The Battle of Heaven and Earth

Two millennia in the past, Ymir Fritz slips out at night and lets a group of pigs loose from their pen. In the present she watches from Eren's Founding Titan as Reiner destroys the Beast Titan she assembled, and Levi immediately grasps the problem: Zeke was never inside it. Rather than comb the entire Titan for him, Armin agrees to trigger his Colossus Titan and let the blast expose Zeke's hiding place, promising Mikasa the explosion will not be strong enough to harm Eren. Before he can act, a Titan seizes and swallows him while Ymir looks on from a distance, and an army of Titans materializes across Eren's back to cut the squad off from their friend.

Outside Fort Salta, Annie's father and other Liberio survivors pull an unconscious Onyankopon from the wrecked flying boat, while the Marleyan general in the control tower commits his last three cannon crews against the approaching horde. On Eren's back, Pieck recognizes the attackers as resurrected holders of the Nine Titans from across history and theorizes that the Founder can spawn them endlessly. She makes a solo run at Eren's nape carrying the flying boat's bombs, but a revived husk of the War Hammer Titan once wielded by Lara Tybur impales her Cart Titan before she can detonate them. Porco's and Marcel's Jaw Titans then maul Reiner and nearly kill Jean, whom Levi rescues before ordering a push toward Armin as the only route to victory left.

Suffocating inside the Titan that ate him, Armin reasons that the resistance must be Ymir's will, meaning the Founder herself desires humanity's destruction, and he despairs that no one can oppose her. A vision of a weeping Bertolt precedes an attack by his revived Colossus Titan. The battle grinds the squad down: Connie is knocked cold, Jean's and Reiner's gear fails, a Titan clamps onto Levi's leg before Mikasa cuts its nape, and with enemies closing on every side she prepares to die fighting. At that moment Falco's winged Jaw Titan sweeps the group away faster than any pursuer, and a bewildered squad finds Annie aboard, admitting that news of Falco's flying Titan made staying behind impossible.

Reiner destroys the decoy Beast Titan, revealing that Zeke has hidden himself elsewhere on Eren's Founding Titan.

A Titan devours Armin before he can transform, and resurrected incarnations of the Nine Titans, including the War Hammer, both Jaw Titans of the Galliard brothers, and Bertolt's Colossus, overwhelm the alliance.

Pieck's attempt to bomb Eren's nape fails when her Cart Titan is skewered.

Armin concludes that Ymir Fritz herself wills the extermination of humanity.

Falco's flying Jaw Titan rescues the survivors, and Annie rejoins the fight after abandoning her escape.

The Battle of Heaven and Earth opens volume 34 as the 135th chapter overall, by Hajime Isayama. It reached Japanese readers on December 9, 2020, a day after the North American simulpub, which carried the alternate title Battle of Heaven and Earth. The chapter belongs to the War for Paradis arc, between In the Depths of Despair and Dedicate Your Heart.

The anime covers this material in THE FINAL CHAPTERS Special 2, in the segment sharing the chapter's name.