That Day (Chapter 86)

Grisha's journal begins with the day the world's cruelty first touched him. As a boy in the Liberio internment zone, he lured his little sister Faye out to chase a passing blimp, slipping past the district gates despite their mother's warnings about armbands and boundaries. Two soldiers caught them. One beat Grisha for the infraction while the other led Faye away, supposedly home. Her mutilated body turned up the next day. The soldier's story went unchallenged, and Grisha watched in disgust as his father groveled before the authorities rather than demand answers.

Ordered by the military to teach his son proper history, Grisha's father laid out the official account: some 1,820 years earlier, Ymir Fritz bargained with the so-called Devil of All Earth for the power of the Titans, and after her death that power split into the Nine Titans, whose Eldian Empire crushed Marley and spent seventeen centuries ethnically cleansing the continent. Marley eventually turned seven of the Nine against the empire in the Great Titan War, driving King Fritz and his people onto Paradis Island behind three Walls, while leftover Eldians like the Yeagers were penned into ghettos. Grisha cared nothing for ancestral sin; he wanted to know why the soldier had lied about Faye. His father begged him into silence, terrified the family would share her fate.

At eighteen, running his father's clinic, Grisha treated a patient who belonged to the Eldian Restorationists and learned the truth: soldiers had set their dogs on Faye for sport. He joined the movement, which aimed to reclaim the Founding Titan and resurrect Eldia, fed by weapons, money, and documents from a government mole known as the Owl. The smuggled records suggested Ymir had used her power to enrich the world, not enslave it. Through the Owl came Dina Fritz, a genuine descendant of the royal line whose family had remained on the mainland. Grisha married her a year later, and their son Zeke was born carrying royal blood.

When Marley announced its Warrior program, recruiting Eldian children to wield the Titans against Paradis, the Restorationists saw their chance. A letter from the Owl exposed the war's true motive, the island's fossil fuel reserves, and the fabricated declaration of war attributed to King Fritz, whose only real threat remained his 80-year-old promise to unleash the Wall Titans on the world if his people were harmed. Grisha entered Zeke into the program as a would-be double agent, raising him on Eldian pride and Marleyan loyalty at once. The gamble destroyed everything. At seven years old, Zeke reported his parents to the authorities, and Grisha, Dina, and the Restorationists were shipped to Paradis to be transformed into mindless Titans.

Grisha's childhood trip outside the Liberio internment zone ends with his sister Faye taken by soldiers and killed, her death officially whitewashed.

Grisha's father recounts Marley's version of Eldian history, from Ymir Fritz's pact to the Great Titan War and the retreat to Paradis Island.

At eighteen, Grisha learns soldiers fed Faye to dogs, joins the Eldian Restorationists, and dedicates himself to overthrowing Marley.

Dina Fritz, a royal descendant sent by the Owl, marries Grisha and bears their son Zeke.

Grisha places Zeke in Marley's Warrior program as a planted agent, but Zeke betrays his parents, condemning the Restorationists to Titanization on Paradis.

That Day closes volume 21 as the 86th chapter overall, released October 8, 2016 in Japan and a day earlier in English. It belongs to the Return to Shiganshina arc and was adapted across the anime episodes The Basement and That Day.

The chapter deliberately echoes chapter 2, sharing its English title and an October release seven years apart, and it is the first chapter in nearly four years to omit Eren entirely, the last being Ymir in December 2012. A background detail shows young Zeke holding an ape toy at the moment he learns of his Warrior candidacy, a nod to his future as the Beast Titan. It follows The Basement and precedes Borderline.