Chapter 152: Past, Present, Future (1)

Caius watched her quietly and made his decision, he would never tell her everything.

Misha valued truth more than comfort. In his first life, Caius had admired that about her, and part of him still did. She would rather hear something ugly and useful than be soothed by a lie meant to spare her feelings. It was one of the reasons people eventually trusted her even when she did very little to make herself approachable.

Unfortunately, four years beside her had also taught Caius that honesty could become recklessness when placed in the wrong hands, especially hers.

Misha investigated things even after promising she would leave them alone. She protected people after insisting, sometimes repeatedly, that they were not her responsibility. She could spend half an hour explaining why provoking someone stronger than her was tactically idiotic, then abandon every sensible conclusion the moment that same person insulted someone she cared about.

Caius had witnessed that contradiction often enough to stop finding it surprising.

Once, she had told him with complete seriousness that she would not interfere in a dispute between two upper-floor parties because it had nothing to do with her. Then, one of the opposing Raiders mocked Tobias' tale as the Mountain Walker.

Misha interfered, violently. She was sharp enough to understand risk, but stubborn enough to ignore it when something became personal.

So if Caius told her that the man currently wandering somewhere down the corridor–flirting with women, complaining whenever survival became inconvenient, and shamelessly hiding behind Hiiro when Misha threatened him–would one day become one of the most dangerous men they had ever faced, then she would never look at Alaric neutrally again.

Worse, she would start making it too obvious, and Alaric would notice.

Current Alaric might act like a shameless coward who survived through charm, and opportunism, but Caius knew what existed beneath that performance. The man was observant, dangerously so.

Caius would rather endure Misha's anger later. He could tolerate being called a liar, and have her distrust, he had endured worse. What Caius would not endure was watching her die again because he had confused complete honesty with loyalty. That mistake would only need to happen once.

So when he told Misha about his first life, he gave her broad strokes, and a controlled version of history.

The training Floors were the safest, so he began there.

In the previous timeline, Misha should never have met Hiiro, Astrid, or Caius anywhere near Floor Seven. So the portal to Floor Eight was all because of her brother's doing.

She never spent days at the Northern Checkpoint after the Linked Floor Quests the way they had in this lifetime all because Tobias was there. He was the safest Constellation Soul she could rely on for sustained objectives. That made him invaluable on Floors where endurance mattered more than overwhelming force.

Nameless had eventually become invaluable too, especially higher in the Tower.

Caius did not say his name, he certainly did not say what lay behind it. Misha had only just learned that Mateo had survived long enough to build a life, and have a daughter. She was still trying to understand that Astrid was her niece, so telling her that the mysterious Nameless soul she already carried inside her Soul Inventory was Mateo would tear open too many things at once.

There were truths that could save people because knowing them gave them choices, and there were truths that arrived too early and shattered the person who needed them before they could do anything useful with the knowledge, so Caius kept that one buried, for now.

By the time she reached Exodus, the differences were already large enough that Caius no longer trusted direct comparisons from his first life events.

There had been no Carl, no Alaric, and no Primarch. The Tollbearer existed, but it remained within the Floor's expected classification. It had never evolved into the monstrosity they fought in this timeline.

Regression had not preserved the future and merely changed a few details, it had dismantled it. People appeared earlier, others vanished completely. Encounters shifted by hours and produced entirely different relationships. Deaths vanished, and new ones took their place. Even cities survived when they once had not. Virelia had taught Caius that most clearly.

The first time, Virelia drowned and died. In this life, when the Settlement Reset finally came, it still suffered since the city could not escape entirely, but the inner district survived, and the Sea Ward held long enough for the people to escape. Most importantly, his parents survived. Caius knew because he had kept contact with them whenever the Communication Orb allowed it.

He owed that to regression, and regression only happened because of Misha, because she had found him after Virelia's fall, and because her brother's interference with the Tower had created systems and exceptions that should never have existed.

Caius owed her more than she knew, he owed her brother too. His life now existed because theirs had intersected with his death. That debt did not feel burdensome, it was rather simpler than that.

If protecting Misha required him to lie to her, he would lie. If keeping her alive meant using what he knew to manipulate where she looked and whom she trusted, he would do that too. He did not need to feel noble about it, he only needed her alive until she found a way to reunite with her blood family.

Above all, Misha had given him something after his death that he had never expected to find again, a place to belong.

She had first been his Contractor, his Master, then his companion and friend, and eventually, she became family. So did the others inside her Soul Inventory.

The Chambers had never felt like a normal household, perhaps that was why Caius valued it so much. They argued, they trained, even annoyed one another, and protected one another.

Regression had given him his parents back, his home, his body, and everything he had once believed he wanted. And in exchange, it erased four years of people he had grown to love.

He remembered them, but they did not remember him, including Misha. She knew Caius now, but not the Caius who had spent years beside her. That hurt in quieter ways he had no intention of explaining.

So he gave her the version of the first timeline she could safely carry.

Misha had stayed quiet while he recounted the lower Floors and Exodus, and only one name from Exodus was familiar in both lives, Dorian.

"You mentioned him once, said you traveled with him until Ashmoor."

That part he also remembered from one of Misha's old conversations. She had never liked joining groups after what happened with Skyreach, even temporary alliances made her restless. She disliked attachment because attachment gave the Tower another method of hurting her.

Dorian had still managed to keep her traveling beside Blackthorn for several Floors because of the people around him. There had been wounded people, and civilians who could not reasonably survive the route alone, and with Misha being Misha, she could never bring herself to turn a blind eye to them.

Misha had complained about him years later in a tone Caius remembered very well, it was the specific annoyance she reserved for competent people whose methods she disliked.

She folded her arms. "So I guess Dorian will be dependable until the next Settlement."

Caius tilted his head. "Dependable is generous."

"Well, I guess… If I mentioned him once, that means either he wasn't important or future me disliked him enough not to waste conversation."

"Possibly both."

Misha gave him a dry look. "Very helpful, Cai."

"I'm trying not to invent information."

"You're a Regressor. You're supposed to be my unfair advantage."

"I apologize for not bringing indexed notes."

Her lips curled faintly. "Fine. I guess he'll stay in the category of useful until proven otherwise."

"That is probably the safest."

Misha tapped two fingers against her arm, then stopped, the humor faded from her face. "Then how did I die?"

There it was, the question he had been preparing to answer incorrectly.

Caius pressed his lips into a thin line as Floor Sixty-One came back without permission. Sound first, music that has been distorted beyond anything it had meant to be. Then blood, thin strands suspended through the air like strings stretched across an invisible instrument.

Alaric Valehart stood there, older and colder. The theatrical coward had vanished from that man almost entirely. Whatever humor remained had sharpened into something crueler, and whatever instinct once told him to retreat had evolved into the ability to decide exactly when everyone else should. His instrument had stopped sounding as though it existed for entertainment.

He had fought Nameless, Caius remembered that most clearly. They had met head-on with neither giving ground.

Misha was studying him, her eyes had narrowed. "You're choosing your words."

"Yes."

"Huh, you admitted it so fast."

"It would be insulting to pretend otherwise." He sighed, then he continued, "you were caught in a conflict between two Families."

Misha's brow rose. "Why was I in the middle of a war between two factions?"

"Because Yara was there."

Misha froze, then her fingers tightened over her upper arms as something colder entered her face. "Yara…?"