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The battlefield did not smell like victory.
Smoke hung low over the torn earth, clinging to broken spears and shattered shields as if reluctant to leave. The wind pushed ash across the ground in thin, whispering sheets, but it could not carry away the stench of blood. That had soaked too deeply into the soil.
Eren stood among the dead and waited for the shaking to stop.
It took longer than it should have.
His hands were steady on the sword's hilt. That was the strange part. His breathing had already slowed, his posture relaxed into something close to rest. The body at his feet—armored, human—was cooling fast. A soldier of the kingdom, judging by the insignia cracked beneath Eren's boot.
He had not hesitated when he struck.
The hesitation came after.
Eren stared at the corpse, then looked away, eyes drifting across the field. Hundreds lay scattered where the lines had broken. Some had died cleanly. Most had not. The banners of the kingdom had been trampled into the mud, their colors indistinguishable beneath grime and gore.
They had lost this land.
Not today—weeks ago, if the state of the bodies was any indication. This was the aftermath of a retreat that had turned into a rout. No burial parties. No prayers. Just rot and silence.
A safer man would have left already.
Eren did not move.
His stomach tightened.
Not pain. Not yet.
Hunger.
It started low, a dull pressure beneath his ribs, as if something inside him were slowly folding in on itself. He recognized the sensation immediately, the way one recognizes a bad habit by the first thought that justifies it.
You can't afford to waste anything.
The thought surfaced unbidden, smooth and practical.
Eren exhaled through his nose. "Not yet," he muttered, unsure who he was speaking to.
The wind carried no answer.
He stepped around the corpse and crouched near a broken supply wagon. Most of it had been stripped clean—food, water, anything portable taken by survivors or scavengers. What remained was smashed wood and dried blood.
Eren pressed his palm against the dirt and pushed himself upright again. His knees complained, old aches flaring briefly before subsiding. His body was stronger than it had been days ago. Stronger than it had any right to be.
He did not dwell on that.
The hunger deepened.
It was patient. It did not scream. It simply waited, like a creditor confident the debt would be paid.
Eren turned back toward the corpse.
The soldier's face was frozen in something between shock and relief. His eyes were open, staring at nothing. Eren had seen that look before—many times, in places that had nothing to do with this world.
The memory tried to surface.
Eren cut it off.
He knelt beside the body and placed two fingers against the man's neck out of habit. Cold. Long gone. No threat.
Good.
For a moment, he simply stayed there, kneeling among the dead, listening to the wind pass through broken armor and snapped arrows. This was the point where most people would pray, if they were inclined to that sort of thing.
Eren was not.
Instead, he weighed a choice.
He could walk away.
The thought was there, clear and unforced. He did not need what lay before him. Not immediately. There were roads nearby, cities farther out—dangerous, but populated. Food could be stolen. Work could be found. Survival, slow and uncertain, but familiar.
He had lived that way before.
The hunger pulsed, just once.
Or you could be efficient.
Eren's jaw tightened.
Efficiency had always been easy for him. It asked nothing of the conscience, only that the outcome be measured and acceptable. He had justified worse than this with less at stake.
His hand hovered over the corpse.
Something in his chest shifted—not guilt, not fear. Awareness. A thin, uncomfortable clarity that this choice mattered more than it should.
Not because of the man.
Because of what choosing meant.
Eren closed his eyes.
When he opened them, the world felt closer, sharper. The sounds of the battlefield faded, replaced by the slow thud of his heartbeat. The hunger unfurled, no longer content to wait.
He placed his hand on the corpse.
The sensation was immediate.
Heat surged up his arm, wrong and intimate, as if something beneath his skin had awakened. The hunger bloomed—not as pain, but as direction. As purpose.
For an instant, Eren thought he heard a sound. Not a voice. More like the echo of one, distorted and distant, pressed through layers of flesh and bone.
Then it was gone.
The body beneath his hand collapsed inward, armor denting as if crushed by invisible pressure. The flesh did not rot or dissolve. It vanished, drawn away in a way that left no blood, no mess—only emptiness.
Eren jerked his hand back and staggered to his feet.
His breathing came faster now.
The hunger receded, satisfied in a way that felt temporary. Conditional.
Information surfaced at the edge of his perception. Not words. Not numbers. Just a certainty, cold and undeniable.
He was stronger.
Not dramatically. Not enough to feel invincible. But enough that the difference could not be ignored.
Eren flexed his fingers slowly.
This had happened before.
The first time, he had thought it was desperation playing tricks on him. The second time, coincidence became harder to argue. Now—
Now it was a pattern.
Eren looked down at his hand.
There was no mark on it. No sign of what he had done. If anyone found this place later, they would see a battlefield missing one more body than it should have had. Nothing else.
Clean.
Efficient.
The thought made something twist in his gut that had nothing to do with hunger.
He turned away from the corpse and scanned the horizon. Smoke columns marked distant skirmishes or burning villages—hard to tell which. The road east was visible between low hills, rutted and darkened by traffic. Soldiers would come eventually. Or scavengers. Or worse.
Staying was not an option.
As he adjusted the strap of his pack and started walking, another presence brushed the edge of his awareness. Not hunger this time. Not information.
Pressure.
As if something unseen were watching him leave, amused rather than displeased.
Eren did not look back.
He had made his choice.
For now.
The road stretched ahead, leading deeper into a kingdom that had already proven it could not protect its dead—only use them. Eren walked with steady steps, the wind at his back, the ash settling slowly behind him.
The hunger slept.
He did not trust that it would stay that way.