Henry Ashford had always believed that if he ever died, it would be something mundane.
Heart attack at fifty-three. Maybe a stroke. Perhaps choking on a piece of steak at a restaurant while a waiter fumbled through the Heimlich maneuver two minutes too late. Something embarrassingly ordinary that his coworkers would hear about on a Monday morning and forget by Wednesday.
He had not, in any of his twenty-six years of life, considered a truck.
It was a Tuesday. Overcast. Early October, with that particular bite in the air that made coffee taste better and mornings feel worse. He'd been crossing Millbrook Avenue with a bag of takeout Thai in one hand and his phone in the other, reading a Reddit thread about whether *Attack on Titan's* ending had been satisfying or a betrayal of the entire narrative—a debate he had strong opinions about—when he heard the horn.
Not a polite horn. Not the *hey, light's green, buddy* tap. This was the long, sustained, hydraulic scream of an eighteen-wheeler whose brakes had decided today was the day they retired.
Henry looked up.
The truck was close enough that he could see the driver's face—middle-aged, mustache, eyes wide with the specific terror of a man who understood he was about to kill someone and could do absolutely nothing about it.
Henry had time for exactly one thought.
*You have got to be fucking kidding me.*
Then thirty-eight tons of steel and momentum erased him from the world.
---
He expected nothing.
Blackness. Void. The permanent off-switch of consciousness. He was a casual agnostic at best—he'd never prayed, never attended church past the age of twelve, never particularly believed that the universe had any interest in his individual existence.
So when he opened his eyes to a white expanse that stretched in every direction without horizon, floor, or ceiling, his first emotion was not wonder.
It was irritation.
"Oh, come *on*."
His body was intact. He looked down—same hands, same clothes, same scuffed sneakers. The takeout bag was gone. His phone was gone. But he was *here*, whatever here was, standing on nothing in a space that felt less like heaven and more like an unrendered loading screen.
"You're taking it better than most."
The voice came from everywhere and nowhere. It had a quality that Henry couldn't pin down—not male, not female, not robotic. It sounded like someone speaking in every language simultaneously while your brain only processed the one you understood.
Henry turned.
There was a figure. Sort of. It kept... shifting. One moment it resembled a man in a tailored suit. The next, a woman with silver hair. Then something geometric and inhuman. Then a kid sitting cross-legged in midair. The transitions were seamless, like flipping through television channels at the speed of thought.
"Let me guess," Henry said, because his mouth had always worked faster than his survival instincts. "You're God."
The figure laughed. It was a warm sound, which somehow made it worse.
"God implies obligation. Responsibility. A *plan*." The figure settled—temporarily—into the shape of a tall man with an amused smile and eyes that contained too many colors. "I am a Random Omnipotent Being. R.O.B., if you prefer the acronym. I find it has a certain charm."
Henry stared.
He had read enough fanfiction. Watched enough isekai. Spent enough late nights on forums and threads and Discord servers to recognize the setup. The knowledge settled into his gut like ice water.
"I'm dead," he said. Not a question.
"Extremely."
"Truck-kun."
"A classic for a reason."
"And you're here to... what? Send me somewhere else?"
R.O.B. tilted its head. The gesture was human but the execution was wrong—too smooth, too precise, like a puppet mimicking a person. "I'm here because I'm *bored*, Henry. Cosmically, existentially, profoundly bored. Do you have any idea what eternity feels like? Every story has been told. Every universe has been observed. Every permutation of every timeline has played out in every conceivable direction." A pause. A smile. "So I cheat. I take interesting souls—people with *knowledge*—and I drop them into worlds they recognize. I give them tools. And then I *watch*."
"Entertainment," Henry said flatly.
"Don't say it like that. You make it sound cheap." R.O.B. spread its hands. "Think of it as... collaborative storytelling. I provide the stage. You provide the performance. And in exchange for your participation, you get a second life. Memories intact. A real, breathing body. And—" the smile widened, "—wishes."
The word hung in the white void like a hook.
Henry's jaw tightened. He wasn't going to pretend the offer didn't appeal to him. He was dead. The alternative to this was *nothing*—the void, the black, the permanent off-switch he'd been expecting thirty seconds ago. And here was a being of apparently limitless power offering him a do-over with cheat codes.
The question wasn't whether to accept.
The question was where.
And Henry already knew the answer. Had known it, maybe, since the moment he'd looked up and seen that truck bearing down on him while his phone displayed a Reddit thread about *Attack on Titan.*
"I want to go to the world of Attack on Titan," he said. "Specifically, I want to arrive in the Season 4 timeline. Marley. Before the Liberio raid."
R.O.B.'s expression shifted—something between surprise and delight. "Attack on Titan. *Really.*" The being leaned forward. "Most people ask for power fantasies. Dragon Ball. Naruto. One Piece. Worlds where strength is king and the path to the top is paved with training arcs and friendship speeches. You want to go to a world where *everyone suffers and most of the cast dies*."
"That's exactly why."
The words left Henry's mouth with more conviction than he expected. He thought about Sasha. He thought about Hange. He thought about Eren—not the Eren of Season 1, bright-eyed and furious and human, but the hollow thing he became by the end. The boy who saw every moment of his life simultaneously and decided the only path forward was genocide.
He thought about Ramzi.
"Season 4 broke people," Henry said quietly. "Not just the characters—the *viewers*. The people watching. It was a slow-motion trainwreck of good people being ground into nothing by a cycle none of them started. Eren, Reiner, Zeke, Gabi, all of them—trapped in a machine that was already running before they were born. And the ending..." He trailed off. Shook his head. "I want to try. I want to see if it can go differently."
R.O.B. studied him for a long moment. The shifting stopped. For the first time, the being held a single form—the tall man, the amused eyes, the too-perfect smile.
"Brave," it said. "Stupid. But brave. Very well. What tools do you want?"
Henry had thought about this. Not consciously—not in a *I might get isekai'd someday and I should prepare* way—but in the idle, hypothetical way that every fan thinks about it. *If you were dropped into this world, what would you need?*
Not raw power. Raw power in Attack on Titan got you turned into a weapon. Got you eaten. Got you chained to a fate that crushed you under its weight. The Nine Titans were power, and every single one of their holders lived a life of misery.
No. What he needed was *versatility*. Adaptability. The ability to move through a world of soldiers, spies, and monsters without being immediately killed or captured.
"First," Henry said, "I want slightly superior healing. Not regeneration—not Titan-shifter level. Just... faster than normal. Cuts closing in hours instead of days. Broken bones healing in weeks instead of months. Enough to keep me functional in a world that's going to try very hard to kill me."
R.O.B. nodded. "Reasonable. Continue."
"Second. I want the capabilities of Loid Forger."
A beat of silence.
"From *Spy x Family*?" R.O.B. asked, and there was genuine interest in its voice now.
"From Spy x Family," Henry confirmed. "His combat training. His espionage skills. His ability to assume identities, read people, operate in hostile environments. His marksmanship, his hand-to-hand proficiency, his capacity for improvisation under pressure. All of it, internalized as if I'd lived his life of training."
R.O.B. was smiling now. Not the performative smile from before—something sharper. More engaged. "A spy's toolkit for a world at war. Not bad."
"Third. I want the *potential* of Taskmaster."
"The Marvel character?"
"The potential. Not the skill. I want the photographic reflexes—the ability to watch someone move and eventually replicate it. But I understand that potential isn't mastery. I'll need to train. I'll need to practice. I won't see Levi spin and instantly become him. But given time and repetition, I want the ceiling to be there."
R.O.B. was quiet for several seconds. Then it laughed—a short, genuine sound that echoed through the void.
"You know what's fascinating about your requests, Henry?"
"What?"
"They're surprisingly *not powerful*." R.O.B. folded its arms. "No magic. No Titan shifting. No reality warping. You've asked for a spy's skills, a copycat's learning curve, and a healing factor that a dedicated surgeon could arguably replicate. By the standards of what I usually grant, these are practically modest."
Henry felt his pulse quicken.
This was the moment.
He'd structured the requests deliberately. Practical first. Reasonable first. Let R.O.B. feel like it was giving away pocket change. Let it remark on the modesty of the asks.
Then swing.
"If they're so modest," Henry said carefully, keeping his voice even, "then you wouldn't mind granting one more."
R.O.B.'s eyes narrowed—but the smile didn't fade. "Oh, you're good. You actually sandbagged me. Go on, then. What's the real ask?"
"I want access to the Paths."
The void went silent. Not quiet—*silent*. The ambient hum that Henry hadn't even consciously registered until now simply stopped.
"The Paths," R.O.B. repeated. "The metaphysical dimension that connects all Subjects of Ymir. The space where time doesn't exist. Where the Founding Titan's power originates. Where *Ymir Fritz* has been building Titans out of sand for two thousand years." A pause. "You want access to that. Without royal blood. Without being a Subject of Ymir. Without any biological prerequisite whatsoever."
"Yes."
"You understand what that means. You could potentially interact with the Coordinate. Communicate across time. Reach Ymir herself."
"Yes."
"And you structured your first three wishes to be deliberately underwhelming so that when I commented on their modesty, you could leverage my own words to justify a fourth request that is, in terms of narrative impact, *enormously* more significant."
Henry said nothing. He held R.O.B.'s gaze.
The being stared at him for a long, terrible moment.
Then it grinned. Wide. Delighted. The kind of grin that had too many teeth and too much hunger behind it.
"*Granted.*"
The word hit Henry like a physical force. He felt something shift inside him—not painfully, but deeply. Like a door being installed in a wall he hadn't known existed. A door he could feel but not yet open.
"You will have access to the Paths," R.O.B. said, and its voice had changed—layered now, resonant, carrying the weight of something being written into the fabric of reality. "You will not need royal blood. You will not need to be a Titan shifter. The Paths will be open to you as a space you can enter, navigate, and act within. What you *do* with that access is entirely your problem."
Henry exhaled. His hands were shaking. He clenched them into fists.
"The world you're entering is not kind, Henry Ashford." R.O.B. began to fade—or rather, the void began to change. Color bleeding in at the edges. Sound returning—distant, muffled, like hearing the world through water. "The people in it are not characters to you anymore. They will breathe. They will bleed. They will look you in the eyes and *mean it* when they speak. And the things that are coming—the raid, the war, the Rumbling—they will not feel like episodes you watched on a screen. They will feel like the end of the world. Because for the people living through them, *that's exactly what they are.*"
Henry's vision was going dark at the edges. Not the darkness of death—the darkness of transition. Of arrival.
"Best of luck," R.O.B. said, and its voice was distant now, fading like a radio signal at the edge of range, "on your potentially traumatic journey ahead."
The white void shattered.
---
Henry woke up face-down on cobblestone.
The smell hit him first—smoke, salt air, coal, and something underneath it all that was distinctly *old*. Not unpleasant. Just... different. A world that ran on different fuel.
He pushed himself up. His body responded normally—same height, same build—but there was something underneath his movements now. A coiled readiness in his muscles that hadn't been there before. When his hand planted against the ground to push himself upright, he noted the angle, the weight distribution, the optimal way to transition from prone to standing in a single motion.
He hadn't thought about it. He'd just *known*.
*Loid Forger.*
Henry stood. He was in an alley—narrow, shadowed, tucked between two buildings of weathered stone and iron fixtures. Laundry hung on lines overhead. Somewhere nearby, he could hear voices speaking a language he shouldn't understand but did.
He stepped to the mouth of the alley and looked out.
The city sprawled before him—dense, industrial, alive with movement. Soldiers in unfamiliar uniforms walked in pairs. Civilians moved with the hurried purpose of people living under the eye of a state that watched too closely. Propaganda posters lined the walls, bearing slogans he could read and imagery that made his stomach tighten.
A red armband on a passing family. A star he recognized. A designation for a people caged within their own city.
*Liberio.*
Henry Ashford stood in the internment zone of Marley, with the knowledge of everything that was about to happen burning in his skull, and thought:
*How long do I have before Willy Tybur's speech?*
The clock was already ticking.