Kenji drifted in the dark expanse of his own mind. He had always thought two hours here felt like eternity. He had hated this eternity.

However, now as these two hours stretched longer, his mind became calmer.

He had counted seconds in this place a thousand times across a thousand loops, and the rhythm of it had become something close to meditation.

This time he counted with a small, secret pleasure.

He had done it.

He had bound her in the loop, dragged her backward with him, and the moment his eyes opened he would be alone again at the start of the run.

Ayla would still be a fist of pale jelly somewhere in the lower tunnels, mindless and small.

He could team up with Jaxon’s team and clear the slimes in that area before the goblins ever ambushed them.

That way he could kill her before she could devour him. All of this plan depended on the notion that their powers would reset after each death.

’Since she got the trait from me, it will be similar to mine,’ he thought.

The darkness thinned at the edges. His body remembered itself in pieces: fingers first, then arms, then the weight of his sword pressing against his hip.

Air filled his lungs. Stone pressed against his shoulder blades. He blinked.

Golden pupils stared back at him from inches away.

"Surprise."

Her smile was the shape of a smile but carried none of its warmth. The corners of her mouth lifted because that was what mouths did; her eyes did nothing.

The cold spread through him faster than thought. The relief he had been carrying through the void poured out of him in a single breath, leaving him hollow.

She was here. She had followed, sure. But not as a simple slime.

His mind moved anyway, because that was what it had been trained to do across endless deaths. Their levels had reset, but would she still keep her traits?

He had an answer already; in fact, it was a stupid question. Since she was here, she had surely kept her traits.

Yet he wanted to try. If he drew his sword now, fast enough, he could end her before she ended him.

Ayla tilted her head. She did not need to read minds to read his face.

"You are thinking again."

A red thread slipped from her fingertip and wound around his throat before he had finished forming the thought. Another bound his wrists to the stone beneath him. A third wrapped his ankles.

The strands pulled tight, making him grunt in pain.

He got his answer. It made him despair.

"Your level is reset," he managed. The thread bit deeper into his neck. "But your traits did not. Why?"

"Why would they?"

Kenji opened his mouth and closed it. Ayla stared down at him. Her trait had simply preserved her acquired forms and the traits attached to them, though the levels and the experience tied to her own growth had snapped back to where they had been.

Perfect Assimilation kept its catalogue. The catalogue was hers.

Kenji opened his mouth to argue. Heat gathered in the air between them before he could speak.

"Wait," he said.

The warmth slid into his skin, then under it. His blood began to simmer in his veins.

[You have been killed.]

The dark expanse received him for the second time that morning. He arrived already speaking.

"Hey. We can talk like civilized people."

"Can we?"

[You have been killed.]

He came back with his hands raised.

"Stop."

[You have been killed.]

He came back on his knees.

"Please."

[You have been killed.]

After the seventh death his voice cracked. After the twelfth it stopped working at all. Ayla varied her methods because the variation interested her.

Once, she made his blood solidify while his skin burned and peeled away. Once, she boiled the water in his eyes.

Once, she did nothing at all and simply watched him hyperventilate against the threads until his heart gave up on its own.

She found that one disappointing; passive deaths taught her nothing.

When she finally let him keep breathing, Kenji was no longer sitting upright. He was on the cavern floor, curled small, his cheek pressed to the cold stone.

Tears had cut clean lines through the dirt on his face. His shoulders shook continuously.

"Please," he said. "Please stop. I am sorry."

Ayla crouched beside him. The threads slackened but did not release.

"Will you betray me again?"

"No."

"If you did?"

Her brows curved upward. The question was sincere. She wanted to know what punishment he thought would be appropriate for himself, because she had never invented punishments before and the concept fascinated her.

The only reason she even considered giving him a chance to decide his punishment was because she wanted him as a partner.

"You can eat me," he said.

"I can do that any time." She rolled her eyes. "That is not a punishment."

He breathed in, ragged, and tried again.

"I will be your slave."

Ayla looked at him for a long moment. Her eyes asked, without her saying it aloud: aren’t you that already?

She was beginning to understand that humans liked to name things they had already become. It made them feel as though they had chosen.

His tears kept coming. They pooled on the stone beside his temple and ran toward a crack in the floor. She watched him until she was satisfied.

There was a particular look she was waiting for, and when it arrived in his eyes, she knew she had reached the bottom of him.

He would not try this again. Some part of him had been folded so many times it would not unfold.

Ayla extended her hand, palm up.

"It is fine. Stop overreacting." She paused. "I am not even eating your brain."

Kenji stared at the offered hand.

"..."

He took it. His fingers trembled. She pulled him upright with no apparent effort. The threads dissolved into pale mist and sank back into her skin.

She brushed a smudge of dirt from his shoulder. The gesture seemed softer, but it did not match the woman who had killed him fourteen times in fourteen minutes.

He flinched when she met his eyes.

"What is next?" she asked.