The staging area between floors was the first real civilization Dante had seen since entering the Tower.
Not a village exactly, but something approaching it: a collection of semi-permanent structures built around a central plaza, populated by climbers who had decided to pause their ascent and merchants who made their living selling supplies to those who continued. The Tower allowed these rest stops every few floors, pockets of relative safety where people could recover, regroup, and prepare for what came next.
He sat on a crate near the edge of their rented warehouse, watching the plaza through a grimy window while the Fragment Shard pulsed cold in his pack. The thing unsettled him in ways he couldn't articulate, its energy completely foreign to anything he had encountered in the original timeline.
'What are you? And why did you let me pick you up?'
No answer came from the dark crystal, and he hadn't expected one.
Inside the warehouse Ravenna was resting on a pile of blankets they had purchased from a passing trader. Her color had returned since the fragment battle with lavender skin no longer pale with exhaustion, but she still slept more than usual because healing took energy even for half-demons.
Astrid, predictably, was not resting.
"Fight me."
She had been saying variations of this for the past two hours, circling the common area with the restless energy of someone who couldn't sit still. Her axe was propped against the wall, but her fists were clenched like she might start swinging at nothing just to burn off steam.
"No."
"Come on!" She dropped onto a bench across from him, close enough that he could smell the sweat and iron that always clung to her. "I'm losing my edge just sitting here. When's the last time you actually trained?"
'Eight years ago, when a Floor 50 monster took my arm and I had to relearn how to use a blade lefty while it regenerated.'
"I'm fine."
"You're always 'fine.' You know what that means? It means you're not getting better." She leaned forward with her grey eyes intense. "The fragment thing almost killed you, all of us, don't you want to be ready for the next one?"
She had a point, a small annoying point that he didn't want to acknowledge.
"Tomorrow," he said. "After Ravenna's recovered enough to join us."
Astrid's expression shifted and she looked away. "You really care about her, huh?"
"She's part of the team."
"That's not what I asked."
He met her gaze steadily and said nothing, and after a moment Astrid looked away with a frustrated exhale.
"Whatever, tomorrow then, and don't you dare hold back."
---
Ravenna woke as the light filtering through the windows began to fade into artificial twilight with the staging area's simulated day-night cycle kicking in. She sat up slowly, her tail unwinding from around her legs in a stretch that looked almost feline.
"How long was I out?"
"Six hours." He had moved inside at some point, settling into a chair near her makeshift bed. "You needed it."
"I feel better." She touched her chest where the fragment's attack had nearly broken through. "Whatever that thing was, it hurt in a way I've never felt before, like it was trying to erase me."
"It was." He debated how much to tell her, then decided honesty was overdue. "The fragment was a piece of something called the Archon, an entity from outside the Tower. It doesn't just kill you, it unmakes you."
"And you fought it with that power you found beneath the arena."
"The Ancient Core, yes."
Ravenna was quiet for a moment while processing that. Then: "You know a lot about all of this, the Archon, the Cores, what's waiting on each floor. I've been trying not to push, but..."
'Here it comes.'
"You said you've seen things, that you know more than you should." She met his eyes with purple and blue holding steady. "I trust you, you know I do, but I think it's time you told us what you really are."
From across the room Astrid's voice cut in: "She's right. I've been waiting for you to explain how you knew exactly where to hit the Lurker, how you navigated the maze like you had a map, how you predicted the fragment attack before anyone else saw it coming."
Both of them were watching him now and waiting.
He had spent weeks hiding, deflecting, building walls around the truth. Part of him wanted to keep hiding, to protect the careful distance he maintained from everyone around him.
But they had fought beside him and almost died for him. Maybe they deserved to know.
"I've done this before," he said slowly. "Climbed the Tower all the way to Floor 75, eight years of fighting and surviving and losing everyone I cared about. At the end the Archon reached into my head and sent me back here, to this body, to this starting point."
The warehouse went quiet.
"You're saying you're from the future," Astrid said flatly.
"I'm saying I've lived through a future that hasn't happened yet, that I watched people die, learned from every mistake, and then woke up with a second chance to do it right."
Ravenna's expression was unreadable. "That's why you saved me on Floor 1. You knew what would happen if you didn't."
"I knew what happened when nobody did." The memory of the Floor 50 half-demon surfaced unbidden. "Someone like you died saving people who hated him, and I decided that wasn't going to happen twice."
Astrid laughed, a sharp bark of disbelief.
"This is insane, you're telling me you're some kind of time traveler?"
"Regressor, the Tower's term not mine."
"Whatever, point is you've got cheat codes for the whole climb." She stood and paced the room with renewed energy. "That's why you're so good, that's why nothing surprises you, you've already done it all."
"I've done it all badly," he corrected. "Made every mistake possible, got people killed, failed in every way that matters. The advantage isn't knowing what's coming, it's knowing what not to do."
Ravenna rose from her blankets and crossed the room to stand in front of him. Her expression had shifted from unreadable to something that looked almost like wonder.
"You've been carrying this alone," she said softly. "All this time, all these memories of people dying and failures and betrayals, and you never told anyone."
"Who would believe it?"
"I believe it." She reached out and took his hand, her lavender skin warm against his. "Not because it makes sense, but because it explains everything, the way you look at people like you've already lost them, the way you fight like you've got nothing left to lose."
"I had nothing left." The words came out rougher than he intended. "Until now."
Astrid's pacing had stopped and she was watching them with an expression that mixed confusion with something that might have been envy.
"So what happens next?" she asked. "In your future that hasn't happened, what comes after Floor 6?"
"Floors 7 through 75 are full of challenges, bosses, factions fighting for control of the Tower. Adrian Cross betrays everyone on Floor 52 and hands us over to the Archon's forces, and twelve people die screaming while he watches with those empty eyes."
"Adrian." Astrid's jaw tightened. "That golden-boy asshole from Adrian's group? He's a traitor?"
"He will be, or would have been. This time I'm going to stop him before he gets the chance."
"By killing him?"
"Eventually." He met her eyes. "But not until I have proof, not until everyone sees what he really is."
The three of them stood in the fading light of the staging area with the weight of revelation settling between them. He had expected fear or disbelief or the kind of distance that came from knowing someone too strange to trust.
What he got was Astrid cracking her knuckles and grinning.
"Well, this is going to be interesting."
And Ravenna, still holding his hand, smiled in a way that somehow made everything else seem manageable.
"We're still with you," she said. "Whatever comes next."
He didn't know how to respond to that or what to do with the feeling her words created.
So he just nodded and held her hand a little tighter, tried not to think about how dangerous it was to let people this close. Tomorrow Floor 7 would open and the climb would continue, but for the first time since the regression he wasn't facing it alone.