The walk to the Tower Gate registration center took forty minutes.
Dante thought about taking the transit. The magnetic rail system that connected the city's sectors still ran on schedule, still packed with workers heading to jobs that felt increasingly irrelevant in a world where power came from climbing, not working. But the transit meant crowds, and crowds meant questions, and questions meant pretending to be someone he wasn't.
He needed the walk and the time to think.
The city looked different through young eyes, cleaner and less scarred. Fifteen years after the Emergence, humanity was still figuring out how to live alongside the Tower, but they didn't break yet. The desperation that defined the later years in his memory, the resource wars and gate breaks and slow collapse of old institutions, all of that was still coming.
Right now, people still believed things would get better.
Dante watched a mother walk her kid to school across the street, ordinary concerns in a normal life. In five years, that school would be rubble after a gate break in Sector 7 killed twelve hundred people in an hour.
He memorized the woman's face without meaning to, an old habit from learning who you can't save.
His phone buzzed, a cheap device with a cracked screen, the kind of thing he threw away years ago and never thought about again. The message was from Ivy.
"Don't embarrass yourself at registration. Also bring milk on the way home."
He stared at the text for a long time.
'She's alive. She's annoying me about milk. This is real.'
He typed back: "Ok."
Then he kept walking.
---
The registration center was a converted stadium, one of the old sports arenas that lost relevance when the Tower made entertainment feel small. Thousands of candidates milled around the entrance, some eager, some terrified, all of them convinced they were special.
Dante remembered being one of them. That version of him died on Floor 3.
He joined the queue and let himself blend in with hunched shoulders and an uncertain expression, the body language of someone who didn't know what they were doing. It felt wrong, like wearing clothes that didn't fit, but it was necessary.
A system window flickered at the edge of his vision, private, visible only to him.
[OBSERVATION MODE: ACTIVE]
[Administrator surveillance detected. Concealment recommended.]
Dante dismissed the window without changing expression. The Tower was already watching, so fine, let it watch a nervous teenager who didn't know any better.
The line moved slowly as an hour passed, then two.
He used the time to study faces.
There, three rows ahead, a young man with sandy hair and an easy smile was laughing at something the person next to him said. Even now, even before the Tower changed him, Elliot Crane had that quality, that ability to make everyone around him feel comfortable and safe.
Dante's hands didn't clench and his expression didn't change. He simply filed the information away and kept waiting.
'Not yet. You don't get to die yet. I need you to suffer first.'
---
Registration itself was anticlimactic. A bored functionary took his vitals, scanned his ID, asked if he had any pre-existing conditions. Standard government procedure for people about to risk their lives.
"Any climbing experience?"
"No."
"Combat training?"
"No."
"Awakened abilities?"
"No."
The functionary stamped his form. "Gate opens at 0600 tomorrow. Sector 1 entrance. Don't be late, don't bring contraband, don't die on the first floor. Next."
Dante took his registration confirmation and walked away.
'Combat training: Eight years. Kill count: 3,047 confirmed. Awakened abilities: ERROR.'
Close enough to "no."
---
He had eighteen hours before the Gate opened. In the original timeline, young Dante spent that time being nervous and writing letters he never sent, a waste of time.
This Dante had work to do.
The first stop was a pawnshop in Sector 4, the kind of place that didn't ask questions about where things came from or who was buying. The owner was a heavyset woman with calculating eyes and a shotgun under the counter.
"Help you?"
"I need climbing gear. Basic. Nothing registered."
She looked him over. He was young and soft, didn't look like he could afford quality.
"Basic kit runs three hundred. Cash only."
Dante placed five hundred on the counter. Money his mother saved for emergencies. Money that would have gone to rent if she lived another month.
It hurt to spend it. But dead men didn't pay rent.
The woman's expression shifted slightly. Professional now. "Anything specific?"
"Knife. Durable. Nothing fancy. Rope. Fire-starting kit. First aid. Ration bars, compact, high calorie." He paused. "And information."
"What kind of information?"
"Floor 1. Current test conditions. Who's running it, what the parameters are, survival rates."
The woman studied him again. Something in her eyes suggested she knew more than she let on. Retired climber, maybe. Someone who made it far enough to understand.
"That costs extra."
"I figured."
She named a price. He paid it.
An hour later, Dante left the shop with a bag of gear and a head full of knowledge that would have taken weeks to acquire through official channels. The Floor 1 test was a race this cycle. Survival course through hostile terrain. Reach the exit gate within three days or get eliminated.
Standard for this time period. He remembered it.
But it was good to confirm his memories matched reality. The regression could have changed things. Could have dumped him in a different version of history.
So far, everything lined up.
---
Second stop: A gym in Sector 2 that catered to pre-climb training.
The place was packed. Candidates worked out on equipment designed to simulate tower conditions, practiced basic combat forms, tested their endurance. Most of them would die within a week.
Dante didn't use the equipment. He found a corner, sat down, and closed his eyes.
His body was nineteen, weak and untrained. The stats that would eventually make him an S-Rank climber were reset to baseline human values. If he tried to fight the way he remembered fighting, he would tear his own muscles apart.
But muscle memory was different from actual muscle.
He spent two hours running mental exercises. Visualizing combat sequences. Feeling the ghost of movements his body couldn't perform yet. The System called it [Residual Memory], one of the skills that transferred with regression. He couldn't execute the techniques, but he could remember them perfectly.
When his body caught up, he would be ready.
A shadow fell over him.
"You okay, man? You've been sitting there forever."
Dante opened his eyes. A young man stood over him, maybe twenty and built like a tank, with dark skin, a friendly expression, and genuine concern in his voice.
He recognized the face.
Dax Mercer. In the original timeline, he made it to Floor 8 before a beast tore him apart. He was a good fighter and an even better person who died protecting teammates who abandoned him the moment things got hard.
"I'm fine," Dante said. "Meditating."
"Before the climb? Smart." Dax grinned and offered a hand. "Dax. You registering tomorrow?"
"Dante. Yeah."
"Cool, cool. You want a workout partner? I've been training for months, but honestly, it's kind of nerve-wracking doing this alone, you know?"
Dante looked at the hand. At the open, trusting face above it.
'You die in three weeks. You die screaming for help that never comes. And I can't tell you that because you'd think I was insane.'
"Sure," he said, and shook.
---
They trained for an hour. Dax was strong and enthusiastic but completely unprepared for real combat. Dante gave him tips disguised as suggestions and corrections framed as questions. By the end, Dax moved slightly better than before.
It wouldn't be enough, but maybe it would buy him time.
"You're good at this," Dax said, toweling off sweat. "You sure you never trained before?"
"Just intuition."
"Hell of an intuition." Dax checked his phone. "I gotta run. Family dinner before the big day. You want to meet up at the Gate tomorrow? Might be good to have a familiar face."
Dante considered.
In the original timeline, he entered the Tower alone, driven by pride, stubbornness, and the certainty that he could do everything himself.
That version of him spent eight years learning how wrong he was.
"Yeah," he said. "I'll find you."
Dax grinned, slapped him on the shoulder, and jogged off to whatever family he had waiting. Dante watched him go.
'I can't save everyone. I know that. But I can try to save a few more than last time.'
---
The last stop was a small shrine on the outskirts of the city.
It wasn't official, just a converted storefront where people left offerings for dead climbers and families came to pray for the ones who never returned. Candles flickered in the dim space while photos covered the walls, hundreds of faces, thousands.
Dante found an empty spot and sat.
He didn't pray because gods, if they existed, clearly weren't paying attention. But he needed a moment, just one moment to acknowledge what he was about to do.
'I'm going back into the Tower. I'm going to climb again. I'm going to watch people die again.'
He closed his eyes.
'But this time, I know what's coming. This time, I have a chance.'
A notification pulsed in his vision. He opened it.
[FLOOR 1 ACCESS: PENDING]
[REGISTRATION: CONFIRMED]
[TIME UNTIL GATE OPENS: 14:23:07]
[NOTE: ADMINISTRATOR OBSERVATION WILL COMMENCE UPON ENTRY]
[RECOMMENDATION: PERFORM WITHIN EXPECTED PARAMETERS]
'They want me to be normal. To fit the pattern.'
Dante dismissed the window.
'I'll fit the pattern. Until I don't need to anymore.'
He stood, looked at the wall of faces one last time, and walked out into the fading light.
Tomorrow, the climb began again.