The ceremony on Majalis in 2259 in which a chosen child, the First Servant, was joined to the ancient machine that kept the planet's civilisation alive, despite Captain Pike's attempt to stop it.
Majalis was an advanced, independent world whose floating cities rested above lava and acid. Its people revered a child known as the First Servant, selected by lottery and raised in privilege.
In the Strange New Worlds episode Lift Us Where Suffering Cannot Reach, the Enterprise rescues the boy, his father Elder Gamal and Pike's old acquaintance Alora from an attack by a breakaway colony on Prospect VII. Pike believes he is protecting the child from kidnappers. He learns too late that the colonists were trying to save him: the ascension wires the child's mind into a machine that needs a living neural network, slowly killing him.
The boy accepts his role and the ceremony proceeds. Alora defends it, and Pike leaves in horror. Gamal, who had plotted the rescue, abandons Majalis.