It was a gamble, a last resort. Death felt like an answer to his worsening life—a way to escape and pave a new road, to finally thrive. But how could the end become a new beginning?
When Ymir snapped in the hangar and caused the accident, it wasn't entirely an unconscious move born from a lifetime of poor choices and a year of relentless abuse. It was a desperate gambit, a leap into the unknown, hoping that instead of his usual miserable existence, he would be accepted into the covenant trial—a sure way to rise in the universe's hierarchy, but simultaneously a deadly endeavor fraught with unimaginable dangers.
Ever since he could remember, as a six-year-old kid from an asteroid belt teetering on the edge of a galaxy, enlightened beings of all races had been like a beacon to him—but not one of hope. They were a beacon of what he believed he would never become, what he could never achieve.
He could only watch their exploits and achievements through the massive neon screens that flickered in the station's common areas, or read fragmented articles to pass the endless, monotonous hours. He had never managed to see one of these beings in person. The universe was vast and ever-expanding, and Ymir—a poor soul struggling to survive each day—lived in what amounted to the dumping ground for the universe's unwanted refuse. He was one piece of that garbage himself.
Even within the confines of the space station, he only heard more rumors that expanded the mythology that kept forming inside his restless mind. The stories grew more elaborate with each telling, weaving themselves into the fabric of his desperate dreams.
One of the most persistent rumors he encountered was that the only way to find oneself in the covenant trial was through an act that all souls must eventually face. When he first heard this rumor, he disregarded it, not daring to believe its validity. The idea seemed too fantastical, too convenient to be real.
According to the whispered murmurs circulating through the station's darker corners, death itself was the key to entering the trial grounds. Death served as a precursor to the elevation of the soul, a necessary transformation that separated the worthy from the masses.
Back then, Ymir had questioned the logic: if death truly made one a covenant sigil holder, then why wasn't the universe overflowing with these enlightened beings? Either the rumor was nothing more than wishful thinking, or there was something else at play—some hidden mechanism that determined worthiness.
Core information about the process of enlightenment was kept deliberately hidden from the forsaken masses and the expendable cannon fodder of the universe. Those dwellers who possessed no value, no meaningful past, no present purpose, and absolutely no discernible future were left to piece together fragments of truth from scattered whispers.
Only the higher echelons of society decided to whom they would share this precious knowledge, and how much they would reveal. If anyone dared to pry too deeply into their closely guarded secrets, regardless of where they were or how well they thought they were hidden, they would disappear without a trace—as if they had never existed at all.
It was as though the knowledge itself possessed a living consciousness. If you overreached, if you grasped for more than you were deemed worthy of, it would begin complaining to its masters, alerting them to your transgression. This terrifying reality had pushed Ymir to question the rumor's validity even more intensely.
Even so, he reasoned, a rumor always carried some chance of being true, no matter how infinitesimal that probability might seem. And if death truly was the beginning rather than the end, then why should he fear it?
During his final year on the station, Ymir had reached a grim but liberating conclusion: he was as good as dead anyway. His boss had methodically ensured that he couldn't escape that fate, systematically sealing off all possible escape routes and transforming what had once been his home into nothing more than a death row—a metallic prison floating aimlessly through the cold void of space.
So if he couldn't escape his predetermined fate, if he was inevitably headed for an early death, and with the tantalizing possibility of the rumor's truth looming constantly above him like a sword of Damocles, why not seize control and take matters into his own hands?
If he was going out regardless, he would do it on his own terms, according to his own conditions. In those final moments, he reverted to the same survival mentality he had possessed as a ten-year-old child—his thoughts focused solely on himself and no one else. Self-preservation had always been his primary instinct.
Now that he had gone through with his plan and staged what he hoped would be the most comfortable death he could arrange for himself, Ymir had expected death to be numb, cold, and utterly still—like swimming in an endless sea of eternal darkness, completely severed from all signs of life and consciousness.
And for a moment that felt like an eternity stretched into infinity, it was exactly that. The profound peace that followed his transition was strangely infectious, spreading through his consciousness like a gentle tide. Undoubtedly, it became euphoric at some point, transcending anything he had ever experienced in his mundane existence.
He temporarily forgot about the fact that he had gambled his entire life on nothing more than an unverified rumor. For those precious few seconds, he simply enjoyed the extraordinary feeling of weightlessness—a sublime sensation of being suspended in some kind of viscous, nurturing liquid that enveloped his essence completely.
But then, abruptly and without warning, that perfect tranquility vanished.
He found himself plummeting in an uncontrolled free fall, as though an invisible, ethereal hand had suddenly snatched him from his sea of peaceful clouds and hurled him downward with tremendous force. With this violent transition came an intense burning sensation—a searing pain so severe it forced him to muffle a deeply painful groan.
Ymir's mind felt completely overwhelmed and utterly exhausted. Just moments ago, he had felt as though he were floating on cloud nine—death had suited him perfectly, better than life ever had. He had never before experienced such a profoundly freeing sensation, such complete liberation from earthly concerns.
But in the span of a single heartbeat, he was being treated like an inanimate object, jerked around by forces beyond his comprehension or control. He had been tired before, but now, with this new agony coursing through his body, his initial groan transformed into desperate, anguished screams.
He could feel the backs of both hands burning intensely, as if something or someone were writing on them with a brush made of molten lava instead of conventional ink. The pain was unlike anything he had ever imagined possible.
The wind whipped mercilessly against his face with such fierce intensity that he couldn't even manage to open his eyes properly. His oversized tracksuit flapped wildly and chaotically around his falling form, and he felt his glasses slipping away from his face, lost to the rushing air. Instinctively, he raised his forearms to shield his eyes from the brutal wind, managing to create only the smallest sliver of vision through which he could glimpse his surroundings.
Since his hands were positioned so close to his eyes in this protective stance, he managed to catch a brief but clear glimpse of what was happening to him. He could observe some kind of mysterious black ethereal symbol—perhaps a single word or an entire complex phrase—being inscribed in real time, slowly and deliberately, across the skin of his hands.
The more intricate and complex the symbol became, the more excruciating the pain grew. This same agonizing process was occurring simultaneously on both of his hands, doubling his suffering.
Then, cutting through the chaos of wind and pain, a monotone feminine voice echoed around him—directionless and omnipresent, seeming to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. The ground beneath him, the air surrounding him, even his own tormented mind—he couldn't determine the source.
"Aspirant, your covenant trial awaits."
The voice was unnaturally calm and deeply solemn, laced with an unmistakable superiority that bordered on outright disdain. He didn't have sufficient time to properly register the voice's implications or absorb the full meaning it was attempting to convey.
Suddenly, brilliant white light engulfed him completely. Its sheer uniformity was overwhelming and nauseating, as though the entire world sought to blind him permanently. Every sensation—from the terrifying feeling of endless falling to the searing pain in his hands, from the mysterious voice to this blinding white light—occurred in such rapid succession that he couldn't find the time to fully comprehend the extraordinary events unfolding around him.
He felt like nothing more than a helpless bystander in his own theater of life. The small semblance of control he had gained over his existence by orchestrating his own demise and desperately hoping for the rumor to prove true had been completely stripped away from him, rendering him a mere spectator rather than an active participant in his own destiny.
As the intense light gradually receded and his traumatized sight slowly returned to normal function, the scene of the ground below revealed itself to be simultaneously mesmerizing, breathtaking, and absolutely terrifying.
A vast maze—an incomprehensibly complex labyrinth—stretched as far as his eyes could perceive, covered entirely in an endless blanket of pristine white.