Midnight Train

Marley's high command convenes after crushing the Mid-East Allied Forces, and the mood is grim: word of the Armored Titan's battlefield failure is spreading abroad. Pressed for an assessment, Theo Magath concedes that Titans are losing their place in modern war. Recent fighting has been naval, where Titans contribute nothing, and rival nations' progress in aviation threatens to make them useless entirely.

Zeke steps in with a proposal. Marley should restart the Paradis Island Operation, seize the Founding Titan, and broadcast that power to keep enemies at bay while the nation rebuilds its conventional arsenal. The presiding general notes Zeke has barely a year left before his term as the Beast Titan ends, and Zeke confirms he means to spend it avenging his defeat in Shiganshina and closing the chapter his father Grisha opened decades ago. The general, won over, promises to raise the plan with his fellow officers.

Afterward, Colt Grice marvels at how Zeke addresses Marleyans as an equal, and at abilities no prior Beast Titan possessed: spinal fluid that creates Titans and bends them to his command. Zeke hints that Colt will understand once he inherits the power and its memories.

Magath privately tells Zeke that every scouting vessel sent to Paradis over three years has vanished. Zeke reasons the island still holds four of the Nine: the Founder and Attack Titan with Eren, plus the Colossus and Female, since no Eldian infants have manifested powers that would signal a holder's death. He credits the lost ships to Eren and at least one other shifter, then warns of two further island advantages, omni-directional mobility gear paired with Thunder Spears, and a pair of Ackermans, living products of Titan science once thought mere royal legend.

Reiner wakes from a nightmare of Shiganshina to a frosty Porco Galliard, who believes Marcel would still be alive had Porco received the Armored Titan instead. Having gained only Ymir's memories with the Jaw Titan, Galliard needles Reiner about the borrowed personality he wore among the 104th. Pieck defuses the moment and sends Reiner to the Warrior candidates, whose bickering warmth painfully echoes his old classmates.

On the night train home, Falco laments that Gabi will likely win the Armored Titan and die at twenty-seven. Reiner turns the despair into a charge: if Falco wants to spare her, he must outwork her and claim the Titan himself.

The chapter opens the Marley arc's deeper exploration of the enemy nation, positioned between Marley's Soldiers and The Boy Inside the Walls. It ran May 9, 2017 in Japan, a day after the English simulpub, and the anime adapted it under the same title.

Pieck appears walking with a crutch, explaining she spent two unbroken months in her Cart Titan and temporarily forgot two-legged movement. At the harbor, an Eldian soldier whose armband sits on the incorrect side shadows Reiner and the candidates, an early glimpse of Eren's infiltration.

The chapter quote is Zeke's vow that he alone, as the man's former son, should be the one to finish off the prodigy Grisha Yeager set loose.