Growth-Through-Trial-of-Change

Growth-Through-Trial-of-Change, or simply Trial, was a Forerunner Lifeworker. She was one of the few Forerunners to survive the activation of the Halo Array, although she would ultimately sacrifice her life in order to repair the Domain.

Early life
Trial was born to a family of Builders. However, she was unwilling to become a Builder and instead desired to join the Lifeworker rate. Her family rejected her as a result, and she was adopted by a foster family. Her family died long before the Forerunner-Flood war as they were caught in the explosion of a star while they were traveling to another world.

Post-Forerunner-Flood war
Trial, serving under the new Lifeshaper Chant-to-Green, was tasked with cataloging humans on the lesser Ark and later overseeing the reintroduction of humanity to Erde-Tyrene. During the process, she personally oversaw the awakening of Riser and the other human specimens on a Lifeworker ship that had survived the destruction of the greater Ark, and guided them to an artificial settlement on the surface of the lesser Ark. The humans would remain there until they were scheduled to be reseeded back onto Earth. Some time after the activation of the Halo rings, she was also present in the trial of Mendicant Bias for the Metarch's betrayal of the ecumene.

Over a century later, Growth-Through-Trial-of-Change accompanied the IsoDidact and a number of other Forerunners on a mission to Maethrillian with the goal of restoring the Domain, which had been rendered inert by the Halos' activation. After an encounter with the Precursor intelligence known as Abaddon in the council chamber, Trial, Bornstellar, and Chant pushed deeper into the capital in order to locate Abaddon's physical housing, where they believed the Domain could be reactivated by using a deadbolt key. With Abaddon intent on stopping the Forerunners from interacting with its core, vaporizing several of them in the process, Chant-to-Green rushed forward with the deadbolt. While none of the Forerunners knew for certain what would happen to the individual inserting the key into Abaddon's matrix, Trial and Chant believed a Lifeworker mind or genetic pattern would be necessary as a template to revive the Domain—along with the suspicion that this process may be fatal. Unwilling to let Chant sacrifice herself, Trial incapacitated the other Lifeworker and seized the key from her, then inserted it into Abaddon's core. She was momentarily caught in an intense glow, then vanished entirely, apparently having successfully initiated the Domain's slow process of regeneration.

List of appearances

 * Rebirth
 * Halo: Fractures
 * Promises to Keep