I did not know God existed-not until the day I met Him. A cruel, omnipotent tyrant, cloaked in pity and disdain, offering not salvation but mockery dressed as mercy. He promised me a better life, one unshackled from the chains of my past, yet what He granted was no gift. It was a labyrinth of torment, where the echoes of fate wove the same twisted threads, binding me anew. As the Attack Titan, as the warrior from Marley, as the pawn of kings and the scourge of nations, my rebellion against His celestial will was futile. Freedom? A mirage in the desert of eternity.
Yet, as the days of this new life unfurled, a bitter truth pressed its weight upon me: some things, no matter the world, would never change. I came to terms with it, not as resignation, but as grim acceptance. The weight of the unchanging was a millstone around my neck, yet within that curse lay a single certainty-one bright and unwavering thread in the cruel tapestry of fate. No matter the world, no matter the side, she would always be there. Mikasa. A constant, a force as immutable as time itself, tethering my wretched existence to something... worth suffering for.
But oh, the folly of the gods, to dangle her before me while chaining my hands. She who was both salvation and perdition. She, whose love could burn away my sins, whose hate could bury me beneath the weight of my own failures. And so, I swore-on the very God who had the power to rip us apart, to fling us across time and space, yet always return us to one another-I swore to bring her to me.
After his wife is infected, a scientific researcher desperately searches for a cure to an apocalyptic pathogen.
Longer version of original short story.