The voice was old and ethereal, but underneath the years, the cadence was Kenji’s.

The same breath pattern. The same slight pause before the heavier syllables. The same dry edge that came out when he was tired and trying to hide it.

Ayla’s tendrils stilled inside the pale tissue.

She did not pull them out. She did not pull them in deeper either.

How? The word formed in her chest without reaching her mouth.

The voice answered the question she had not asked.

"I am him. No, more like he is me."

The pulse of the brain under her palm slowed.

"I formed a time loop and created a trait just to assist you to me. It seems I was the one assisted by you." 𝓯𝓻𝒆𝙚𝒘𝓮𝙗𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝒍.𝙘𝓸𝙢

A pause. It was long enough for Ayla to realize her own breathing had stopped. She remembered to start again.

"Open your eyes, child."

She opened her eyes.

The chamber was gone.

She stood in a white expanse with no walls, no ceiling, and no floor that she could measure.

Her feet rested on something that had the shape of ground without the texture of it. The light came from no source she could find.

It simply was.

Two eyes opened in front of her.

The eyes were huge.

Each eye was the color of molten metal that had not yet decided what shape to cool into. The pupils were vertical slits, slow and patient.

The eyes were looking at her.

The look was not curiosity. It was not hunger. It was not the cold appraisal she had received from the young master in the spider chamber, or the layered amusement she had received from the Eight-Winged Bat.

The look was love.

It was the kind of love a creature gave to a thing it had been waiting to see for a very long time. It was the kind of love that survived absence. It was the kind of love that had patience folded into it, layer over layer, until patience became indistinguishable from the love itself.

Ayla had no idea what to do with it.

"Hello, child."

The voice came from the eyes now. Not from a mouth. From the eyes. Each word arrived with a small, warm pressure, the way a hand might rest briefly against the top of her head.

She stepped back.

Her foot found the unmeasurable ground and held.

"Who are you?"

"You know."

"I do not."

"You ate the goddess. Open the part of you that holds her, and you will know."

Ayla considered the part of herself that held the goddess. It was the locked shelf at the back of her catalogue, the one she had not opened because opening it might unwrite her.

She did not open it.

"Tell me yourself."

The eyes watched her for a long moment. Something rippled in the white space behind them. The ripple resolved into a shape.

The shape kept resolving. By the time it finished, Ayla understood that what she had been calling eyes were two small lights set in the face of something much larger.

Scales.

Each scale was the size of a cathedral wall, layered against the next in slow geometric patterns.

A jawline that ran for kilometers. Horns that branched like roots growing in a direction she could not name. The body did not have wings, exactly.

It had folds of space that suggested wings without showing them. The body did not have legs, exactly.

It had places where legs should have been.

A dragon.

The word arrived unbidden. She had not pulled it from any memory. It simply was.

A demonic devourer dragon.

The phrase rose in her thoughts without her summoning it. She did not know which part of her catalogue had supplied it.

She did not entirely trust the part of her that had.

"You are a dragon," she said.

"I am older than that word. But yes."

"You are Kenji."

"He was the part of me that walked alongside you. The trait Death Looper is mine. I gave it to a piece of myself, set the piece in the path I needed walked, and let the piece find you."

"He does not know."

"He does not need to know. He never did. The walking was the gift, not the knowing."

Ayla’s chest tightened around something she did not have a word for. It was anger, maybe, or something close to anger that wore softer clothes.

"You used him."

"I used myself. He was always going to be reabsorbed into me. The looping was his price for existing at all."

"He died."

"Many times. Each death was him returning home, briefly, before going back out to walk with you. He did not remember the returning. I remembered for him."

"Why?"

The eyes blinked. The blink took a long time. The white expanse darkened slightly and brightened again as the lids passed.

"Because I needed you to reach me. And you would not have come for me. You would have come for a meal."

Ayla’s jaw set.

"I came for a meal."

"Yes. And here I am. The meal."

The eyes warmed. The molten color shifted toward gold.

"Eat me, child. That is why I called you."

Ayla took another step back.

"You are alive."

"I am not. I have not been alive for nine hundred and twelve years. The body you walked through is mine. The brain you placed your hand against is mine. The thing the Eight-Winged Bat was eating was me. The Bat fed on the parts of me that drifted near the surface. You finished what the Bat could not."

"You are dying."

"I died before your goddess was born. What remains is memory. Memory wishes to be eaten. Memory wishes to live in something that walks."

Ayla looked at the eyes.

The love in them did not waver.

"Why should I eat you?"

The dragon fell silent. "Aren’t you curious about yourself?"

"Not really."

A pause.

"Don’t you want my strength? My body?"

"Yes," Ayla said. "But why are you acting like you are offering it to me for free?"

"Huh?"

"I will devour you anyway. And I will lock your memory forever."

"You dare!" The dragon’s voice changed. Ayla smirked.

The memory of the goddess alone had almost erased her; what if she devoured that of this old dragon?

Wouldn’t it be the same as her submitting her body to him?

She wasn’t a fool. This old dragon was trying to lower her guard, to make her read all his memories so he could incarnate as her.

Stupid dragon.

And so she began to feed, all while locking the memory into her mind. When she completed the feeding, a message appeared in the sky.

[The Veins of the dragon have been cleared.]

[Contribution calculating...]

[Ayla: 95%]

[Kenji: 4%]

.

.

Ayla turned to look at Kenji. Sure enough, the dragon had lied. Both of them glanced at each other.

"We did it," she said with a smile.

"Yeah," he too smiled.