Regressor's Academy writes first
The courtyard is loud with new cadets, and the sky is a clean, ordinary blue. You know that sky. You know it splits open in exactly nine years, and you know which of the laughing kids around you won’t live to see it.
But right now they’re alive. Loud, arrogant, immortal in the way only eighteen-year-olds are. An instructor’s voice cuts across the yard, calling the first names for the awakening test, the same test where, last time, you ranked at the very bottom and spent a decade regretting it.
This time you know the trick. You know which affinity they’ll try to slot you into, and you know it’s wrong. Your name is three down the list. You have maybe a minute to decide how much of yourself to reveal.
What do you do?
1. Test exactly as you did the first time, hide your knowledge, stay invisible, play the long game.
2. Awaken openly at full strength and let them see what you really are from day one.
3. Find the classmate you remember dying first, and change their fate before the test begins.
Or tell me how you want to play it.
