Daniel had a rule.
When something in a dark tunnel knew his full name, he did not investigate.
When that something sounded suspiciously like a boy he knew from an anime, he investigated even less.
And when an extremely unhelpful system confirmed that reality itself had developed a scheduling problem, Daniel considered abandoning civilization altogether.
Unfortunately, civilization was currently the only thing standing between him and being eaten by a giant naked person.
So abandoning it would have to wait.
"Arlen," he whispered.
"Yes?"
"Tell me you heard that."
"I heard it."
"Good."
"Good?"
"Yes. Because if you hadn't, I'd have to accept that I'm hallucinating. And frankly, I'd prefer the alternative where we're both losing our minds."
Arlen stared at him as though he had finally understood that Daniel was not entirely sane.
Behind the wooden door, something shifted.
The hinges groaned.
"Daniel Cross," the voice repeated. "Are you going to leave me here?"
Daniel's blood ran cold.
There was no mistaking it now.
The voice was younger than he remembered. Rough around the edges, carrying a familiar impatience that sounded almost offended by the fact that someone had dared to keep it waiting.
Eren Jaeger.
Except that couldn't be right.
Daniel knew Eren's story. Or, at least, he had believed he did.
Eren should have been in Shiganshina, growing up beneath the walls, arguing with his mother, dreaming of joining the Survey Corps.
He should not have been behind an old wooden door in a forgotten underground passage, speaking to a stranger who had been born in another world.
Most importantly, Eren should not have known Daniel existed.
"How do you know my name?" Daniel called.
Arlen immediately grabbed his arm.
"What are you doing?"
"Gathering information."
"From the thing behind the door?"
"Would you prefer I ask the thing behind the flooded tunnel?"
Arlen looked toward the dark passage.
A moment later, he reconsidered his position.
Behind the door, silence.
Then Eren answered.
"You told me."
Daniel frowned.
"When?"
A quiet laugh came from the other side.
"Not yet."
Daniel stopped breathing.
That was not an answer.
That was the sort of answer people gave immediately before explaining that time was a circle, death was an illusion, and Daniel had somehow become responsible for saving the universe.
He hated those people.
Mostly because they were usually right.
"System," he whispered. "I need information."
\[HOST REQUEST ACKNOWLEDGED.\]
"Who is behind the door?"
\[IDENTITY UNCONFIRMED.\]
"Is it Eren Jaeger?"
\[CANONICAL INDIVIDUAL: EREN JAEGER.\]
\[PHYSICAL PRESENCE: UNCONFIRMED.\]
Daniel's eye twitched.
"How can you confirm his identity but not his physical presence?"
\[INSUFFICIENT DATA.\]
"You're an evolutionary system. Evolve a brain."
\[REQUEST OUTSIDE CURRENT CAPABILITIES.\]
Daniel closed his eyes.
One day, when he was sufficiently powerful, he was going to have a very unpleasant conversation with whoever had designed this thing.
Assuming the system had a designer.
Assuming that designer had a face.
Assuming Daniel survived long enough to complain.
Three very large assumptions.
"Listen," Daniel said to the door. "I'm going to ask you some questions. You answer them, and maybe we can work something out."
"You're injured."
Daniel stiffened.
The voice had lost its amusement.
"Your left shoulder is damaged. Your ribs are fractured. You have internal bleeding, and your right leg is barely functional."
Arlen looked at Daniel.
Then at the door.
Then back at Daniel.
"How does it know that?"
Daniel had no answer.
The voice continued.
"You should sit down before you fall down."
"I've received worse medical advice."
"No, you haven't."
Daniel opened his mouth.
Closed it.
Annoyingly, the thing might have been right.
He leaned against the wall.
"Fine. First question. Where are you?"
"Here."
Daniel stared at the door.
"Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. We have a philosopher."
"Where are you?"
The question caught Daniel off guard.
"Excuse me?"
"Where are you, Daniel Cross?"
He glanced at Arlen.
Arlen looked just as confused.
"Underground," Daniel answered cautiously.
"That's not what I asked."
"Then ask better questions."
The silence that followed was long enough to make Daniel wonder whether he had somehow offended a supernatural entity.
Then the voice spoke again.
"You're not supposed to be here."
Daniel's stomach tightened.
There it was.
The sentence he had been dreading since waking up in this world.
Not you shouldn't be here.
Not you don't belong here.
You're not supposed to be here.
As though someone had drawn a line through reality and Daniel had stepped over it.
"Neither are you," Daniel replied.
A faint scraping came from behind the door.
"Perhaps."
"Perhaps?"
"You think you know this world."
Daniel's fingers curled against the wall.
"I know enough."
"No. You know a story."
The words struck harder than they should have.
Daniel remembered the faces.
The battles.
The deaths.
The countless hours he had spent watching the anime, reading discussions, memorizing names and events.
He had arrived in this world believing that knowledge was his greatest advantage.
He knew when the Colossal Titan would appear.
He knew what lay beyond the walls.
He knew which people would die and which ones would survive.
He knew the shape of the tragedy.
But lately, his memories had begun to feel like a map of a city that was being rebuilt while he walked through it.
And the thing behind the door had just pointed out that he had mistaken the map for the territory.
"Who are you?" Daniel asked.
"Eren."
"Prove it."
Arlen looked at him incredulously.
"How exactly is he supposed to prove that?"
Daniel ignored him.
The voice answered without hesitation.
"My mother makes terrible stew."
Daniel blinked.
That was... surprisingly plausible.
"My father disappears whenever someone mentions money. Mikasa follows me around like I'm going to accidentally throw myself into a well. And Armin thinks reading books will somehow solve every problem in the world."
Daniel slowly turned toward Arlen.
Arlen's face had gone pale.
"That last part," he whispered, "is impossible."
"Why?"
"Because Armin is in Shiganshina."
Daniel looked back at the door.
"Armin Arlert?"
"Yes!"
"Your friend Armin Arlert?"
"How many Armins do you know?"
Daniel would have answered, but the voice behind the door spoke first.
"Tell Armin I found something."
Arlen stepped forward.
"Found what?"
"Something that shouldn't exist."
Daniel almost laughed.
"That's becoming a theme."
The wooden door shuddered.
Dust fell from the frame.
Then a thin line of pale light appeared beneath it.
Daniel stared.
The light was not yellow like the lantern.
It wasn't white like sunlight.
It was blue.
The same unnatural blue that accompanied the system's notifications.
Daniel's stomach dropped.
"Arlen," he whispered, "get behind me."
Arlen looked at Daniel's injured body.
"Behind you? You can barely stand."
"Then stand behind me while I barely stand."
For once, Arlen obeyed without arguing.
The blue light intensified.
Something clicked inside the door.
A lock turning.
Then another.
Then a third.
Daniel pushed himself away from the wall.
His legs trembled.
His shoulder screamed.
Every sensible instinct told him to run.
Unfortunately, the only available escape route was the passage behind them, and the sound of scraping had begun there again.
They were trapped between two unknown horrors.
Daniel had always imagined that being the protagonist of a story would be exciting.
He was beginning to suspect that protagonists were simply people who made terrible decisions while the universe watched with amusement.
The door opened.
Only a few inches.
Cold air rolled through the gap.
It smelled of rain.
Rain was impossible down here.
Daniel stared into the darkness beyond the door.
A hand appeared.
Small.
Human.
Covered in fresh blood.
The fingers curled around the edge of the door.
Then a boy stepped into the lantern light.
He looked about fifteen.
His dark hair hung messily around his face, and his green eyes were fixed on Daniel with an intensity that made Daniel instinctively straighten.
The boy wore a brown jacket over a dirty shirt. His trousers were torn at the knees, and his boots were covered in mud.
There was blood on his cheek.
Not much.
Just enough to suggest that the person who had hurt him had gotten close.
He looked human.
Completely, unmistakably human.
And yet Daniel felt a pressure in the air around him that reminded him of standing too close to a Titan.
The boy looked Daniel up and down.
Then he frowned.
"You're smaller than I expected."
Daniel stared at him.
"I'm sorry?"
"I thought you'd be taller."
"Right. Fantastic. I've been dragged into a supernatural nightmare, and the first thing I get is body-shaming."
The boy's expression remained serious.
Arlen stepped forward, his lantern shaking in his hand.
"Eren?"
The boy turned.
For the first time, his expression changed.
"Arlen?"
Arlen looked as though he had seen a ghost.
"What are you doing here?"
Eren glanced at the open doorway.
"That's a long story."
"You're supposed to be in Shiganshina!"
"I was."
"Were?"
Eren shrugged.
"Then I wasn't."
Arlen opened his mouth.
Closed it.
Opened it again.
"That doesn't make any sense!"
"Neither does this place."
Eren's gaze returned to Daniel.
Something about the way he looked at him made Daniel deeply uncomfortable.
It wasn't suspicion.
It was recognition.
As though Eren had been expecting Daniel to look exactly the way he did.
"You're Daniel Cross," Eren said.
Daniel nodded slowly.
"And you're Eren Jaeger."
"Yes."
"Wonderful. We've established the obvious. Now, can someone explain why we're having this conversation in a hole beneath the ground?"
Eren's expression darkened.
"Because someone brought me here."
"Who?"
"I don't know."
"How?"
"I don't know."
"Why?"
Eren's jaw tightened.
"I said I don't know."
The sudden anger in his voice silenced Daniel.
For a moment, Eren looked less like the determined boy Daniel remembered and more like a frightened child trying desperately not to show it.
Then the expression disappeared.
"I woke up in a room," Eren continued. "There were people outside. They called me a mistake."
Daniel felt the temperature in the tunnel drop.
"What people?"
Eren looked toward the darkness behind him.
"People who knew my name before I told them."
Daniel swallowed.
"Did they say anything else?"
Eren hesitated.
Then he reached into his jacket and pulled out a folded piece of paper.
The paper was stained with blood.
He held it out.
Daniel took it with his good hand.
There were only three lines written on it.
THE WALLS WILL FALL.
THE DEVOURER WILL FEED.
AND THE BOY WHO SEEKS FREEDOM WILL OPEN THE WRONG DOOR.
Daniel read the message twice.
Then a third time.
He looked up.
Eren was watching him.
"What does it mean?"
Daniel forced himself to breathe.
"I was hoping you knew."
Eren shook his head.
"But there's something else."
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small metal object.
Daniel's blood ran cold.
Another tag.
The same shape.
The same engraving.
EREN JAEGER.
Except this one was older.
Its edges were worn smooth, and its surface was scratched as though someone had carried it for years.
On the back, beneath the familiar numbers, was a second inscription.
846.
Daniel felt the floor tilt beneath him.
845 was the year Wall Maria fell.
846 was the year humanity began reorganizing its surviving population, struggling to recover from the catastrophe.
But this tag was already here.
Before either event.
And it belonged to Eren.
"Where did you get that?" Daniel asked.
Eren's eyes narrowed.
"It was around my neck when I woke up."
Daniel looked at the tag in his own pocket.
He pulled it out.
Two identical names.
Two different dates.
Two versions of a future that should not have existed.
The system flickered.
\[ANOMALY CONFIRMED.\]
\[PARALLEL HISTORICAL RECORDS DETECTED.\]
\[WARNING: HOST'S MEMORIES CANNOT DETERMINE WHICH RECORD IS PRIMARY.\]
Daniel's fingers tightened around the metal.
"Parallel historical records," he whispered.
Eren studied his face.
"You know what this is?"
Daniel laughed once.
It sounded horrible.
"No."
He looked at the two tags.
"But I'm beginning to suspect that whatever brought me here made a very serious mistake."
The system flashed again.
\[CORRECTION: HOST'S ARRIVAL WAS NOT RANDOM.\]
Daniel went completely still.
He read the message once.
Then again.
His heart began pounding.
"System," he whispered. "Explain."
\[ACCESS DENIED.\]
"Explain!"
\[ACCESS DENIED.\]
Daniel wanted to tear the thing out of his own skull.
Before he could try, Eren grabbed his wrist.
"Listen to me."
Daniel looked up.
Eren's expression had changed.
The anger was gone.
In its place was something far more unsettling.
Fear.
"I heard them talking before I escaped," Eren said. "They said the first one had arrived."
Daniel's mouth went dry.
"The first what?"
Eren shook his head.
"I don't know."
He tightened his grip.
"But they were arguing about whether to kill you."
Daniel stopped breathing.
Arlen backed away.
"Why would they want to kill Daniel?"
Eren looked at him.
"Because they said he wasn't supposed to survive his first transformation."
Silence swallowed the tunnel.
Daniel could hear his own heartbeat.
The first transformation.
His Titan form.
The claws.
The teeth.
The sensation of something ancient waking inside his bones.
He had assumed the system had given him those powers.
He had assumed his transformation was an accident of transmigration, some strange reward for crossing into another world.
But what if it wasn't a gift?
What if it was an experiment?
What if someone had been waiting for him to arrive?
"Who are they?" Daniel whispered.
Eren released his wrist.
"I don't know."
For once, Daniel believed him.
Then the scratching began again.
Not behind the wooden door.
Not in the passage behind them.
It came from inside the walls.
A thousand tiny claws dragging across stone.
Arlen raised the lantern.
The flame turned blue.
Daniel felt a familiar pressure gathering beneath his skin.
The system activated without being called.
\[EMERGENCY ALERT.\]
\[FOREIGN ENTITY DETECTED.\]
\[THREAT CLASSIFICATION: UNREGISTERED.\]
\[HOST'S CURRENT PHYSIOLOGY: INSUFFICIENT FOR ENGAGEMENT.\]
Daniel stared at the notifications.
"Oh, come on."
A crack appeared in the stone beside him.
Something moved behind it.
Eren drew his blade.
Arlen raised his knife with trembling hands.
Daniel tried to summon his Titan form.
Nothing happened.
His body remained stubbornly human.
Then a voice echoed through the walls.
It was not Eren's.
It was not human.
It sounded like several people speaking through the same mouth.
"THE FIRST HAS AWAKENED."
The stone cracked again.
"THE SECOND HAS RETURNED."
Eren's face drained of color.
Daniel looked at him.
"What does that mean?"
Eren didn't answer.
He was staring at the wall.
At the crack.
At the darkness spreading through the stone like veins beneath skin.
The voice spoke one final time.
"NOW BRING US THE DEVOURER."
The wall exploded.
And something reached through.
End of Chapter 8.