Erwin's father

Round spectacles and a scraggly beard and mustache gave the aging teacher a scholarly, slightly unkempt look. He was tall and thin, his light hair combed into a left-side part above prominent cheekbones and a deeply lined face. In the classroom he worked with his shirtsleeves rolled up over dark gray trousers.

A sharp analytical mind sat behind his quiet manner; he had privately picked apart the government-issued histories and reasoned his way to a dangerous conclusion. He was equally careful as a parent. Rather than air his ideas before a room of children, he deflected Erwin's question in public and saved the honest answer for home, trying to shield both his students and his son from the risk his thinking carried.

During a lesson one day, young Erwin raised a question the textbooks could not answer, and the teacher brushed it aside before dismissing the class. At home he sat his son down and confessed what he actually believed: the official records were riddled with gaps and contradictions, humanity could not plausibly have lost its entire oral history, and the only way a whole population forgets its own past is if the king somehow rewrote their memories when they entered the Walls.

Erwin, too naive to sense the danger, repeated the theory to other children in town. Word reached the Military Police, who secretly seized the teacher, tortured him for what he knew, and dumped his body in a distant town staged to look like an accident. He is counted among the people believed killed by Djel Sannes and the First Interior Squad.

Decades later, Nile Dok reveals to the military's leadership the exact question that started it all: how anyone ever confirmed there were no humans left outside the Walls. Proving his father's theory true became the dream Erwin Smith carried to his own death.