope Eren had felt under the moonlight was a fragile, distant thing. A new nightmare had come to Paradis, and it was very, very hungry.

  Chapter 20-30 are already available on Pa tre on.com (slash) Weeb Fanthom.