Welcome Party

Outside the Reiss chapel, Levi asks his young squad whether they are ready to bloody their hands, and their strained faces answer for them. In the cavern beneath, Kenny's second-in-command, Traute Caven, runs the numbers on the coming fight: lure the intruders into massed gunfire, trust that even Levi will not act recklessly against so many barrels. Her speech to the Anti-Personnel Control Squad turns fatalistic. With the old king fallen and Titans able to crack the Walls at any hour, dying here beats capture and torture, and what remains is faith in Kenny's dream of seizing the world at the root and flipping it over.

The assault opens with a kicked-in door and oil-filled barrels rolling down the stairs. Sasha's flaming arrow ignites them, flooding the cavern with blinding smoke while Levi and Mikasa charge in tandem to draw fire. Flare guns handled by Hange and Connie, reloaded by Armin, Jean, and Sasha, streak light across the gunmen's vision, and the squad's blades do the rest. Jean opens a blinded man's throat from behind, exploiting the anti-personnel gear's inability to fire backward; Sasha's arrow stops a woman about to kill Connie; Hange counts enemy shots and strikes during a reload. Caven, recognizing the divide-and-slaughter design of the attack, waits for her opening and hooks Hange out of the air, hurling them to the cavern floor before ordering a retreat. Levi leaves Armin with the wounded Hange and presses the pursuit, wondering where Kenny himself has gone.

Deeper in, Rod Reiss hurries Historia along and explains why Eren glares at her: the stolen power in him must return to Reiss blood. His account reaches back a hundred years to a special Titan who raised Maria, Rose, and Sheena out of a desire for peace, then reached into humanity's hearts and rewrote its memories, a power certain bloodlines resisted. Generation after generation, one Reiss devoured the last to inherit the power and the world's true history, Frieda taking it from her uncle Uri most recently. Every inheritor learned the world's secrets; none ever acted on them, though Frieda could have erased the Titans entirely. Eren, lacking Reiss blood, holds the power uselessly. Kenny drops into the scene to confirm that detail, then asks the question that unmasks him: whether that means there is no point in becoming a Titan himself and devouring Eren.

Traute Caven rallies the Anti-Personnel Control Squad around Kenny's dream, accepting death in the chapel over capture.

Squad Levi breaches the cavern using burning oil barrels, smoke, and flare-gun cover to neutralize the squad's ranged advantage.

Hange is critically injured by Caven's counterattack before the enemy retreats.

Rod Reiss recounts the Walls' creation by a special Titan a century ago and the memory-wipe it imposed, along with the Reiss ritual of succession by devouring.

Kenny reveals his ambition to claim the Titan power by eating Eren himself.

Second chapter of volume 16 and 64th overall, released in Japan on December 9, 2014, one day after the English simulpub, during the Royal Government arc. The anime split its events across the episodes Sin and Wish.

The chapter delivers the series' first inside account of the Walls' origin and the Founding Titan's memory manipulation, framed through Rod's self-serving retelling. Kenny's closing question reframes his entire allegiance, revealing personal ambition beneath his service to the Reiss family.