Wish

Needle in hand, Historia hesitates. Memories surface: Ymir collapsed after emerging from her Titan body, her sister Frieda horrified over a splinter at the family fence, Ymir mocking her performative kindness back in the 104th. Rod senses the doubt and fills it with family history. Frieda, he confirms, took on the First King's philosophy along with the world's lost memories, an ideology holding that Titans should rule, its reasons known only to whoever carries those memories. His own father refused to explain it; his brother Uri volunteered to inherit the burden, and one look into Uri's changed eyes told Rod he was facing something beyond a man, a being he can only call God. Reviving that God and praying to it, he tells his daughter, is the last hope humanity has, and he grips her arms as he pleads.

What breaks the spell is Ymir's voice in her memory, urging her to live proudly. Historia hurls the vial to the cavern floor and, when her father lunges for her, flings him down hard enough to break his back. She accuses him of inventing whatever story would make her obey, takes his handbag, and goes to unchain Eren, who begs her to devour him instead, insisting his continued life is a loss for mankind. She cracks him across the head, calls him a stupid crybaby, and declares that she is now the enemy of mankind, that she will free him anyway, and that she is his friend regardless. Behind them Rod drags his ruined body to the evaporating serum and laps it up, mumbling about rejoining his family. A skeletal mass of spine and bone explodes out of him.

Levi's squad converges. Mikasa catches Historia before she strikes the cavern wall, Connie fumbles through keys while Jean warns that Kenny's soldiers are still coming, and the group wrenches Eren loose seconds before falling rock crushes the spot where he hung. Levi sizes up the rising Titan and judges it bigger than the Colossus itself. Eren spirals, convinced any form he produces will simply be flattened along with everyone he loves, until a small vial stamped Armor catches his eye among Rod's scattered belongings. Historia needles him about whether they should all hold hands while they die, and Levi, apologizing for forever dumping the decision on him, tells Eren to act on his own will. Remembering the squad he lost in the forest by trusting others, Eren silently asks his friends for one chance to trust himself, crushes the vial between his teeth, and leaps into a new transformation to meet Rod's Titan.

Historia refuses the inheritance ritual at the final moment, destroying the Titan serum rather than transforming and devouring Eren.

Rod's account of Uri's succession explains how the First King's will has bound every Reiss ruler and why Frieda never used her power against the Titans.

Rod ingests the spilled serum and becomes a gigantic Titan that Levi estimates surpasses even the Colossus Titan in size.

Freed from his chains, Eren bites into a vial labeled Armor and transforms, choosing for the first time to believe in his own strength.

The chapter ran in Japan on February 9, 2015, one day after its English release on February 8. It concludes volume 16 as its fourth chapter, follows Dreams and Curses, and precedes Outside the Walls of Orvud District. The anime spreads its events across two episodes, Wish and Outside the Walls of Orvud District.

Although Eren only registers the word Armor on the vial, the katakana printed on it reads Armor Braun (Yoroi buraun), a pointed reference to Reiner Braun and his Armored Titan identity. Whether the serum genuinely connects to Reiner is never established in canon.