CHAPTER 36: THE CRACK IN THE SKY
Weeks passed.
The Marleyan delegates returned to their ships. No agreement. No peace. Just tension.
Everyone waited.
Sukuna trained. He ate. He slept. He watched.
But something was different.
The Founding Titan's power was changing him.
He could feel it in his bones. In his blood. In his mind.
"I'm becoming something else," he thought. "Something not human."
Mikasa noticed.
"Your eyes," she said one morning.
"What about them?"
"They're glowing. Just a little. In the dark."
Sukuna looked at his reflection in a window.
She was right.
A faint gold light flickered in his pupils.
"It's the Founder," he said. "It's taking over."
"Can you stop it?"
"I don't know."
Armin researched day and night.
Old books. New notes. Hange's journals.
He found something.
"The Founding Titan doesn't just control Titans. It controls Eldians. Their minds. Their bodies. Their memories."
"If you're not careful, you could lose yourself. Become nothing but the power."
"A shell."
Sukuna looked at his hands.
"A shell," he repeated.
"Like the first king."
That night, he dreamed again.
Not of Eren. Not of fire.
Of nothing.
An endless void. Grey. Empty. Silent.
And in the center...
A throne.
The same throne from before.
But this time, it was empty.
"Where are you?" Sukuna called.
No answer.
"WHERE ARE YOU?"
Silence.
He woke up screaming.
Mikasa burst into his room.
"Sukuna!"
He was covered in sweat. His hands were shaking.
"The Founder," he whispered. "It's trying to erase me."
"What do you mean?"
"It wants to take over. Become the only voice in my head."
"Then fight it."
"I'm trying."
Hange ran tests.
Blood. Tissue. Brain waves.
"Something is happening inside you," she said. "Your cells are changing. Evolving."
"Into what?"
"I don't know. Something ancient. Something powerful."
"Something not human."
Sukuna stared at the ceiling.
"I was never human."
"Maybe. But now you're becoming something else entirely."
Reiner visited him that night.
"I know what you're going through."
"You don't."
"I do. The Armored Titan tried to take over me too. When I was younger. When I first inherited it."
"It wanted to erase my memories. Make me a weapon. Nothing more."
"How did you stop it?"
"I didn't. I just learned to live with it."
Sukuna looked at him.
"That's not helpful."
"It's the only advice I have."
The next morning, a scout arrived.
"Marley is moving. More ships. More soldiers. More Titans."
"They're coming back."
Shadis gathered everyone.
"This is it. The final battle. If we lose, everything ends."
"If we win... we finally have peace."
Sukuna stood at the front.
"We won't lose."
He looked at each of them.
"I won't let us."
That night, he sat with Mikasa on the roof.
"If I don't come back from this..."
"Don't say that."
"Someone has to say it."
She grabbed his hand.
"You're coming back. I don't care what the Founder wants. I don't care what the Titans want."
"You're coming back to me."
Sukuna was quiet.
Then he said, "You're stubborn."
"I learned from you."
The ships appeared at dawn.
Dozens of them. Black sails. Iron hulls.
And on the shore, the Titans.
Marley's Titans. Dozens of them. The ones Zeke had gathered. Now under new command.
Sukuna stood on the wall.
"Today, we end this."
He raised his hand.
"Titans of the walls. Wake up."
The ground shook.
Thousands of Titans emerged.
"March."
END OF CHAPTER 36