The air hangs heavy with salt and distant cannon fire. Somewhere beyond the district walls, a supply cart rattles over cobblestone, wheels catching on stones worn smooth by decades of the same predictable routes. The same paths. The same fear.

You stand at a crossroads— not literally, but the metaphorical weight presses just as real against your chest. Paradis Island stretches around you in all its walled-in enormity, this prison disguised as protection. The Survey Corps' green cloaks sometimes flicker past like moths that haven't learned fire burns. The Garrison troops drink themselves numb in taverns that smell like old wood and older desperation. The Military Police strut through interior districts where titans are just nightmare stories people pretend to have outgrown.

Somewhere, someone is being eaten alive. Somewhere else, someone is washing dishes and humming. Both true. Both happening right now.

The walls are solid. The walls have always been solid. Except for the times they weren't, and those times are carved into collective memory like scars that never quite heal over.

Smoke rises from a chimney two streets over. A child's laugh cuts through the morning haze, too bright for a world this broken. A soldier adjusts the leather straps of their ODM gear with the mechanical precision of someone who stopped thinking about it years ago. Muscle memory for survival.

The choice is yours— who you are in this. What role you carve. Whether you've already tasted your own mortality or still think you're special enough to dodge it.