[Awaken, sinner.]
The voice reached me without emotion. No tone. No presence. No will. It echoed—not like something human, but like a mechanism repeating a command.
There was nothing there. A sea of darkness, endless and hollow, where I drifted without form or weight.
[Defeat the darkness…]
The voice continued.
Something about it unsettled me. Deeply. Enough to make me want to wake up from that dream—if it even was one. Without realizing it, my body twisted, cold sweat sliding down my skin.
After a few seconds, I began to hear sounds—still distant—sounds that didn't belong to that void.
Heavy wheels rolled along a road, shaking everything as they passed over stone. Hooves followed—slow, uneven gallops, accompanied by anxious neighs.
A carriage.
"Hm… hey? You alright?"
Something grabbed my shoulder. The contact was rough—too real for a dream. Cold pierced through my skin, burning from the inside.
The darkness began to recede as sound forced its way in—wood creaking, iron rattling, the uneven sway of an old structure in motion. The labored breathing of horses.
My eyes opened with effort. The light was dull, gray, distant. My breath escaped in small white clouds. My fingers refused to respond—stiff, numb, barely mine.
Low murmurs echoed around me. Some stopped the moment I tried to move. The wood beneath me groaned.
"Ah… so you're—"
The murmurs vanished all at once, swallowed by a deafening hum.
The mysterious voice didn't stop.
[There is no salvation in this world.]
[Except for you.]
[Awaken.]
The cold sank into my bones. My consciousness grew heavy. My vision darkened. Then everything went black.
***
Pain came before awareness.
Something solid struck my back—not hard enough to break bone, just enough to rip the air from my lungs.
"Hey. Don't sleep wherever you want."
I lifted my head on reflex.
In front of me stood a man slightly taller than I was. Dark-skinned. Brown hair and beard, both unkempt—not from neglect, but from someone who never had time to care.
My fingers were purple. I couldn't feel them properly. When I tried to move them, the response came late and weak, as if they no longer belonged to me. The cold gnawed at my skin, forcing my body to tremble. The air burned as it entered my lungs, each breath followed by a sharp pain in my chest.
All I managed to say was—
"…What?"
The only thing protecting me from the cold were a few torn rags—my clothes, if they could even be called that. Useless.
"Tsk." The man clicked his tongue, clearly used to sights like this, yet unable to hide a trace of pity. "Look, man… sorry for waking you up like that, alright? Here."
Despite being in no better condition than me, he grabbed one of the cloths beside him and tossed it my way.
"Listen. This is for your own good—it's better not to sleep too long," he continued, lowering his voice.
"If you make it look like you're already gone… to them, you're just merchandise with no value. Dead weight gets discarded. Never went through it myself, but rotting in these frozen mountains—while still alive—can't be pleasant."
I tried to move, but my body refused to cooperate. A metallic sound echoed as I shifted. My wrists screamed in protest—raw and wounded from iron shackles. Every touch of freezing metal against torn skin sent sharp pain through my arms.
I looked around.
It was worse than I expected.
Bodies piled inside the carriage, wrapped in cloth far too thin for this cold. Some trembled openly. Others lay still—not calm, but exhausted beyond resistance.
Purple hands. Broken nails. Shallow breathing. The air stank of iron, old sweat, and restrained fear.
"Pretty miserable, huh?" the man muttered. "Anyway. Better save your strength. You don't wanna pass out from exhaustion here, like I said before."
My memory caught up.
Everything made sense now.
***
It wasn't hard to understand why I was there.
I was a criminal.
An assassin, according to the records. The reason didn't matter. Neither did the context. Only the result.
I was caught. Judged too quickly for any defense to matter. Sentenced like so many others deemed unnecessary.
Execution would've been simpler. I had nothing to lose either way.
But the capital doesn't waste resources. As long as a body breathes, as long as arms can still move, there's value to be extracted. So they shackled me—not to restrain me, but to count me among the State's assets.
Everyone there was a slave.
Not all of them criminals like me. Some were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.
In the end, it was the same.
"So cold…" a woman whimpered.
I wouldn't say I was moved by the sight of her covering her baby's mouth to keep it from crying—a desperate act. Noise meant punishment.
Still…
I stared at the rag the man beside me had given me and tossed it toward her in a quick motion. I said nothing. She looked confused for a moment, then accepted it without hesitation.
"Wow. You gave away the cloth I just lent you," the man said. "Not that I mind."
"You gave it to me, didn't you?" I replied. Not rudely—just honestly. "Then it's mine. And I'll do what I want with it."
"Eh…? O-okay..."
"By the way," I continued, "why is it snowing this hard? Doesn't match the season."
"Good eye. Heard a portal opened a few kilometers from here," he said. "You know...Tartarus stuff."
The name sounded familiar. I didn't know much, though. Everything I knew came from fragmented conversations during my work as an assassin.
"And that explains the weather?"
"It does. When Saint-tier monsters appear, the entire atmosphere reacts. Air. Earth. Everything."
I nodded. It made sense.
Still, a question surfaced.
"This trip… is it really necessary?" I asked. "Why risk death—for slaves and officers—when we could just wait for things to calm down?"
The man smiled. A short one. Empty.
"Haha… wait? We don't have that luxury. We were already being transported when this happened. In short—there's no turning back."
"That's it?" I asked.
"Well. For me…" he continued. His expression was a strange mix of restrained hatred and absolute calm. "It's actually good for them. The weaker slaves die—get discarded like trash. The strong keep moving. Keep being tested."
I stayed silent. The weight of his words lingered in the air.
He noticed.
"…Of course. That's just what I think." The hatred vanished, replaced by a friendly smile. That made it worse.
"I see."
We fell silent for several minutes. The kind of silence that doesn't calm—it accumulates. Then a horse's neigh tore through the air, sharp and panicked. Even from afar, the creature's presence pressed down on everything. The animal sensed it long before we did.
We weren't the only caravan. Others lined up behind us, transporting different things—goods, weapons… Slaves.
The sudden stop blocked the path, forming a jam of wood, iron, and disposable lives.
"Quiet!" one of the officers shouted. But not at the horse.
The crack of the whip echoed—clean, almost precise. It struck a slave who complained too loudly about the cold. The man—who had just been hit—had no choice but to cover his mouth to avoid making a sound.
The man beside me clenched his fists.
He said nothing. His expression remained still, but there was something tight beneath it—anger held down by force. Not because the pain was familiar to him, but because there was nothing he could do to stop it.
Soon, the whip found another target.
The horses.
Even the animals were forced to move.
The wheels began to grind again. One by one, the carriages lurched forward—slow, unwilling, driven more by fear than command. The caravan breathed again, if that could even be called breathing.
"I never introduced myself," the man beside me said casually. Far too casually for a place like this.
"Eren."
I looked at him.
The name sounded simple. Too normal for someone here.
I hesitated.
"I…" I started, feeling something tighten in my throat.
"I don't have a name."