She didn’t answer. But old Mr. Braus, leaning on a fence post, spat tobacco juice and muttered, “That’s the Wings of Freedom, boy. They’re offering their hearts to humanity. To the ghosts of every fool who died before ’em.” Twenty years earlier, the Salute hadn’t existed.

Ilse understood. She stood, turned to the survivors, and raised her right fist to her own heart—then extended it outward, open-palmed, as if releasing a caged bird.

Viktor survived. Barely. His right leg was crushed beneath a collapsing horse. As his soldiers burned the dead (no time for coffins; the smoke would attract more Titans), he watched a young corporal named Ilse Langnar kneel beside her dying squad leader. The man couldn’t speak. His throat had been torn. But he clawed at his own chest, fumbled for Ilse’s hand, and pressed it over his heart. Then he pointed at the sky.

Viktor nodded. He looked at the smoke rising from the funeral pyre. Then he faced the remaining soldiers—twenty-three hollow-eyed men and women—and raised his own fist. “Present hearts.”

That changed after the disastrous Shiganshina Retrieval Operation of 831.