Promise

Stones scythe through the charging recruits. One finds the commander himself, punching into Erwin's torso and tearing away his mount's head; man and horse crash down together while Marlowe screams the survivors forward. Zeke watches almost sadly, musing on how the first king's memory wipe condemns these islanders to repeat old mistakes and gallop into death, then reminds himself not to brood like his father and hurls a second volley. Marlowe's last thought is of Hitch before a fragment takes the side of his skull. Three recruits keep launching flares at the Beast Titan's eyes; a third throw erases them, and Zeke goes quiet with something close to pity.

Then he notices the silence on his right flank, where every Titan lies butchered. A hook slams into his shoulder and Levi arrives like weather, shearing the right arm apart before any defense forms. Old warnings from Reiner and Bertolt about this one soldier flash uselessly through Zeke's mind as his eyes are cut out, his ankles ruined, and the hand shielding his nape minced faster than it can harden. Levi rips him from the Beast Titan's neck with his limbs mostly gone and pins him, blade in mouth. When a question about the healing gets no answer, the steel goes up through the palate and out one eye.

Levi's plan crystallizes: keep Zeke alive, locate any soldier on the field still breathing, and use the syringe of Titan serum so someone can devour Zeke and inherit the Beast, a thought that briefly carries Erwin's name. The quadrupedal Titan wrecks it, bursting from behind to carry Zeke off between its teeth. Fleeing, Zeke orders the surviving Titans to swarm the captain. Levi loads fresh blades, repeats aloud the oath he swore, and starts cutting a path after the Cart. Far back, a single recruit stands up unhurt among the corpses; Floch begins wandering the field of bodies, hunting for anyone alive.

Inside the Wall, Jean wonders aloud what it would even take to finish the revived Reiner. Armin, though, is staring at Bertolt: each steam burst leaves the Colossus visibly thinner. Piecing that together with Hange's old theory about extended fights and Eren's known transformation limits, he concludes the giant body burns energy catastrophically fast and will eventually strand Bertolt as a defenseless skeleton. He assigns Mikasa and Jean to pull Reiner away while he and Eren handle Bertolt. Landing on the chest of the dormant Attack Titan, Armin remembers Eren saying that picturing freedom poured strength into him, then rams a blade into the flesh to wake his friend, telling him the ocean is waiting for the two of them.

Zeke's barrages annihilate the recruit charge; Erwin falls gravely wounded and Marlowe Freudenberg dies with the others.

Levi single-handedly destroys the Beast Titan, mutilates Zeke, and comes within moments of feeding him to a Titanized soldier, possibly Erwin, before the Cart Titan steals him away in its jaws.

Floch proves to be the charge's lone survivor and starts combing the corpses for anyone breathing.

Armin identifies the Colossus Titan's energy drain as its fatal opening, splits the squad to isolate Reiner, and wakes Eren with the promise of seeing the ocean.

Promise runs 81st overall and third in volume 20, hitting Japan on May 9, 2016 with English readers served a day earlier. Part of the Return to Shiganshina arc, it follows The Nameless Soldiers, precedes Hero, and covers ground the anime adapts in the episodes Perfect Game and Hero. The title points at Levi's vow to Erwin that Zeke dies no matter what.

Japan's Full Color Edition volume 1 carries a colored version of the chapter, which In Color, the American best-of collection, also includes in its first volume. Two Titans charging Levi late in the chapter strongly resemble Yūki Kaji and Yui Ishikawa, who voice Eren and Mikasa in the anime.