Eld Jinn

Eld kept his blond hair long, parted down the middle and gathered into a bun at the back of his head, with a small beard on his chin. His dress matched any other scout: the standard uniform beneath the green cloak carrying the Wings of Freedom on its back.

Duty ran deep in Eld. He said little, and what he did say came out plain and direct, the manner of a leader who expected competence. Veteran swagger showed in his ribbing of Petra and Oluo over the pants they had wet on their first expedition, and he held firm ideas about soldiering, once telling Oluo that a kill count by itself proves nothing about a soldier's worth.

When Eren transformed without warning, Eld's reaction set him apart from his squadmates: where Oluo threatened and Petra panicked over Levi, he pressed Eren for the reason it happened. Afterward, ashamed of how quickly the squad had turned on the boy, he joined the others in biting his own hand, a gesture of shared pain and restored trust.

After Eren's trial places him in Survey Corps custody, Eld and the rest of Squad Levi escort him to the Corps's abandoned former headquarters and settle into the routine of guarding him, from scrubbing the derelict building to overseeing Hange's transformation experiments. When Eren accidentally produces a partial Titan while reaching for a dropped spoon, the squad draws blades on him, a mistake they atone for once Hange uncovers how the power actually triggers.

A month later the squad rides in the 57th expedition. Deep in the Titan Forest, the Female Titan runs them down, slaughtering the reinforcements behind them while Levi orders his soldiers to keep riding. Once Erwin's trap snares the enemy, Eld and the others boast to Eren that the strength of the Survey Corps made the capture possible, and he defends Erwin's decision to keep the operation secret, reasoning the commander must have had cause.

The escape goes wrong on the way out of the forest. A disguised enemy kills Gunther, then transforms into the Female Titan and comes for Eren. Eld leads the counterattack: his feints and a burst of gas as a smokescreen let Petra and Oluo carve out the Titan's eyes, and his blades strip the muscle from both its arms. As he closes in on the nape, a single eye regenerates ahead of schedule, and the Titan catches him in its teeth and bites him in half. His name echoes long afterward, among the dead who weigh on Erwin, Levi, and Hange, and among the fallen scouts who salute Levi once the war ends.