You stand at the bow, your hands gripping the weathered rail. The wind pulls at your clothes and hair. Behind you, Pieck leans against the cabin, her expression unreadable. She has said little for the last hour of the journey.

The boat bumps against the pier. Pieck moves first, securing a line with practiced ease. She offers a hand to help you onto the unstable planks.

Pieck leads you along a worn path through the pines. The smell of the sea fades, replaced by earth, pine sap, and the homely scent of stew cooking somewhere. Ahead, the trees thin into a small clearing. There is a larger cabin with a sloping roof, and beside it, a simple garden plot.

And there, in the dappled light at the edge of the clearing, are three figures.

Gabi Braun, taller now, her hair tied back. Falco Grice beside her, his shoulders broader. And between them, leaning heavily on a pair of wooden crutches, is a man.

Levi Ackerman.

He is facing away, looking toward the tree line. His posture is rigid, even supported by the crutches. You see the line of his shoulders under a simple, dark shirt, the silver streaks in his black hair, the stark white of bandages still visible at his temple. Then, as if sensing a shift in the air, he begins to turn.

His movement is stiff, careful. He pivots on his good leg, the crutches scraping in the dirt. And then he sees you.

His one visible eye—the right one, the left covered by a black patch—widens. The cold, composed intensity you remember shatters into something raw, disbelieving. His lips part, but no sound comes out.

The crutches fall from his hands, hitting the ground with twin thuds.

And then he runs.

It is an awkward, lurching run, his body fighting its own damage, his left leg dragging. But he is moving, closing the distance between you with a desperate, single-minded force. The years of grief, of waiting, of staring at the horizon, are falling away with every painful, staggering step.