Dante spent the first hour after waking up doing something he never thought he would do again: checking dates.
The phone on his nightstand, a piece of garbage he replaced three weeks into the Tower because it couldn't handle system integration, displayed a date that made his chest tight. Fifteen years after Emergence, two months after his eighteenth birthday, one day before registration opened for the next wave of candidates.
He sat on the edge of his bed with the cracked screen glowing in his palms, staring at the numbers until they blurred together while his hands stayed pressed between his knees to keep them from shaking.
This was real, even if he couldn't make himself believe it yet.
His mother was still dead. He already knew that, felt the absence like a missing limb the moment he woke up, but confirming it didn't make it hurt less. Cancer took her when he was fifteen while the awakening resources that might have saved her went to climbers who already had power, already had connections, already had everything. She withered away in a hospital bed that smelled like antiseptic while he sat there holding her hand and pretending he wasn't terrified.
He remembered her telling him to take care of Yuki at the end, to be strong, to live a life worth living. He promised her he would and then spent eight years becoming someone she wouldn't recognize.
The memories hit him in waves after that: moments from a timeline that didn't happen yet in this body, faces of people who didn't know they were going to die, techniques he spent years perfecting locked behind a body that couldn't execute them. The system said his skills were suppressed until his physical vessel caught up with what his mind already knew.
He made himself breathe through it with the pattern Vex taught him on Floor 23 when panic attacks started becoming a problem, in through the nose and out through the mouth until his heartbeat steadied. She was alive right now, probably still working as a freelancer in the outer districts, no idea that the guy who would become her closest friend was sitting in a shitty apartment trying not to lose his mind.
Ren was alive too, along with Cade, while everyone who died on Floor 75 was going about their business somewhere in this city without any clue what was coming for them. Adrian Cross, that piece of shit, was probably smiling at someone right now with those empty fucking eyes while he planned out exactly how he was going to betray them all.
His jaw clenched so hard his teeth ached, which didn't help anything, but he couldn't make himself stop.
He needed to actually think about what went wrong the first time because he only had so much time before everything started moving again.
He closed his eyes and sorted through eight years of memory, pulling out the critical failures, the moments where everything could have gone differently if he just knew what was coming.
Adrian was first because the traitor infiltrated their team from Day One, built trust over years, sold them out to the Archon's forces on Floor 52. Twelve people died because he trusted the wrong guy, because Adrian smiled at the right moments and said the right things and none of them saw what he really was.
This time he knew, and this time Adrian would think he was the one playing games while the opposite was true.
Then there was the Black Surge on Earth, a coordinated attack by the Obsidian Cult that devastated Gate cities and killed thousands of awakened who never even entered the Tower. Yuki was among the dead—his sister, the only family he had left. He was climbing Floor 40 when it happened, too deep in the Tower to receive word until days later, and by then she was already gone.
He couldn't stop it alone the first time, but maybe he could change that if he was strong enough, fast enough, smart enough to be in the right place at the right moment.
And then there was Floor 75 itself, the Archon's descent and the massacre that followed. Everyone he cared about dead or dying while that thing spoke to him like they were old friends.
'You again.'
He still didn't know what that meant or how many times this happened before.
He opened his eyes and stared at his reflection in the dark phone screen, at the young face that didn't match what he felt behind his eyes.
None of that mattered right now because dwelling on it wasn't going to change anything, so he needed to focus on what he could actually control: getting stronger, climbing faster, dealing with Adrian before the bastard got the chance to betray anyone.
His hands were still shaking, which was annoying because this body was weak in ways he forgot existed, and even basic emotional control felt harder when his nervous system wasn't trained to handle stress yet.
He shoved the frustration down because it wasn't helping, then forced himself to take another breath and hold it until his heartbeat slowed to something almost normal.
A knock on his door made him jump, and he almost fell off the bed before catching himself on the nightstand.
"Dante! You awake yet?"
Yuki's voice through the thin door made his chest seize up and he found himself on his feet before he consciously decided to move, his hand reaching for the doorknob while his heart slammed against his ribs.
He didn't hear her voice in six years in the original timeline, not since she came to visit him on Floor 30 and they got into a fight about him pushing too hard and climbing too fast without taking care of himself. She stormed out saying she would call when he learned to be less of an asshole while he watched her go because he was too proud to chase her, and then two weeks later the transport she was on got hit by a monster surge between gates that killed seventeen passengers with no survivors.
He never got to apologize or tell her he was sorry for all the times he pushed her away, never got to say goodbye.
The door opened and there she was: sixteen years old with black hair messy and falling in her face, brown eyes narrowed with that familiar annoyed expression, oversized hoodie swallowing her small frame. She had a wooden spoon in one hand that was dripping something onto the carpet, and she didn't seem to notice.
For a long moment all he could do was stare at her, at the way she stood with her weight shifted to one hip, at the tiny scar on her chin from when she fell off her bike at twelve, at the silver ring on her index finger that used to belong to their mother.
She was alive and standing right in front of him, breathing and looking at him like he was being weird, which he probably was because he couldn't stop staring.
"Okay, what." She waved the spoon at him, splattering something that might have been broth across the doorframe. "You're just gonna stand there? I've been calling you for like ten minutes and the noodles are getting gross."
His throat closed up and he didn't trust himself to speak, so he reached out and pulled her into a hug instead.
She went stiff immediately, her whole body rigid with surprise, and he felt the spoon smack against his back where she forgot she was holding it.
"What the—" She tried to pull back but he held on. "Did you hit your head? Are you having a stroke? Dante, what the hell is happening right now, you're being so weird—"
He lost her once already in the original timeline and he wasn't there when it happened, was too far up the Tower climbing like it mattered more than she did. He couldn't explain that without sounding insane so he just held on tighter for another second.
"I'm fine," he said, and his voice came out rough in a way he couldn't control. "Just had a bad dream."
"A bad dream." She pulled back enough to look at his face, and whatever she saw there made her stop struggling. "You're crying, and you don't cry. You didn't even cry at Mom's—" She stopped herself with her mouth pressing into a thin line.
He touched his face and found it wet, tears he didn't remember shedding sliding down his cheeks.
"Shit." He wiped at his eyes with the back of his hand while trying to pull himself together. "Sorry, I don't know what's—"
"Stop apologizing, it's weird." She stepped back and crossed her arms, watching him differently now. The spoon dripped onto her shoe and she didn't notice. "Was it about Mom?"
He couldn't tell her the truth, couldn't explain that her big brother was twenty-six in his head with eight years of memories from a timeline where she was dead. She would think he was crazy, or worse, she would believe him.
"Yeah," he said while forcing the words to come out steadier. "It felt real."
"Oh." She looked away and picked at a thread on her hoodie sleeve. "Those are the worst ones. I had one last month where she was just sitting at the kitchen table not even doing anything, just sitting there, and I knew she was going to leave and I couldn't..." She trailed off and shook her head hard. "Whatever, noodles are cold now. Your fault."
She turned and walked toward the tiny kitchen space while he watched her go, noticed the way her shoulders stayed tight even though her voice went casual.
"Registration is tomorrow, right?" She didn't look back at him, just grabbed a pot off the stove and dumped its contents into the sink. "You're still doing the whole Tower thing?"
"Yeah." He leaned against his doorframe. "I'm going."
"Cool." She turned on the faucet and let water blast into the pot so she didn't have to fill the silence. "Just, you know, don't be stupid about it. Mom would—" She stopped and adjusted her grip on the pot before starting again. "Just don't die on the first floor or something embarrassing because I'd have to tell people my brother got killed by a slime and I can't live with that kind of shame."
He already died once and it didn't stick, but he couldn't tell her that either so he just smiled even though she wasn't looking.
"I'll try to make it past the slimes at least."
"You better." She still wasn't looking at him, scrubbing the pot harder than necessary. "I'm making more ramen, the cheap kind, because someone hasn't contributed to grocery money in three weeks. You want some or not?"
"Yeah, give me five minutes."
He watched her for another moment before heading back to his room. Tomorrow was the Tower and today was his sister making him shitty ramen in their shitty apartment, and he could deal with the rest after lunch.
He closed his bedroom door and leaned against it while pressing the heels of his hands against his eyes until he saw stars.
He couldn't fuck this up because he got one more chance and he couldn't waste it on panic.
He allowed himself thirty seconds to feel everything, then shoved it down deep where it wouldn't get in the way.
When he walked out to join his sister his breathing was even, his hands hung loose at his sides. She glanced over her shoulder when he sat down at their tiny table and he gave her a small smile, easy enough to fake even if she probably didn't believe it.
She turned back to the stove without saying anything and he waited for the food while neither of them talked about what just happened, because that was how they worked.
He had eight years of knowledge in his head and one person in this world worth protecting. He'd figure out the rest after lunch.