The first reset I used the two weeks like a person who still thought talking worked.
I told Tess before the toast. I told Victor after. I used Radu's name in a room that did not like names. Silas went pale in that careful way that meant the paper had a file and the file said do not engage. Mara wanted the Congregation. Rafael wanted to meet him at the door. Anton wanted the river and a pack debt.
We set a trap in the salon anyway.
[EMERGENCY QUEST: SURVIVE LAUNDRY]
He walked through it like furniture.
Victor first. Then the clever ones. Tess lasted a breath longer because I Pulled her off the line with Pulse Step and she still went back in. Reflect dumped into him and came home into me. Hand through the chest. Party to attend.
Folder. Bed. Fourteen days.
Second try I emptied the salon.
Got them out of the city. Different roofs. Different names. I stood in the townhouse alone with Vein Map screaming and the quest already red.
He found the house anyway. Or he found Tess across town. Or he found Victor in a car. The loop did not care which room I picked. When the last of the table went, the dark took me on a sidewalk with his mouth still clean.
Bed. Fourteen days.
Third I went at him first.
Mark said eight kilometers. I used noon because dead things were supposed to hate it. He did not hate it. He was in a hotel suite with a glass he was not drinking and a look that said I was late to someone else's appointment. I hit him with everything London had beaten into my feet. Scarpace. Half-steps. Strength 19. Will 25. The stack. The abort. The stack again.
He called the blood extravagant like he was commenting on wine.
I died looking at a ceiling I did not know.
Bed.
Fourth Tess believed me early enough to offer the Gift with both hands.
"If you are repeating a night," she said, aristocratic and almost afraid, "then stop being warm for it."
I said no because the Mark still had fine print and because I was not ready to sell the part that asked questions. She called me a child and went to die in the salon anyway. I watched it twice more after that, once with the Gift sitting on the table like a loaded yes I still did not take.
Same hand. Same boredom. Same party.
Fifth through ninth blurred.
Evacuate Silas only. He died in a stairwell with a contract in his fist.
Leave Rafael to the door. He died smiling.
Put Anton in the trees with kin. The trees did not help.
Hide in London. He was not in London. The quest still fired. The table still ended. I still woke on the bed.
Tell Mara to call Glass. Hunters arrived with silver and Latin. The penthouse version of him would have liked them. This version did not even stay for the whole set. I caught the last of it through a wall and then I did not.
Archive stopped highlighting every death. I told it to mark only what was new. Almost nothing was new.
[EMERGENCY QUEST: FAILED]
[EMERGENCY QUEST: FAILED]
[EMERGENCY QUEST: FAILED]
Level did not climb like the garage. The System knew the difference between a copy and Radu. It paid me in commas. Not in power that closed a five-hundred-year gap.
Tenth I tried to be the only one in the room.
Sent them running with a lie they almost bought. Locked the salon. Sat in Victor's chair like a stupid dare.
He came through the same missing door.
"You again," he said, and there was still no recognition in it, not of loops, not of alleys, not of me. Just a warm shape that had been near a roof he was erasing. "Do not take it personally."
I took it personally.
I lasted longer than Victor had on the first night and shorter than Tess had on the third. Reflect Discipline let me drop the stack before it finished me. He finished me anyway. Mild. Clean. Late for something better.
I lost count the way you lose count of a song that only has one verse.
Warn them.
Don't warn them.
Fight.
Run.
Beg.
Hit first.
Stand still.
The court died in every arrangement. He never got curious enough to ask my name. He never stayed dirty. He never missed his party by more than a few minutes.
Fourteen days. Red text. Bed.
On a morning that was the same morning as all the others, I did not call Tess.
I sat on the edge of the mattress with the folder still shut and watched the square of light move across the floor. Vein Map quiet. Mark sitting out there like weather. Archive waiting for important.
I did not tag anything.
Giving up did not feel like peace. It felt like putting the phone face down. Like not waiting for a highway to ring. The table was going to end. I was going to come back to this bed. He was going to wipe his hands and go wherever five hundred years went at night.
I could spend the next fourteen days building another clever shape for him to walk through.
I didn't.
I made coffee. I did not open Status. I did not open Reflect. I let the quest sit in the corner, unarmed, waiting for proximity like a smoke alarm in a house I had already watched burn.
"I'm done," I told the empty hall. Not loud. Not a speech. Just the truth the loops had beaten flat. "You can have the roof."
The house ticked.
Two weeks from now he would come anyway.
I drank the coffee cold and did not make a plan.
That was the first morning I did not pretend the year still had a next season in it.