𝚂𝚃𝙴𝙰𝙻𝙸𝙽𝙶 𝚂𝙴𝙲𝚁𝙴𝚃𝚂

Prologue

Y/N had always been one to want more than the underground could offer her. Not a lot of people could get behind that, but that was okay for her. Most of the people living underground had somehow made their peace with the way they were living. Y/N hadn't done that.

A lot of people figured that she got that from her parents. Well, a lot of people might be an exaggeration. There weren't that many people that knew her or her parents or were particularly interested in what they were doing. Most people had a general idea, but they didn't care much and it was probably better for them. Otherwise the same thing might have happened to them that has happened to Y/N's parents. And it really wasn't a pretty sight to behold.

Y/N knew sort of why they had been killed - well, slaughtered seemed to be a more fitting word. She didn't know any details, however. And she was pretty sure that that was what saved her life. Her parents were killed because they knew too much. They knew too much about the world out there, too much about the world above the ground and outside the walls, even.

Y/N's parents had been collecting books - and collecting meant stealing them. Stealing them from the church, from the royal family, anywhere they could find them. And they weren't just any books - those books were guarded well and they contained all the secrets of this world. The secrets of the walls, of what lay beyond the walls, of the Titans... they gathered up all those books and kept them locked away. For a long time Y/N didn't understand why they were doing all this, but once she got older she understood. She understood the curiosity behind it, the thirst for more and more knowledge about the world around her, to know everything that she possibly could know.

Y/N's parents had kept themselves afloat by selling any information they learned along with the big secrets of the world. A lot of it made some nice bribes, other things were valuable information for many of the gangs down in the underground. It wasn't really their plan for life, but it had been a means to an end.

But then came the day they had been murdered. Y/N hadn't understood it at the time, but now she knew that the Military Police was definitely involved - there was no doubt about that whatsoever. Somehow her parents had found out too much and that's why they had to die. Of course she didn't get that as a seven year old girl that had just come back home after wandering the streets, looking to get into some sort of trouble.

All she saw were two bodies, barely human looking, and blood. So much blood, blood everywhere. It was splattered on the walls, the little furniture they owned and it was all over the floor. It was sticking to her naked feet, to her hands. To this day her mind sometimes tricked her into thinking there was still blood on her hands or her feet. The image of her parents being murdered and cut up was haunting her in her nightmares and in her daydreams. It wouldn't leave her alone.

But over the years she had gotten used to it. There were other terrible images haunting her now. Things that were still happening and that she'd rather not think about. Some days she wished she had gotten murdered with her parents. Or that she at least knew what that terrible secret was that they had to die for. The prospect of maybe finding that out for herself some day was what kept her going.

That there was some secret out there that was big enough and terrible enough for the Military Police to come all the way down to the underground and murder her parents, completely wreck their home and steal back all the books that they had acquired over time. And Y/N needed to know what it was they died for. She needed to survive somehow so she could find out one day.

After her parents death she moved in with her uncle who was in a very similar business to her parents, except that he didn't care for any big secrets that the government was hiding or anything like that. He just cared about making money and staying alive. And about making Y/N's life a living hell.

She didn't like thinking about it... it made her feel horrible. He was... he did things. Things she didn't want. But what choice did she have? It was either that or... or starving out on the streets. And she needed to grow up and get into a position to somehow escape him, before she could do anything about it. Plus, she needed to find out what her parents had died for. That was her reason for staying alive.

No matter how difficult it was, no matter how much she wanted to die each and every day - she needed to stay alive to see what they had found out. Whatever they had uncovered, Y/N was sure that it was absolutely beyond her wildest imagination. And even if it would kill her much the same way her parents were killed - Y/N would be able to rest peacefully knowing about it.

She had found out enough about the outside world to know that it wasn't such a terrible place. There was so much beauty out there... if it wasn't for the Titans that were keeping them all trapped inside the walls. But it was nice to imagine it - to imagine herself wandering through a deep and dark forest with trees that were taller than even the walls, to see lakes and deserts and even the sea...

If she could only imagine it and know that it was somewhere out there, she'd be happy. She wouldn't care if she died for it, but she just needed to know. It was all she ever wanted. But finding books like that was difficult enough. Getting her hands on them was even more difficult.

But she had years and years since her parents died and she knew that she was getting closer to her goal with every day. One day... one day she would know...