The Dawn of Humanity

Aboard the ship bound for Odiha, Hange explains to a distraught Annie why Liberio cannot be saved in time, invoking Magath's sacrifice as proof that the mission matters even when homes cannot be rescued. Annie slumps, believing her father lost, and asks once more whether the Survey Corps could truly kill Eren, or stand aside if she tried. Her defiance drains away almost immediately: she admits she has no fight left, not against Mikasa, not against the others, not even against Eren.

Eren's mind drifts across the road that brought him here, deciding the starting point no longer matters. Yelena once laid out Zeke's plan to sterilize the Subjects of Ymir; Eren instructed Floch to play along with it while confessing his true intent, flattening the outside world to burn away the cycle of hatred at its root. He warned Historia that the Military Police intended to make her a Titan and let her devour Zeke on his arrival, and when she accepted that fate for the island's sake, he refused to allow it, offering even to rewrite her memories if carrying his secret proved too heavy. He trusted her silence because it was Historia, the self-professed worst girl alive, who had saved him beneath the Reiss chapel; stunned, she answered by asking how he would feel about her having a child. In Marley, Zeke had dismissed the idea of any Ackerman "imprinting," telling Eren that Mikasa's devotion is nothing more than love. Eren saw no point in addressing it with four years left to live. He remembers maiming his own foot and eye to pass as a broken soldier, and silently wishes long lives on his friends and on Ramzi's people, knowing what he will do to them.

In the present, the Global Allied Fleet meets the Wall Titans at Port Acrifa and learns that cannon fire means nothing; the Titans dive beneath the ships and boil the sea itself, steaming crews alive. Shore batteries fare no better, and retreating soldiers look back to see the immense skeletal frame of Eren's transformed Attack Titan advancing behind the marching line. As the Titans make landfall and begin grinding Marley into the earth, Eren holds the memory of losing Carla and the promise it forged in him: to advance without stopping until every enemy in the world is destroyed.

Annie renounces fighting, unwilling to raise a hand against the Survey Corps or Eren again.

Flashbacks confirm Eren only pretended to back Zeke's euthanization plan, revealing his true goal to Floch and Historia.

Historia's pregnancy is tied to her conversation with Eren about the military's plans for her.

Zeke debunks the Ackerman imprinting theory, telling Eren that Mikasa simply loves him.

The Rumbling annihilates the Global Allied Fleet at Port Acrifa, and Eren's gargantuan Titan leads the Wall Titans onto Marleyan soil.

The Dawn of Humanity ends volume 32 as the 130th chapter overall, written and drawn by Hajime Isayama. Japan received it on July 9, 2020, a day after the English simulpub, which titled it Dawn for Humanity. It falls in the War for Paradis arc, after Retrospective and before The Rumbling.

A colored printing exists, appearing in Japan within Attack on Titan: Full Color Edition volume 2 and stateside within The Best of Attack on Titan: In Color volume 1. The anime adapts the chapter across the episodes Retrospective and The Dawn of Humanity.