Counterfeit

At the forest camp where he is being held, Zeke walks Levi through the Ragako operation. Marleyan soldiers dispersed a gas laced with his spinal fluid over the village, paralyzing every subject of Ymir who inhaled it and etching a coordinate onto each of them through the paths, which let Zeke send Titan bodies to those marks and bend the resulting Pure Titans to the Beast Titan's will. Levi is disgusted by his indifference toward human life, but Zeke insists the attack was necessary to keep Marley from doubting him. Both men agree that delaying the planned experiment with Eren much longer would be a mistake.

Yelena admits her covert meeting with Eren to Pixis, claiming impatience with the island's inaction drove her and that she simply wanted Eren to recognize her. She calls the Liberio raid a finer justice than anything she had pictured and frames all of it as service to Eldia. Pixis remains unmoved, remarking that a convincing lie needs truth folded into it.

Hange questions Onyankopon, who knew nothing of the secret meeting. He describes how Yelena organized the volunteers and proved her devotion to Zeke by ruthlessly purging comrades she found suspect. Hange puzzles over the gap between that cruelty and her later campaigning for captive Marleyans' rights, then judges Onyankopon honest and releases him. Elsewhere, Hitch catches Armin visiting Annie's crystal, and on their walk to headquarters the two run into a mob demanding Eren's freedom.

Zackly turns down Armin and Mikasa's request to see their friend, reasoning that Yelena's unauthorized contact makes Zeke's control over Eren plausible, and distractedly gestures at a custom chair new recruits just delivered. Minutes after the pair leave, a bomb planted in that chair detonates, hurling the Commander-in-Chief's dismembered body through the window while the crowd below erupts in celebration. That night the assembled branches learn the blast killed four people, that Survey Corps recruits moved the chair, and that Eren has slipped out of his underground cell using his Titan abilities. On a mountain road, Eren joins Floch and his fellow conspirators, pulls on a black hooded jacket, and gives one command: find Zeke. As the military rides out the next morning, a disguised Pieck sits reading a newspaper, once again inside the Walls.

Zeke discloses the full mechanism behind the Ragako transformations: spinal-fluid gas, paralysis, coordinates carved through the paths, and Pure Titans answering to the Beast Titan.

Pixis sees through Yelena's rehearsed apology, while Hange clears Onyankopon and gains an ally in the process.

Zackly is assassinated by a chair bomb traced to Survey Corps recruits, Eren escapes custody, and the conspirators later known as Yeagerists rally around him with orders to locate Zeke, all while Pieck re-enters the Walls unnoticed.

The Japanese title Itsuwari Mono translates literally as "liar," fitting a chapter built on deceivers, from Yelena's staged confession to the infiltrators moving freely through the Walls. The chapter closes volume 27 as its fourth installment and stands 110th overall, released in October 2018 within the War for Paradis arc.

One of the Titans drawn in the Ragako scenes bears a strong likeness to Joffrey Baratheon from Game of Thrones. The anime adapts these events across the episodes Guides and Children of the Forest.