Kenji and Ayla sat side by side on a huge rock. The stone beneath them was cold, its surface slick with moisture that was dripping from the cavern ceiling.

The silence between them stretched long, broken only by the distant echo of water falling somewhere deep in the tunnel.

Kenji peeked at her sulking face and sighed.

Ayla had gone quiet after learning the truth. Without the goddess, she would have been nothing. Just another bit of goblin food.

That realization sat poorly with her. Her chin rested on her knees. Her golden eyes, usually bright with curiosity, glowed with a dimmer light now.

She looked small. She was too small for a creature that could steal traits from her prey.

’It must be those goblins that eat me. I will eat all of them,’she swore in her mind.

And so, goblins became her sworn enemies.

Then a calmer thought settled behind that anger. She had the Death Looper trait now. She would return from death the same way Kenji did. Nothing in the world could ever end her now.

But something nagged at her.

Could Kenji control her regression the way she had controlled his?

Ayla tilted her head and studied his side profile. His jaw was tense. His eyes stared at nothing in particular.

She liked how his hair fell over his forehead when he looked down. It reminded her of something in Jaxon’s memories: a drawing of a hero from a storybook his sister once kept under her pillow.

"Kill me," Ayla said.

Kenji flinched hard enough that the sword resting near his hip slipped a few inches along the rock.

"What?"

"Kill me," she repeated. Her voice carried no weight, no plea, and no threat.

He turned to face her. Her expression was serious. Her hands rested in her lap, palms up, as if she had already decided to let him.

"Are you sure?"

His fists curled at both sides. His mind wavered. An opportunity had fallen into his lap, and he had not asked for it.

He could kill her, then end himself, and the loop would drop him back to the starting point two hours ago.

From there, he could find Jaxon’s team before the goblin ambush swallowed them. The Outers had been kind in his earliest loops.

They would have taken him in if the circumstances allowed.

More importantly, if Ayla never devoured Jaxon, she would never gain Pyromancy. If she never devoured the Spider Mother, she would never gain Bloodnet.

Without those, the monster he was sitting next to would remain a fist-sized slime drifting through the tunnels, too weak to matter.

He could end her before she grew.

’Every Loop resets everything to the last time.’

It was worth a try.

The thought of her reaching the human cities made his stomach twist. A creature that ate brains and wore faces, walking into Old York with a smile on her lips.

Mothers would lose children. Entire districts would empty in a single night. The Inner Walls would not save anyone.

Ayla was too dangerous to walk unattended in the city.

Kenji swallowed. Even if the plan failed, he could accept her wrath. She had already killed him more times than he could count.

Another round of it would not break him.

He rose from the rock. His boots scraped against the stone.

"Close your eyes," he said.

"Why?"

"So you will not be scared."

"I am not scared," Ayla retorted.

"I am..."

"Why?" Ayla furrowed her brows.

She was the one going to be killed. Why was he getting scared?

Ayla considered this for a moment, then closed her eyes.

Whatever.

Her lashes were long and pale. They rested against her cheeks in a soft line. Kenji lifted the sword from where it had fallen into the damp earth.

The blade caught a stray shimmer of bioluminescence. His hand did not tremble. He had learned long ago that trembling did not help. He stepped close.

"I am sorry," he whispered, softly enough that it might have been a prayer. Then, he drove the sword down through the crown of her skull.

A sound cracked inside her, like ice fracturing under heat. Her slime core. Her body slumped forward, silver hair spilling across her lap.

[You have slain a Human.]

The notification flickered in his vision, then another replaced it almost instantly. This one burned in deep red.

[Do you want to regress together with Ayla? Y/N]

Kenji froze.

"So I can control it too," he murmured.

The text blocked almost his entire field of view. He understood both options without having to think.

"Yes" would pull them both back two hours. Ayla would return with him, memories intact.

"No" would leave her to reset on her own, born again at this exact spot.

Neither option served him.

He stood with the sword still embedded in her skull and looked at the red letters. A third path pressed itself into his mind, one he had used countless times to escape traps that had no clean exit.

He pulled the sword free. Her body tipped to the side and settled against the rock like a sleeping child.

Kenji turned the blade inward.

The steel passed through his neck with the familiar coldness he had grown tired of feeling. His knees folded. His body hit the stone beside hers.

[You have died.]

The darkness came for him the way it always did. He hoped the next time he opened his eyes, everything would change.

Alas, poor him.

Elsewhere, in a room no larger than two of her steps across, Ayla opened her eyes. The space was white and featureless.

The ceiling sat close above her head. The walls pressed in on every side. There was no door. There was only her, standing in the middle of it.

Unlike Kenji, who floated in the dark expanses of his own mind between deaths, Ayla had been placed somewhere: a small box built for her and her alone. A notification hovered in front of her face.

[The regression partner has died. Do you want to follow him? Y/N]

"He died?"

She blinked at the words. Her brows drew together, then slowly lifted. He had killed her. That part she understood.

She had offered him the chance and he had taken it, and she had felt the blade enter her skull before the world went quiet. That was fair. She had asked for the test.

But, how did he die? Had he killed himself?

Ayla instantly understood his scheme. The stupid human thought killing himself after her would give him a chance to change the way of things now. Naive.

Her lips pressed together. The corner of her mouth twitched downward. In Jaxon’s memories, this was what people called betrayal.

She had not thought the word applied to her yet. She had assumed it was something that happened to other people.

She tapped her chin and studied the prompt.

If she said "Yes," she would follow him wherever he had gone. Backward, presumably, to the point before she became interesting. If she said "No," she would reset here.

But what was the fun in that? He would still harbor thoughts of escaping her. She wanted to teach him that was impossible.

So she said "Yes."