A Dream I Once Had

Two months separate the story from Historia's coronation, and the Walls barely resemble their old selves. The military governs while the queen, affectionately nicknamed the Cattle-Farming Goddess, pours confiscated noble wealth into an orphanage where Eren, Jean, and Armin now haul sacks under her orders. The old Assembly rots in prison camps, uncooperative aristocrats pay punishing taxes, seized technology fuels invention, and glowing ore from the Reiss cavern lights common homes without any fuel at all.

Eren's hardening practice has reinforced the Trost breach and made possible Hange's proudest creation, a guillotine-like trap dubbed the Executioner from Hell that kills Titans without spending a single life. The progress visibly drains Eren, and Levi suspects a hard ceiling on what his body can endure, but Eren refuses to slow down with Shiganshina waiting. At a command conference, Erwin promises the expedition within the month; afterward, in private, the leadership confronts the stolen Titan serum. Every attempt at analysis has failed, the fluid vaporizing on contact with air, so the vial and the judgment of when to use it pass to Levi alone.

Garrison and Military Police transfers, Marlowe among them, pad the Scouts' thin ranks, though the veterans regard their enthusiasm coldly. One new arrival studies Jean's deadened expression and asks what could have happened to change his old friends so much. Prompted by Jean's joke about their drill instructor, Eren realizes the man glimpsed in his father's recovered memories is Keith Shadis and resolves to question him at dawn. In ruined Shiganshina, the Beast Titan stands over Reiner's wrecked armored form; a bespectacled man emerges from its nape and tells Bertolt they need only wait, because Eren will bring the Coordinate to them.

Historia establishes an orphanage funded by seized noble assets while the military governs in her name.

Eren's hardening ability seals Trost's gate and enables Hange's Titan-executing guillotine, at a mounting cost to his health.

Analysis of the Titan serum proves impossible, and custody of it passes permanently to Levi.

Marlowe, Floch, and other transfers replenish the Survey Corps ahead of the Shiganshina operation.

Eren identifies Keith Shadis in Grisha's memories; the Beast Titan defeats Reiner, and Zeke decides to ambush the Corps when they arrive.

The chapter closes volume 17 as its fourth entry and stands 70th overall in Hajime Isayama's manga. Japanese publication came June 9, 2015, one day after the English release, and before the volume edition it circulated under the title A Dream From the Past.

Its material spans three episodes of the anime's third season: Friends, Bystander, and Night of the Battle to Retake the Wall. The closing scene in Shiganshina reveals the man piloting the Beast Titan and sets the stage for the battle to retake Wall Maria.