Regression of the Tower's Final Survivor-Chapter 27: The Ghost of Love Past

She found him on the second day, which was honestly longer than he expected to stay hidden on a floor this small.

Dante avoided the main camp as much as possible during those first thirty-six hours, sending Ravenna or Astrid for supplies while he stayed in the shadows of their alcove. The strategy worked well enough at first, and they scouted the path toward the dungeon entrance, killed a dozen more phase eels, and even found a hidden cache that contained two skill stones worth more than anything they collected since the tournament.

But Floor 8 was too small to hide forever, and eventually his luck ran out.

He was examining a merchant’s selection of underwater breathing enhancements when that familiar voice cut through the crowd behind him, freezing him where he stood.

"Excuse me? You’re Dante Graves, aren’t you?" 𝒻𝘳𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝘯𝘰𝑣ℯ𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝘮

His body went rigid before he could stop it, and eight years of combat training told him to turn slowly, to control his expression, to give nothing away. He followed that training on autopilot while his heart hammered against his ribs and his vision tunneled with the force of memories he spent years trying to bury.

Seira Valen stood maybe three meters away with that curious smile on her face, the same one that once made his world brighter. Her dark hair was perfectly arranged despite the humidity, and warm brown eyes studied him with an interest that felt uncomfortably familiar while those delicate features arranged themselves in an expression designed to make people want to help her, protect her, love her.

"Word travels fast," he managed, keeping his voice flat and his hands loose at his sides.

"You’re becoming famous, you know. The Sky Serpent, the shattered plains, all of it." She stepped closer and he fought the urge to step back, forced himself to hold his ground even as his instincts screamed at him to run. "I’m Seira. Seira Valen. I’m a seer, so I tend to hear things before everyone else."

’Nice to meet you, like we’re strangers, like you didn’t tear my heart out and leave me bleeding on Floor 25 while you walked away without looking back.’ He swallowed the bitterness and nodded once, keeping his expression neutral.

"Likewise."

He turned back to the merchant’s stall and pretended to study the wares, hoping she would take the hint and leave, but she didn’t. Instead, she moved to stand beside him, close enough that he could smell the subtle perfume she always wore, the one that once meant comfort and now meant only pain.

"You’re interesting," she continued, seemingly oblivious to his coldness as she leaned against the stall’s edge. "Most climbers your age are still struggling with the basics. But you move like you’ve been doing this for years. Decades, maybe."

"I’m a fast learner." He picked up a breathing mask and examined it without seeing it, anything to keep his hands busy and his eyes off her face.

"No, it’s more than that." She tilted her head in that gesture that used to seem adorable and now just made his stomach clench with memories he wanted to forget. "My seer abilities give me impressions sometimes. Feelings about people. When I look at you, I get the strangest sensation. Like you’ve lived more life than your body should contain."

’Too close, she’s too damn close to the truth and she doesn’t even know it.’ He set the mask down and reached for his coin pouch, ready to end this conversation before she dug any deeper.

"Interesting theory." He paid the merchant for supplies he didn’t need and stepped away from the stall, putting distance between them. "But I have to get back to my team."

"Wait." Her hand caught his arm, light and warm, and he almost flinched away from the contact because the touch brought back a flood of memories: her hand in his as they walked through Floor 15’s crystal caves, her fingers tracing patterns on his back after a difficult battle, her palm against his cheek as she told him she was leaving.

"I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable," she said, releasing him when she noticed his reaction, though her eyes stayed fixed on his face with that analytical intensity he knew too well. "I’m just curious. We don’t get many mysteries in the Tower, and you’re definitely one."

"I’m not a mystery." He shifted the supplies to his other arm, creating distance without stepping back. "I’m just a climber."

"You’re definitely more than that." She didn’t step back, maintaining that closeness that felt like a knife between his ribs, and the smile on her face was warm in a way that might have fooled him once. "My team camps on the east platform. If you ever want to talk, or maybe share resources, you’re welcome to visit. I’d love to understand you better."

"I’ll keep that in mind." He turned and walked away without looking back, his heart still pounding and his thoughts a tangled mess of past and present and futures that would never happen, but at least his feet kept moving and his back stayed straight and he didn’t let her see what she still did to him.

---

Ravenna was waiting when he returned to camp, sitting on a crate near their supplies with her arms crossed and her mismatched eyes tracking him from the moment he came into view.

She said nothing as he dropped the supplies onto their makeshift table, nothing as he sat down heavily on a crate and put his head in his hands, just moved to sit beside him, close enough that he could feel her warmth, close enough that her presence began to anchor him back to reality.

"You met her." It wasn’t a question, and she didn’t pretend otherwise.

"She found me." He kept his face in his hands, voice muffled against his palms. "Introduced herself, asked questions, did everything exactly the same way she did in the original timeline. Same approach. Same smile. Same hand on my arm like she’s already decided I belong to her."

"You’re shaking." Her hand found his shoulder, warm and grounding, and he finally looked up.

He looked at his hands and saw she was right, fine tremors running through his fingers as the physical manifestation of emotions he suppressed since the moment Seira appeared finally broke through his control.

"I thought I was over it." His voice came out rougher than he intended and he balled his hands into fists, trying to steady them. "Eight years. Eight years of climbing, fighting, losing people, becoming something cold and hard and efficient. I thought that was enough time to bury the memory of her."

"Some wounds don’t heal with time, they just get covered by other pain, scarred over but never truly closed." Ravenna moved closer, her shoulder pressing against his as she offered her presence instead of empty reassurances.

"She doesn’t even know what she did." He stared at the ground between his feet, unable to meet Ravenna’s eyes. "This version of her never hurt me, never said those words, never looked at me like I was something to be discarded when something better came along. I can’t hate her for things she hasn’t done. Things she might never do, in this timeline."

"Can you tell me about it?" The question was gentle, without pressure or expectation. "What she did? In your original timeline? I know some of it from what you’ve mentioned before, but..."

He was quiet for a long moment while the memories played through his mind, clear as glass, preserved in the amber of his eight years of regression knowledge. The happiness. The hope. The slow realization that she was pulling away while claiming nothing changed. The conversation that shattered him so completely that he spent years putting himself back together.

"We met on this floor," he said slowly, and his voice sounded distant even to his own ears. "She was with a different team, one that took heavy losses. Her leader died fighting depth stalkers, and they were barely holding together. I helped them survive, helped them clear the dungeon, and somewhere along the way she started looking at me like I was something special."

Ravenna’s hand found his, warm and steady and completely different from Seira’s touch, and she laced their fingers together without saying a word.

"We were together for two years after that, through Floor 9, 10, all the way up to 25. She was kind and warm and made me feel like I mattered, like the things I did had meaning beyond just surviving another day." He forced the next words out one at a time, each one heavier than the last. "Then she met Leon Caine. High Ranker from a major guild. Could offer her protection, status, a future I couldn’t match."

"She left you for him." Ravenna’s voice was flat, her grip on his hand tightening.

"She didn’t just leave, she sat me down and explained, very calmly, very reasonably, why she couldn’t stay." The memory burned as fresh as the day it happened and he leaned forward, elbows on his knees. "She told me I was a good person but not good enough. That I’d never be strong enough to give her what she needed. That she had to think about her own future."

Ravenna made a sound low in her throat, something between a growl and a curse.

"I asked her to wait, to give me time to get stronger, and I would have done anything she asked, anything at all." His voice cracked on the last word and he didn’t try to hide it. "She looked at me with something like pity and said, ’That’s not how this works, Dante. You either are enough or you aren’t. And you aren’t.’"

"That’s cruel." Ravenna’s free hand curled into a fist against her thigh.

"She didn’t think so." He opened his eyes and stared at nothing, seeing only the ghost of Seira’s face as she walked away. "She thought she was being honest. Maybe she was right. Maybe I wasn’t enough, not then. But the way she said it, the absolute certainty that I would never be anything more than what I was in that moment... it broke something in me."

"What happened after?" Her shoulder pressed harder against his, offering support without demanding anything.

"I spiraled, stopped trusting people, stopped letting anyone get close enough to hurt me, and I became the cold, efficient weapon that survived all the way to Floor 75." He turned to look at her, at the concern in her mismatched eyes and the anger simmering beneath it. "That version of me wouldn’t have saved you on Floor 1. Would have walked past the mob and kept climbing. Wouldn’t have cared about anything except getting stronger, proving her wrong."

"But you’re not that version anymore." She searched his face, and something in her expression softened when she found whatever she was looking for.

"No, I’m not." The words felt like a confession and a promise at once, and he turned his hand in hers so he could grip back properly. "I have you now. I have Astrid. I have people who actually care about me, not for what I can do for them but for who I am, even the broken parts."

Ravenna smiled, small and genuine and warmer than anything Seira ever offered, and she leaned her head against his shoulder without breaking eye contact. "Then let her go. Whatever she did in a timeline that doesn’t exist anymore, that’s not your burden to carry into this one."

"It’s not that simple."

"It never is." She closed her eyes and settled more comfortably against him, her hand still clasped in his. "But you don’t have to figure it out alone. Whatever you’re feeling, whatever you’re struggling with, I’m here. Astrid’s here. We’re not going anywhere, no matter how complicated things get."

He sat there in the dim light of their camp, Ravenna warm against his side, and let the tension slowly drain from his body as her presence reminded him why he kept fighting in the first place.

Astrid returned from her supply run a few minutes later, took one look at them, and made a sound that might have been approval or might have been jealousy before dropping a pack on the ground.

"Found the breathing enhancements," she said, settling down across from them with her legs crossed. "Also saw your ex watching you from across the camp. She looked interested."

"She always looks interested." He didn’t move away from Ravenna, didn’t feel the need to.

"Well, she can keep looking." Astrid’s expression turned fierce as she leaned forward, arms crossed over her chest. "Because you’re spoken for."

He didn’t correct her, just let a small smile tug at the corner of his mouth as he looked between the two of them.

Surrounded by people who actually gave a damn about him, he started to believe that maybe Seira Valen didn’t have power over him anymore. Maybe he could finally move on, and this time he wouldn’t have to do it alone.