Half an hour later the witness stand was still crowded with survivors.
"That's exactly what I saw that night!" Hannes shouted, voice rough but steady. "If it weren't for Zeke, I and all these people beside me would be dead a dozen times over!"
He stepped back slightly, and another refugee took his place, telling the same story: how the bells of Shiganshina had rung, how the outer gate had been kicked aside, how the Colossal and Armored Titans had come tearing through the darkness. One by one they spoke—farmers, a baker, a cartwright—each voice thin from grief but sure in its facts.
They all told how a Beast Titan had fought the two monsters, buying time for civilians to escape, how entire families were pulled back from the jaws of death because of that intervention.
"During the retreat," another man said, wiping his face with a sleeve, "he covered our backs like any human soldier. He wasn't some mindless beast—he fought like one of us. When the Armored Titan reached the inner gate, we thought all was lost. If the inner gate had fallen, it wouldn't have been only Shiganshina that burned—everything behind Wall Maria would have been at risk."
As the refugees spoke, Hannes produced a length of white cloth. He unfolded it slowly. At first people thought it was a banner; then they saw the names—scratched, smeared, written in blood.
One after another, names of the dead and the missing were visible across the cloth: neighbors, children, friends. The room went painfully quiet.
"Your Majesty, Commander-in-Chief," Hannes cried, voice cracking, "we ask you: forgive Zeke Yeager. Let him help us reclaim our home—let him lead us back to Shiganshina!"
The hall trembled with that plea. For a moment the spectacle of the trial fell away; raw grief filled the cavernous space and pressed at every listener's throat.
A scoffing voice rose from the crowd: "It's only Shiganshina. There are other lands to settle—why risk everything for one ruined district?" The question landed like a splinter in the room. The man who voiced it had meant to provoke practical calculation, but the reaction was immediate and colder than he expected.
A child on the witness stand—brown hair, green eyes sharp as knives—turned his head and stared at the speaker with such intensity the man shivered and fell silent.
Zachary raised a hand and the uproar subsided. He set the folded report down in front of him and peered at the portrait of the Colossal Titan printed there: a figure taller than the wall, head high as a mountain, its blank face looking down upon men like some living ruin.
The image made the hairs on necks stand up. He thought of the current technology, the cannons and bolts, and knew, with a bureaucrat's cold clarity, that killing such a thing would require a miracle—or a weapon no one here possessed.
"They're right," Zachary said finally, voice rough. "If the inner gate falls, the rest of Wall Maria could follow. We cannot pretend this is a local problem."
Murmurs ran through the audience. The people of Wall Sina leaned forward, thought of their comfortable life, and tried to force the images away. They told themselves the walls would hold. A few nobles snorted at the sentimentality of refugees. But presidential logic was harder to shrug off than tears or outrage: the loss of Shiganshina was a warning, not just a tragedy.
"After arresting Zeke, did you test him?" Zachary asked Erwin. "Did you try to transform him to see if he remains sane?"
"No," Erwin answered plainly. "He made clear that transformation requires a serum—he has none. Without it, he cannot become a Titan."
"So he is harmless now," Zachary summarized, glancing at the gagged figure kneeling at the center. "Then place him where he cannot harm the people and we'll decide later."
"How many lives were at stake that night?" Hannes demanded, voice steady again. "Do you know what a hundred fewer hands for the wall would mean in a future assault? If we can turn a single man's strength against that danger, is it not worth trying—if only to save more lives later?"
This struck a chord. Conversation shifted. Officials leaned together, measuring risk in spreadsheets and votes rather than in mourning. The peasants in the courtroom felt the logic too; a chance to regain their land was a hope money could not buy. Discussion turned into cautious acceptance.
"Weigh the human cost," Zachary said carefully. "If there is any strategic value to keeping him alive—if his power can be harnessed for our defense—then perhaps we must delay the sentence. If not—"
"If not, execute him," the Left Minister interrupted with a hard edge. "We cannot keep a man who devours others."
A ripple of unease moved through the crowd. Even some nobles flinched at the cruelties the minister named aloud. Erwin locked eyes with Zachary, searching for the pivot point: the man in the chair who could stamp decisions with a signature that no governor or commander could overrule.
"Your Majesty," Zachary said, turning to the throne, "I request that custody of Zeke Yeager be entrusted to the Survey Corps. Let them study him and, if they can make him an asset to humanity, allow it. If not—then judgment may follow."
The people murmured; some nodded, imagining a small chance of retaking Shiganshina. Others still looked frightened, disgusted, unwilling to gamble on a monster.
Across the hall, Annie and Bertholdt stood rigid, faces as blank as porcelain. They had said little since the trial began; now they watched the stitches of public opinion being sewn and tugged. Eren watched them, fists clenched, a whirlwind of memory and anger moving under his skin. He felt the fragile thread that held the refugee testimony tug hope slightly at his chest—and he hated himself for being moved even a little.
"Let's be cautious," a voice from the assembly said cautiously. "Try, but with guarantees. If he is to be used, then strict custody first."
"Yes," Hannes said quietly, folding the bloody cloth with care. "We don't wish to feed the walls with our neighbors again. If Zeke can help bring us home, then let him prove it."
The trial arena, once a furnace of fear and fury, cooled fractionally into deliberation. It was not mercy that swayed the crowd—it was calculation, the same grim math that had kept people alive behind stones for a hundred years. But calculation, too, could be a kind of compassion: the preservation of a future at the expense of a present certainty.
Outside, the bells in the capital tolled a dull, uncertain note. Inside, men argued and a woman held a cloth written with the dead. The country, for the first time in a long season, felt a decision turning on the hinge of one living man—Zeke Yeager—and on the fragile hope of those who had nothing left to lose.