Midnight Sun

Levi is furious that Eren and Mikasa would ask him to let Erwin die, and orders them out of his way. When Eren blocks him again, Levi knocks out several of his teeth with a single blow. Mikasa answers by pinning Levi with a blade at his throat, though his weakened state startles her. Floch, the sole surviving recruit of the suicide charge, sides with Levi: after finding Erwin's body, he concluded that only a demon willing to spend lives, someone like Erwin, can beat the Titans, and he will not let anyone rob humanity of that.

Hange arrives with the rest of the squad and hauls Mikasa off. When appeals to Erwin's value fail to calm her, Hange speaks from grief instead, admitting there are dead comrades they too ache to bring back, and that moving forward is the only way to keep living with it. Eren makes one final plea, telling Levi about Armin's lifelong dream of the ocean.

Alone with both bodies, Levi remembers eavesdropping on Armin's excited talk of the sea, Erwin's hunger for the basement's secrets, and Kenny Ackerman's dying observation that everyone is a slave to something. As the syringe nears, Erwin's arm drifts up on reflex, a schoolboy again, raising his hand to question his father about the world beyond the maps. Levi decides.

Bertolt Hoover wakes limbless on the rooftop as a freshly made Titan looms over him. Realizing his former classmates will only watch, he screams for Reiner and Annie, but no one comes. The Titan bites down, and with Bertolt's death the Colossus Titan's power passes to the one who devoured him: Armin.

Floch demands to know why Levi abandoned Erwin. Levi answers that Erwin had already become the demon humanity asked him to be, and letting him rest is the kinder end than dragging him back into hell. He quietly apologizes to Erwin for postponing his promise to bring down the Beast Titan.

Hange pronounces Erwin dead of his wounds. Moments later Armin climbs from the steaming nape of his Titan, alive, restored, and now the bearer of one of the Nine.

The chapter closes the central dilemma of the Return to Shiganshina arc, running between Cleaver and The Basement. Japan received it August 9, 2016, one day after the English simulpub, and the anime adapted it as an episode carrying the same name.

A colored edition later appeared in Japan's third volume of Attack on Titan: Full Color Edition and in the second volume of the American collection The Best of Attack on Titan: In Color.

Isayama tucked a joke into the death scene: the sound effect of Armin's Titan chewing can be read as "pakkyao," a nod to boxer Manny Pacquiao. The chapter quote belongs to Hange, consoling Mikasa with the admission that surviving loss is agonizing but the living still have to advance.