Board Thread:Theories/@comment-37408692-20181104203631/@comment-30473998-20181105040550

Oooh. This game me an idea. To answer your question, the "first Titan" you mention is called the "Founding Titan". Just a note to be clear because I like the terminology -- down here, I will refer to the first Titan as an"important figure we don't know of", who is NOT Ymir Fritz or any of the future Founding Titans.

There are three cases that I've come up with, assuming the below is true: To further explain the first one: everybody becomes old because P A T H S controls their aging. If they still haven't given up their power at the end of their 13 year tenure, the holder will die because their nervous system fails in some way.
 * The first Titan/Ymir/Devil of All Earth/another important unknown figure convinced ALL future Titan inheritors to pass down their Titan in a cycle every 13 years.
 * It's phsyically impossible.
 * Everybody was brainwashed into believing it.
 * It's true but you can escape it.

For the second: Titan shifters can live for longer. The influencer just brainwashed everybody to believe it, because nobody should be allowed to gain that much power.

And fianlly, for the last one: the cycle exists. However, there can be ways to evade the 13 curse. One of them might be what Annie is doing. Perhaps she's been trying to use P A T H S to secretly influence something from the background. If it's one thing she's been doing in the crystal, I bet it's not just sleeping.