Soldier (Chapter)

Titans close on Utgard Castle in the dark, some inexplicably turning on one another. Henning, Nanaba, Lynne, and Gelgar meet them outside, felling a large one onto the smaller Titans below, and Lynne discovers the castle door has already given way. She orders the unequipped recruits inside to barricade every passage. Reiner Braun rushes ahead of the others, a habit Connie and Bertolt note with worry, and finds a Titan waiting behind an old cellar door. Bracing the door with his own weight, he calls for materials as the creature batters through.

The breaking door pulls Reiner into memory: as a boy he was nearly seized by a Titan until a friend shoved him clear and was devoured in his place while Reiner and Bertolt looked on. In the present, Bertolt drives a pitchfork into the intruding Titan's eyes, and Reiner vows they will live to see their hometown again. The recruits arrive hauling an antique cannon, which they cannot fire but can drop, and the toppled gun pins the Titan to the floor. When a second Titan lunges at Connie, Reiner shoves it away and takes its bite on his arm, then hoists the creature onto his back and heads for a window intending to carry it out with him. Connie severs its jaw muscles and Ymir boots it into the night. As Krista bandages him, Reiner shrugs off the heroics as a soldier's duty, prompting Bertolt's cryptic remark that Reiner was once a Warrior.

Outside, the veterans have cleared most of the large Titans when a strange whistling cuts the air. A projectile obliterates the stable and the horses, and a second crushes Lynne and Henning on the roof, killing both instantly. Connie recognizes the Beast Titan's work as a fresh wave of Titans converges, and Nanaba, sensing an intelligence directing the assault, hears the giant ape roar from atop the Wall.

Titans breach Utgard Castle's ground floor, forcing the unarmed recruits to improvise barricades and weapons.

Reiner relives the memory of Marcel being eaten in his place, the event that binds him and Bertolt to their promise of returning home.

Reiner is bitten saving Connie, and Bertolt lets slip that his friend was formerly a Warrior, an early hint at the pair's hidden identity.

Boulders thrown by the Beast Titan destroy the horses and kill Lynne and Henning, revealing a coordinating mind behind the Titan assault.

The Japanese title is 兵士 (Heishi), meaning soldier. This chapter marks the first time the manga distinguishes the word from "Warrior," a contrast that becomes central once Marley's Warrior Unit is revealed.

Bertolt's answer about Reiner's past reads as an odd joke on first pass and as a major slip in hindsight, one of the earliest direct clues to the identities of the Armored and Colossus Titans.

The anime adapts the chapter as the episode Soldier.