The first thing Daniel Cross learned about being crushed beneath several tons of rubble was that screaming accomplished absolutely nothing.
The second thing he learned was that the human body possessed a truly impressive capacity for making noises that should never come from a living person.
He discovered both lessons within the first thirty seconds.
"Ah—"
Pain shot through his left shoulder.
"SHIT!"
His voice bounced off the broken stone surrounding him.
"Okay. Okay, that's fine."
He lay still for a moment, staring into the darkness.
"That's a lie. Nothing about this is fine."
His right arm was trapped beneath a fallen beam. Something heavy pinned his legs, and every breath dragged a fresh wave of pain through his ribs. Dust coated his tongue. Blood trickled from a cut above his eyebrow and crawled toward his ear.
He tried moving his left foot.
Nothing.
He tried the right.
A sharp, unpleasant sensation answered him.
Daniel immediately stopped.
"Right. Excellent. Wonderful. I'm going to die in a hole."
Silence.
Then, from somewhere beyond the collapsed tunnel, came a sound that made his stomach tighten.
Scraping.
Slow, deliberate scraping.
Something was dragging its claws across stone.
Daniel shut his eyes.
"No."
The scraping stopped.
He held his breath.
A wet clicking sound followed.
Then another.
Then several more, overlapping until they resembled the chattering of a crowd whispering behind a closed door.
The twelve creatures.
Daniel remembered them too clearly.
Their elongated limbs. Their distorted bodies. The way they had moved through the underground passage without making a sound until they wanted him to hear them.
And the worst part?
They hadn't seemed interested in eating him.
They had seemed interested in stopping him from getting somewhere.
Or reaching something.
He opened his eyes.
"System."
Nothing happened.
"System?"
A faint blue flicker appeared at the edge of his vision.
[HOST STATUS: CRITICAL]
[PHYSICAL CONDITION: SEVERE TRAUMA]
[TITAN ENERGY: 8%]
[TRANSFORMATION STATUS: UNSTABLE]
Daniel stared at the numbers.
"Eight percent?"
The system offered no explanation.
"Eight percent of what? Battery life? Blood sugar? My remaining will to live?"
A new line appeared.
[EMERGENCY RECOVERY PROTOCOL UNAVAILABLE]
"Of course it is."
He swallowed.
His throat felt as though he had swallowed a handful of sand.
"Can I at least get a manual?"
[NEGATIVE.]
Daniel laughed.
It hurt.
He immediately regretted it.
"Right. No manual. No medical insurance. No customer support."
The scraping resumed.
Closer this time.
Daniel slowly turned his head toward the narrow gap between two slabs of stone.
He couldn't see anything beyond it.
But something on the other side could see him.
He felt it.
The same instinct that had warned him before his first transformation was now screaming at him to move.
Unfortunately, his body had apparently decided that moving was an optional feature.
Daniel pulled against the beam trapping his arm.
Pain exploded through his shoulder.
He bit down on his lip until he tasted blood.
The beam shifted.
Barely.
He pulled again.
A small stone rolled away.
Then another.
Something above him creaked.
Daniel froze.
"Please don't."
The ceiling groaned.
"Please, for the love of—"
A fist-sized rock dropped onto his forehead.
He saw stars.
"SON OF A—!"
The entire pile shifted.
Dust burst into the air.
Daniel threw his free arm over his head as stones crashed around him. One slammed into his hip. Another struck his back.
Then, just as suddenly as it began, the collapse stopped.
Silence returned.
Daniel lay beneath the rubble, trembling.
He waited for the pain to settle.
It didn't.
"Okay," he whispered. "New plan."
He drew a shaky breath.
"Plan A was getting out."
Another breath.
"Plan B is not dying."
He paused.
"Honestly, Plan B has always been the better plan."
The system flickered again.
[NOTICE: HOST'S TITAN PHYSIOLOGY IS EXPERIENCING RAPID DEGRADATION.]
[FORCED REVERSION COMPLETE.]
Daniel's eyes widened.
"What?"
His stomach twisted.
The familiar pressure inside his body vanished.
The unnatural strength that had held the fifteen-meter Titan together drained away, leaving behind ordinary human flesh, broken bones, and an overwhelming amount of pain.
His transformation had ended.
He was human again.
Trapped beneath several tons of stone.
With twelve nightmare creatures somewhere nearby.
Daniel stared into the darkness.
"You couldn't have told me that BEFORE I got buried?"
[HOST WAS UNCONSCIOUS DURING INITIAL REVERSION.]
"That doesn't make me feel better!"
No response.
He exhaled through clenched teeth.
Then he noticed something.
The rubble pinning his legs had shifted when his Titan body collapsed. A narrow space had opened near his right side, just wide enough for him to squeeze through if he could free his arm.
It wasn't an escape route.
It was an opportunity to exchange one horrible situation for another slightly less horrible situation.
Daniel would take it.
He began pulling loose stones from the gap.
One.
Two.
Three.
Each movement sent fresh pain through his body.
He kept going.
After several minutes, his right hand finally slipped free.
He nearly cried.
Not from pain.
From gratitude.
"Beautiful," he whispered, flexing his fingers. "Absolutely beautiful. Never taking hands for granted again."
He pushed against the beam trapping his left arm.
It moved a fraction.
He tried again.
This time, the wood cracked.
Daniel sucked in a breath and pulled hard.
The beam broke.
His arm came free.
For several seconds, he lay motionless, breathing through clenched teeth.
Then he began dragging himself toward the gap.
His legs were in bad shape. He couldn't tell whether anything was broken, and he wasn't particularly interested in finding out.
He pulled himself forward using his elbows.
Stone scraped against his skin.
His shirt caught on a jagged edge and tore.
Something crunched beneath his palm.
He ignored it.
Then his fingers touched something cold.
Metal.
Daniel stopped.
He looked down.
The tag.
The one he'd found earlier.
It lay beside his hand, half-covered in dust.
He had forgotten about it during the collapse.
Now, with the darkness pressing in around him, he found himself staring at the engraved name.
EREN JAEGER.
The letters looked painfully ordinary.
A simple name on a piece of metal.
Except Eren Jaeger wasn't supposed to be here.
Not like this.
Not in a forgotten underground passage beneath a place Daniel barely understood.
And certainly not attached to an object connected to whatever the hell those creatures were guarding.
He picked up the tag.
The system immediately responded.
[FOREIGN OBJECT DETECTED.]
[IDENTIFICATION: INCOMPLETE.]
[ASSOCIATED RECORD: RESTRICTED.]
Daniel's mouth went dry.
"Restricted by whom?"
[ACCESS DENIED.]
"Naturally."
He turned the tag over.
There were scratches on the reverse side, so faint he had mistaken them for damage.
He rubbed away the dust with his thumb.
A series of numbers emerged.
845.
Daniel stopped breathing.
The year.
He knew that year.
Wall Maria fell in 845.
The Colossal Titan appeared. The outer gate was breached. Titans poured into human territory, and an entire world was thrown into chaos.
Eren's life changed forever.
Mikasa lost what little remained of her family.
Armin watched the walls of his world crumble.
And humanity began its desperate retreat.
Daniel stared at the numbers until his eyes hurt.
The problem wasn't that the tag existed.
The problem was that the date was wrong.
The story he remembered began in 845.
But Daniel had entered this world in 844.
He had spent months trying to reconcile the geography, the technology, and the people with his memories of the anime.
Most discrepancies had been small.
A different road.
A missing building.
A conversation that had happened earlier than he expected.
He had blamed imperfect memory.
But this?
This was different.
He knew the canon timeline.
He knew the names.
He knew what was supposed to happen.
And something had just handed him evidence that the world was keeping its own schedule.
A low rumble passed through the tunnel.
Daniel shoved the tag into his pocket.
The creatures were moving again.
He crawled.
The gap widened enough for him to pull his upper body through, followed by his legs. He emerged into a narrow cavity between two collapsed sections of the passage.
Cold air touched his face.
He had never been so happy to smell damp stone.
Then he heard a voice.
"Daniel?"
He froze.
It came from the darkness ahead.
A human voice.
Hoarse. Frightened.
Alive.
"Daniel, if that's you, say something!"
Arlen.
Daniel almost laughed from relief.
"Here!"
His voice came out weaker than he'd intended.
"Over here!"
A lantern appeared around the corner.
Arlen stumbled into view, one hand gripping the wall and the other holding a small blade. Blood covered his sleeve, and his face was pale beneath the grime.
He looked at Daniel.
Then at the rubble behind him.
Then back at Daniel.
"What happened to you?"
Daniel considered the question.
"I fought a building."
Arlen blinked.
"You fought a building?"
"The building won."
For one absurd second, Arlen looked as though he might laugh.
Then he noticed the blood running down Daniel's leg.
His expression changed.
"Can you walk?"
"Define walk."
"Daniel."
"Yes. Probably. With enthusiasm."
Arlen crouched beside him and helped him sit up.
Daniel nearly blacked out.
Arlen caught him before his head struck the wall.
"You're hurt worse than I thought."
"Your observational skills are breathtaking."
"Keep talking. It means you're conscious."
"Then prepare yourself. I've got years of material."
Arlen tore a strip from the bottom of his shirt and wrapped it around Daniel's leg as tightly as he could.
Daniel hissed through his teeth.
"Sorry."
"Don't apologize. Just get me out of here."
Arlen glanced toward the collapsed passage.
His face tightened.
"I saw what happened."
Daniel stopped joking.
"What did you see?"
"The giant."
The word hung between them.
Arlen swallowed.
"It came out of nowhere. One moment you were there, and the next..." He looked away. "I thought it had eaten you."
Daniel said nothing.
"I ran," Arlen continued. "I know I should've helped, but I couldn't move. And then those things appeared."
"The twelve?"
Arlen stared at him.
"You counted them?"
"I had a lot of free time."
"They weren't chasing me."
Daniel slowly turned his head.
"What?"
"They passed right by me. Didn't even look at me." Arlen lowered his voice. "They were all heading toward the place where you disappeared."
The air seemed to grow colder.
Daniel looked toward the tunnel behind Arlen.
The creatures hadn't been hunting randomly.
They had followed him.
And now they were moving toward the rubble where his Titan had collapsed.
"How long ago?"
"Maybe ten minutes."
"Then we need to leave."
Arlen nodded.
He slid Daniel's arm across his shoulders and helped him stand.
Daniel's right leg buckled immediately.
He grabbed Arlen's shirt.
"Okay. Walking is overrated."
"Lean on me."
"I weigh a lot."
"You weigh less than a corpse."
"That's encouraging."
They moved slowly through the narrow passage.
Every step was an argument between Daniel's determination and his body's desire to lie down and surrender.
Arlen kept glancing behind them.
Daniel noticed.
"How did you get around the collapse?"
"There's another route. A maintenance passage leading toward the old drainage tunnels."
"You knew about that?"
"My father used to work in the underground district."
Daniel filed that away.
There were too many questions, and he lacked the strength to ask even half of them.
They reached a junction where the passage split in three directions.
Arlen raised the lantern.
"The drainage tunnel is this way."
Daniel looked at the other two passages.
One was narrow and partially flooded.
The second sloped downward into darkness.
The third had been sealed with a thick wooden door.
Something scratched the other side of it.
Arlen went completely still.
Daniel felt his stomach drop.
A second scratch followed.
Then a soft, deliberate knock.
Three times.
Knock.
Knock.
Knock.
Arlen backed away.
"What is that?"
Daniel stared at the door.
"I was hoping you'd tell me."
The system flickered.
[WARNING: HOST APPROACHING AN UNREGISTERED ENTITY.]
[THREAT CLASSIFICATION: UNAVAILABLE.]
Daniel swallowed.
"System, scan the door."
[UNABLE TO COMPLY.]
"Why?"
[ENTITY IS NOT CURRENTLY VISIBLE.]
"Then scan whatever is behind it!"
[UNABLE TO COMPLY.]
Daniel almost screamed.
"WHAT EXACTLY ARE YOU GOOD FOR?"
The door creaked.
Just a little.
Arlen grabbed Daniel's arm.
"We're leaving."
For once, Daniel had no objection.
They turned toward the drainage tunnel.
Then a voice came from behind the door.
"Daniel?"
Both boys stopped.
The voice was quiet.
Young.
Familiar.
Impossible.
Daniel felt every hair on his body rise.
The voice spoke again.
"Daniel Cross."
Arlen looked at him with naked terror.
"How does it know your name?"
Daniel couldn't answer.
Because he knew that voice.
He had heard it before.
Not in this world.
Not in person.
But in the memories of a story he had watched from the other side of reality.
A boy who dreamed of freedom.
A boy who hated being trapped.
A boy whose anger would one day shake the foundations of the world.
Eren Jaeger.
Daniel stumbled backward.
"No."
The lantern flickered.
The voice behind the door gave a soft, almost amused sigh.
"You took your time."
Daniel's hand went to the tag in his pocket.
His fingers closed around the cold metal.
Then the system displayed a message he'd never seen before.
[CRITICAL STORY EVENT DETECTED.]
[CANONICAL INDIVIDUAL: EREN JAEGER.]
[STATUS: ALIVE.]
[LOCATION: UNKNOWN.]
[WARNING: TEMPORAL INCONSISTENCY CONFIRMED.]
A final line appeared beneath it.
[HOST'S MEMORIES OF THE ORIGINAL TIMELINE ARE NO LONGER A RELIABLE SURVIVAL RESOURCE.]
Daniel stared at the words.
Behind the door, something began to laugh.
And for the first time since arriving in this world, Daniel Cross understood something far more frightening than the existence of Titans.
He might know how this story ended.
But he had absolutely no idea which story he was in.