"ALEXA SAID SHE'D KISS YOU ALL NIGHT IF Y-mmm"

Damien chuckled at the loud statement, glanced over at his Fae, and saw Alexa grabbing the girl's face and almost topple her over the back of her shoulder. He gave them a thumbs up and turned back to the entrance of the cave-like structure, full of nervous energy.

The opening was dark, to an eery degree. He wasn't able to make out a single detail whatsoever. He'd effectively be walking in blind.

"Whelp... Alright. Here goes nothing," he declared under his breath, slowly inching forward.

Once within two feet of the entrance, he noticed his surroundings begin to darken as the inside of the cave lightened up, revealing the terrifying...

"What?" Damien muttered, staring at a spacious hallway that went straight for about fifty feet.

It was bright and way, way too ordinary looking. As he glanced about, it was quite obviously, taller, broader, and longer than it looked from the outside as well. Staring into the empty hallway was much more eery than it would have been if the obstacles had been visible, so perhaps they were traps more than obstacles for this portion.

He began wondering just how to go about the barren room when a blemish on the door caught his eye.

"Built and designed by Layla Deathclaw. That... that's a ridiculously fitting last name," Damien thought out loud.

Hopefully, the woman couldn't listen to all he said in here, but he figured it wouldn't be intelligent to count on that.

"Wait... what does that..." he wondered aloud again, getting closer and turning toward the wall. "Assistant creator, Reinal. No last name and in tiny wri-"

Damien's words halted the moment his head and chest were struck by a blunt force that immediately voided his lungs of the ability to store air. The impact launched him away from what he'd been inspecting and he collided with the wall behind him. Coughing, he fell to his knees and looked up to see two stone poles retreating back into the wall as two dinging sounds rang out.

"That was unf-" he started to complain, when the ground suddenly slammed into his stomach and chest and sent him into the ceiling where his body crashed, then stuck, as if gravity had kept him there.

He leaned up off his back, or down off the ceiling, and fought to keep in the vomit threatening to void itself from his stomach. With effort and a bit of head/neck rubbing, he held it in whilst listening to another obnoxiously loud bell-like sound ring out.

"Fuckkkkkkkkk meeeeeee," Damien groaned out.

He slowly lifted his body up off the ground and glanced about.

"What in the..." he muttered, eyes rolling over what he had thought was the floor.

He searched for where the writing had been, and sure enough, he found it upside down back near where he'd entered. While trying to understand what was happening, the distended earth that had tossed him around like a rag doll began slowly morphing back to normal, causing the hallway entrance to look exactly how it had before. Smooth and untouched.

Hurriedly, Damien created a swath of water around his body in the shape of a ring and spread out his mana sense across the inside of the structure. A moment later, he dropped to his knees on the ceiling, water dispersing around him.

"Ahrghh," he moaned out, cradling his head as his mind was overwhelmed by the raw density of mana in the structure.

Pain assaulted his senses as the man struggled not to scream.

Unfortunately, the assessment room wasn't hospitable to his predicament. As if waiting for an opportunity and sensing it, the ground slid out from under him while he cradled his head and he found himself once again compelled through the air into a new wall, legs getting slammed down low and face-planting into it while two more dings sounded off.

"Screw... you..." he gasped out, lifting his body up while panting and trying to get ahold of his senses in time to ward off the next attack.

The pain from slamming into the wall had fortunately ruined his focus on his mana sense and other manipulation efforts, saving him from the disarming headache. He began creating another ring of water around his body when a voice rang out, booming all around the inside of the structure.

*Announcement: Practice Round Ended Prematurely. Difficulty Increasing*

"Goddammit," he whispered under his breath.

*Announcement: Difficulty Increasing*

"Alright! Alright. Sorry," he yelled out.

*Announcement: Difficulty Increasing.*

Gritting his teeth to hold back a multitude of remarks, Damien found his feet once again lifting off the ground as he was thrown across and further into the room. While on a collision course with the far side of it, two one foot wide pillars of earth shot out from above and to the right side of him. He tried to gain control of them both, but failed. Whatever controlled them was much more familiar with manipulating them than he was.

Thinking quickly, Damien split then solidified two sides of his ring of water, turning them into two ice shields about half a foot in width at their thickest point. He set them above himself and on his shoulder then braced himself to land on the far wall that he was accelerating towards much too fast.

The opposing elements all collided at the same time as Damien passed through unharmed, feeling as his ice had somehow held out against the earth. With his mind at ease from avoiding being crushed, Damien condensed a few pockets of air beneath him to help slow his fall before collapsing into a crouch as his body met the ground.

Looking upward to view the situation, the poles had lost their animation almost instantly and were breaking apart, crashing down to the new ground he was standing on. Calling his shields down faster than the earth could fall, he warded off the larger chunks while observing the multitude of hairline fractures present in his creations. Luckily, they'd held out then and now, and he reverted the transformation, turning them back into a ring of water to be used whenever needed.

As he was doing that, his vision went sideways as his feet were slammed out from under him from a pillar shot at his feet, his right ankle popping suspiciously the moment it hit. Already, and again, Damien was realizing how much he relied on his mana sense to avoid surprise attacks.

Forcing his body to act quickly yet again, he manipulated a section of pressurized air in between the floor and his face while lifting his legs up, pushing himself back into an upright position. He steadied his balance and checked on his ankle, relieved to find it not broken, only sprained. He sent his mana to heal the sprain while looking around, no longer confident of which way was up, down, or sideways.

The mana in this entire structure was not his, that was very clear from his previous failure to control it. He'd have to get by with whatever he could make so before moving onward, Damien manipulated his water to a suit of sorts around himself, similar to armor but much more flexible and variable if he needed to thicken certain spots before freezing it.

*Announcement: Difficulty Set To Maximum For Mage Challengers. Do You Accept Requested Ceiling Break?*

"NO!" he yelled out as fast as possible.

*Announcement: Answer Override Accepted. Difficulty Increasin- Error. Ceiling Break Requires Master Reinal's Approval. Assistant Deathclaw Not Authorized*

"HAHAHA!" Damien yelled/laughed out at the ceiling as he scanned his surroundings for more danger, throwing caution to the wind and foolishly mocking Layla's failure at ruining his time in here further.

*Authorization Denied*

"OH JUST LET ME GO FORWARD WITH THIS DIFFICULTY!!"

*Authorization Denied*

*Authorization Denied*

"Whatever..." Damien whispered as he began moving what he thought was the correct direction.

*Authorization Denied*

As he moved forward, Damien spread out a new layer of mana sense in his immediate surroundings. It still flooded his mind with way too much ambient mana and information, but being ready for it and keeping it in a small area made it tolerable. It was necessary with his level of reliance on it currently, especially since he wasn't exactly sure how far Layla would go in here. Damien wouldn't put it past the Demon to leave constant traps of spikes, deadly spiders, snakes, lava... all of it.

Finally, his eyes caught sight of what he assumed was a door to the next location, set right next to where he had landed earlier on the far side of the room. Smiling, he took a cautious step forward, feeling a few instances of the ground shifting beneath him, yet not attacking him. Most likely it was designed to put him on edge, and it was working superbly well.

"At least this is ov-" Damien started, reaching out towards a handle with hope in his chest.

His words stopped in their tracks though as he felt the room shifting its gravitational vortex again. A few seconds later, and he was laying on his back at the front entrance, staring up at scribbling on the wall that read, "Built and designed by Layla Deathclaw," while a lone tear streaked down the side of his face.

Alexa nervously took another half step back as the Kreel's sharp and intimidating teeth ground against one another.

"I'm gonna kill that stupid... No wonder he said he needed to work on a few things for a week... Him and the boy... Just you wait you bastards..."

Alexa looked up and to her right, contemplating moving more, but already backed away as far as she could from the Kreel without making it obvious. She'd been screaming and muttering for the past two minutes while grinding her teeth and no one really understood what had caused it. No one wanted to find out, either. She tensed up as Layla turned to glare at her.

"I hope you're ready to go next cause it's going to hurt thanks to that one in there. He is getting special attention the moment he comes out. Five times so far... I will enjoy this," she declared with an evil sneer.

"What the hell did he do," Alexa whispered to Kastra who stood beside her.

"No idea. Layla does seem very excited about it though," Kastra replied with a shrug. "Maybe he's using too much mana? She was much happier with the other contestants."

"That's an understatement..."

"HAHA! THOUGHT YOU WERE GETTING OUT!" the Kreel yelled, laughing loudly as more of her students jumped and scooted further away, her eyes still dark and face twisted in the same sneer.

'At least he's still alive...'

"OH COME ON!!!!" Damien screamed out, gritting his teeth as he expended mana to cover himself in a constantly repairing earthen wall/shield above his head. "SHIT!"

He lept to the side before a lump of magma melted through the wall and landed on his shoulder, quickly patching up the new hole in his wall as an intense flame began blasting through it. He generated more and more ice around his person to keep his body temperature as neutral as possible while willing the magma that had been created out of his earth to disappear.

Moments before, he'd finally entered the new room. He'd been thrown around by the gravity vortex more than a couple of times, but had finally started to learn how to expect it by the way the surrounding mana seemed to cling to his body and surroundings on one specific side, dragging him across the room and into multiple pillars. Once he figured it out, the attacks began to come less and less until they stopped altogether and he made it to the far side again where he'd tried to rest. Tried, and failed, as the moment he set his arms on what he assumed was a doorway and hung his head to breath, it began to slide up and out of the way and the entire corridor began to collapse inward, giving him no choice but to push on.

The wall that had lifted revealed a large, black opening just like at the beginning of the maze. He moved slowly toward it as it showed yet another passage, this one headed in the original direction he'd come from.

Three more tings had already sounded off before he'd reached this endpoint of the hallway: one from a carefully placed blunt spike of ice that had struck his neck while he was being covered in fire, one from a curved spike of ice that he thought was going to fly past him and ended up instead driving directly through his water helmets eye hole and slamming into the bridge of his nose, and the final one from a combination of gravity magic, teleportation magic, light magic, and earth magic. Whatever else Reinal and Layla were capable of producing, Damien really did not want to find out.

Mainly since this wasn't even the hardest setting.

His veins were just beginning to feel a tad bit sore, indicating he was below a quarter of his capabilities left, when the fire stopped pouring on top of him and the room cleared up. He transitioned the thin suit of ice he had left back to a sheet of water around him and took a moment to gather himself, once again resting at the end, but making sure he did so on the wall and not the doorway.

He understood entirely now why the Combatants failed this contraption. Making it through this far at a harder setting... He didn't want to guess what it was like for them. It was a small mercy that Layla hadn't shown them the bodies of anyone that had failed inside here. They had all been transferred immediately to the infirmary and probably appeared extremely mangled.

If there was anything positive he could say about this though, it was that it truly explained to him some core concepts of the world he'd need to learn more about. Gravity magic being able to throw you around like a rag doll, Teleportation magic being able to teleport more than just people, mana being able to saturate an area to blind a person, light magic being strong enough to scorch someone's eyes to the point they had to heal themselves because they'd go blind, the terrifying prospect of being crushed to a paste by a vast five foot in diameter pillar of earth repeatedly slamming into your hastily crafted shield of ice like a battering ram...

He'd put off his library trip for so long because he and Alexa had been working on her communed state, nearing a point of getting her full control of it, but this along with everything else... It was time. They'd have to postpone their plans so he could at least go rent a ton of books to keep around the house.

It was too bad, too. The communed Alexa was much more obvious with her desires and forceful. It had been an exciting experience for both him and Kastra, to say the least. Awoken an interesting-

'Ok, ok. Focus,' Damien chastised himself, pushing off the wall he was resting on and touching the one that would lead to the new room.

Waiting for the wall to slide up and out of the way, Damien stepped into what he hoped was the final room and found it was continually rotating, covered in things that looked similar to bear traps with many branching, small paths between them. The only difference between these and regular traps seemed to be the size of the teeth, probably long enough to impale fully through his leg if they closed on him. Most had some amount of dried blood on them, indicating they'd already impaled completely through someone, and all were stuck to the moving walls, keeping their place even when upside down.

Damien adjusted all the water he had left around his legs, solidifying it into thick sections of ice that he made sure to control in a manner that they'd not weigh him down. Gazing out across the rotating alley of despair before him, he sighed resigned himself to a vast amount of pain before taking a step onto the beginning of a pathway. Immediately after stepping his center of gravity changed to the wall he was standing on and all the traps disappeared from view.

He created a rock and tossed it where he believed one was and watched as it rebounded off an invisible wall while making a metalic clinking sound. The rock should have been big enough to shift the trap at least slightly, but it seemed they were stuck in place.

"Son of a bitch, who the hell thinks of all this shit! Oh wait, MY INSANE INSTRUCTOR DOES," Damien yelled, mind exhausted and past the breaking point as he began to shuffle his feet through the landmine covered tunnel slowly.

*Authorization Denied*

*Authorization Denied*

"Oh bite me," he muttered to the ceiling.

"I hope you enjoyed your time in there while it was easy!!" a quiet, screaming voice responded. "Once I fix this IDIOTIC limiter, I'm throwing you in there daily!!"

He didn't think to respond nor did he care to as he kept moving forward with no plan, exhausted. It had been over an hour since he'd started out in this stupid obstacle course, but from what he remembered, the students that had gone before him had only been in for scant minutes.

"THIS ISN'T EVEN AN OBSTACLE COURSE, IT'S LIKE A DEMENTED ESCAPE ROOM!!!!"

He almost didn't care anymore if he stepped in a-

"ARRRRGGGGHHHHH!!!" he cried out as a trap appeared from its invisibility, biting down on his right leg and piercing through his ice armor like it was water.

He'd miraculously made it over halfway through the room by the time something happened, so at least he had that going for him. The pain brought back a sense of caution about his reality at least, causing him to shake his head and began to think through his actions once more as he had at the beginning of the obstacle.

Noticing his mana sense wasn't giving him any edge in detecting the painful traps and only feeding back the image of a mana blanket he was walking on, Damien disabled it. As blood trickled slowly down his leg, he created a fine mist throughout the area in hopes it could reveal them, only to see it get sucked out of the room through the creases in the wall/floors. He flooded the floor with water and watched as it sank into the walls directly. Shooting fire around to see where it parted around the traps only served to blind him as it seemed to float a foot off all of the walls, blocked by an invisible barrier. All of it seemed to laugh in his face and demand he make it through by sheer luck or memory.

It seemed memory had been on Damien's side so far, but not because he recalled where the traps were, but because he'd been in the ocean back on earth. Shuffling his feet and moving forward, treating the ground as if it were covered by stingrays, had saved him so far. All of the traps he came across on either set off when he bumped into them or were avoided entirely after initial contact. He'd gotten a scrape or two from the ones that had set off but once he started using his already trapped leg as a front buffer, no more injuries came to him. Once he got about three-quarters of the way across the room, an announcement rang out.

*Assistant's Announcement: Phase Two Beginning Early*

Damien felt a strong desire just to hang his head and sit down.

As if a veil had been undone, the hundreds of traps all revealed themselves. Looking up, down, and around, he was surrounded by them.

*Gravity Modifier Disabled Early*

'She's mocking me, isn't she.'

Damien paled as he began to fall to his side, face first forward towards a group of traps. He used a small ball of compacted air to knock them all out of the way.

*SNAP SNAP SNAP SNAP SNAP*

Like mousetraps setting each other off, the bear traps all began to fall into and set each other off. He utilized what little mana he had left to keep a cone of compressed air above himself to push the traps on either side of his body as they came down and felt as it was constantly ripped apart by the teeth, but working.

Damien moved his hands together and touched them at the tips of his fingers, angled like a wedge. With one last effort, he created a large swath of earth before him and began sprinting for the exit. Like a snowplow, the earth crawled along the ground in front of him and shoved all the traps out of his path as he transversed through the circular, rotating room.

'Thanks for making this easy for m-'

*Attention: Phase One Reactivated. Gravity Modifier Reinstated*

His body flew upside down to the new roof and the traps seemed to all be magnetically drawn to exactly where they had been at the start, reset and ready to tear as they disappeared, himself on a collision course for one, or a few.

"GOD FU- AHHHHH!!!!" he screamed in anger more than pain as two traps ripped through his skin.

He didn't care that his complaints and pain might egg the controller on even more at this point. The tricks, the games, the constant barrage, the announcements... this place had beaten him mentally as well as physically.

Damien lay on the ground for a moment more as he looked at his two upper arms, now both pierced through the bone and skin by two more once again visible bear traps. It looked painful, but he could hardly feel it at this point through his exhaustion and adrenaline.

"Alright, let's go-owww ow ow," he whined out, finding the resolve to stand up until moving caused his limbs extreme discomfort, settling for sitting upright instead.

He took a deep breath and used his mana to sear his wounds closed, stopping the blood loss. Trying again, he successfully stood up and wobbled a bit, no doubt feeling woozy from what liquid he'd already lost, the pain, the disorienting way the room spun about, and his mana shortage. The opening leading outside was twenty feet away but he wasn't sure if he'd make it without going unconscious first. Damien considered just jumping out or using air magic to launch himself, but figured the penalty for cheating like that in Layla's eyes would be much more severe than this. This room was meant to be a quick-thinking on your feet room and if he violated that sanctity... repercussions were sure to be inbound.

*Gravity Modifier Disabled. Phase Two Activating*

'Then again, fuck the sanctity of this death trap.'

This time he didn't fall, gravity seemingly in his favor, and he took a huge, leaping stride forward with the assistance of compressed air as his foothold and a little explosion of air at his back. Immediately after giving the traps a moment to realize they weren't held in place any longer, the room erupted in an uproar of metal rending anything it could, from the walls to other traps and pieces of Damien's loose clothing. Swinging his stomach to the left avoided a trap that was coming at him from the side, rotating his arm upward sent the last bit of ice he had control of off his leg to divert one away from it before it hit, another compressed foothold for his next step stopped teeth that had been launched upward by its surroundings... they were coming from all directions and impossible for him to predict.

"Whats- shit!" he exclaimed, swinging his left arm in an arc upward to bash one away from its collision course with his head.

The trap immediately clamped down onto the one already on his arm, increasing the pain and pressure on his left limb as he bit down hard, focusing on his goal.

'Five feet! COME ON!'

The moment his foot lifted for the second time, aiming to leap out in this last ditch effort, his hair stood on end as he remembered the way both the Minotaur and the Human had been launched out of the room.

Instantly, the air in the room rushed into a void behind Damien's back, compressing it all as quickly as he could manage while his body continued its forward trajectory. He was coming dangerously close to overdrawing from his veins, the soreness was beginning to sting, but he needed to be able to control enough air to dampen whatever it was that was coming to ruin his day. He didn't want to be unconscious when he left this section as well.

As if waiting for that very moment, something slammed directly into his cushion from behind and burst the air, rocketing his body forward. A half-second later, the object broke through the air and contacted his back, but only at the level of an uncomfortable strike. He'd saved himself from breaking any bones as he was ejected into the outside world, the traps immediately vanishing off his limbs. Damien almost allowed himself to smile as he soared through the air alive, conscious, and barely able to continue. The record would be h-

"You think I'm going to let you set a record with THAT performance?"

The voice caused a cold sweat to immediately form on Damien's brow, and down his back. He couldn't tell where it was coming from but he could hear it crystal clear.

"I might even have let you, earlier. But no... not after that. Payback is a bitch," the voice asserted cruelly as a Demon from the very depths of hell gripped his lower ankle and stopped him from floating forward any further.

He sent a prayer out to the gods, begging them to give Kastra a better life partner and husband in her next life.

Kastra felt the ground crack and give way as the giant, violent Kreel disappeared from where she'd been standing. In her peripheral vision, she watched as Alexa's eyes hardened and her face became one of absolute concentration in an instant. Kastra smiled and sighed lightly at that before once again focused on the Kreel as she grabbed Damien's ankle.

Alexa had begun to bother Kastra of late with her indecision towards her and Damien, irritated only slightly less at the latter for not resolving the problem himself. However, whenever it came to Damien's or Kastra's own safety, well-being, or mental states, Alexa was almost always the first to be there for them or to be concerned for their sake. It was hard to get truly annoyed at that, so slight distaste at the entire situation seemed to be the emotion her mind had settled on.

Not that she'd tell either of them that. She didn't want to make an already difficult situation harder by telling them she was irritated.

Regardless of whether they both genuinely loved Damien, they both cringed hard as Layla swung him around like a mallet and slammed him into the ground, back first.

"THAT'S ONE PRETTY BOY!" Layla yelled out with mirth. "YOU FAILED THE MOMENT THE ALARM WENT OFF ONCE. AND YOU DECIDED TO GO AND USE AS MUCH MANA AS YOU POSSIBLY COULD THE MOMENT YOU'RE OUT OF SIGHT?!? ONE SLAM FOR EACH TIME YOU DIED IN THERE SEEMS A FITTIN PUNISHMEN-!"

"Layla dearest, it isn't exactly his fault he died so much. You had the difficulty set much too high from the start. You are supposed to let them begin at the lowest setting to get used to the hall, then turn it up as they progress through it. This is why I limited your rights with regards to the pain and difficulty settings," a voice interrupted. "And it's understandable he'd need mana in there without the reaction time and agility of a standard Combatant, especially at that setting."

Kastra watched on as Layla stopped what she was doing in an instant. Her head seemed to turn 180 degrees to stare into Reinal's eyes. The man smiled back at her with one the gentlest smiles Kastra had ever had the pleasure to witness, from his cheeks to his eyes, simply oozing comfort. Layla smiled back just as genuinely, though with a much different emotion spread across her face.

Wind exploded in Kastra's immediate area as Layla tossed Damien to the sky limp, Alexa appearing next to and catching their love before he hit the ground. Kastra was unaware she could move that fast and was happy she'd been gripping her clothing.

Feelings of calm came from his end of the pact, signifying his clarity of mind and well being. Kastra followed his eyes to Layla's back as she slowly moved in Reinal's direction, a loud booming sound echoing out with each step she took.

"Class is dismissed. First excursion taking place in two weeks, one week after Lover's Day. Talk more tomorrow," Layla said to the class as she moved away from them all.

Kastra turned back to him as he stared up at her and smiled. He looked over to Alexa a second later, face switching to a smirk while twitching in pain.

"I think I've just fallen for you," he wheezed out.

Kastra giggled while Alexa sighed at him.

"If you weren't in so much pain, I'd drop you right now."

"Who says... I'm in pain? That barel- Ow ow ow ok ok," he cried out, wheezing, coughing, and laughing as Alexa pinched different parts of his body.

Alexa's expression softened into a smile as he responded.

"Will we have enough time for you to get healed at home before basic spells? I'm pretty sure we have the rest of the period off," Kastra asked, motioning to where Reinal turned around and took off running.

"YOU CAN RUN ALL YOU WANT BUT WE BOTH KNOW I'LL FIND YOU!!!!!"

"Maybe, pretty sure... Let's hurry though, it all hurts like hell," he replied back in a serious tone.

Alexa nodded and Kastra hopped down do Damien's chest lightly, smiling and stroking his chin as they began to move toward their home. He loved when her nails were long enough to scratch just right and she enjoyed the faces he'd make, leaning his head into her tiny hands for more.

"I think I may have gotten him killed," Damien muttered absently.

"He'll be fine, I think. He usually comes back the next day partially or fully healed," Kastra stated.

"Really?"

"How do you know?" Alexa followed up.

"Well, every time this happened last year and the year before, whenever I observed this class, she'd chase him in a rage and the next day he'd be mostly fine. He had a bruise or two and a broken arm one day, but nothing huge and she was always actually rather easy on the class the day after. As easy as you can picture her going on people, sure, but no one broke bones those days," Kastra asserted. "I doubt that is going to pertain to you though. Whatever you did or said in there for the two minutes you were gone really pissed her off."

Kastra finished her explanation and crawled up to Damien's neckline, settling against him with a sigh of content.

"Just prepare your body," Kastra finished groggily.

"I was in there for like an hour," Damien stated incredulously as he lifted his chin to look up at Alexa.

"An hour? Really..." Alexa asked him as she lifted off the ground, carefully flying him and Kastra back to their home. "I feel... carriage. You... spoiled.... one ever carries me."

Kastra yawned as her words began to fade in and out. Damien was warm and comfortable. His heartbeat felt through his neck was like a gentle rocking, only adding to her exhaustion.

"So she speaks, so it will be done," Damien declared, causing a light smile to play across Kastras lips as she nudged closer and intently listened to each word he spoke. "And that's what it honestly felt like. I guess time is distorted in there. We probably shouldn't talk about this more. I'm supposed to keep it a secret, remember? If she finds out, she really will kill me... Especially since you haven't gone yet," Damien finished with a grimace. "Thank you for catching me though, Lexi. I didn't fancy the idea of landing on the ground from twenty feet up."

Kastra made a mental note to be more aware of that. She wasn't sure if it was ok for her to interrupt the Kreel's punishment, but perhaps it was more important that she show her love than worry about being removed for acting out of place.

"What did you.... to anger her," Alexa asked.

"Wait till we go... ask me. I can't... probably hear and hunt me..."

Kastra didn't hear Alexa's response as Damien's words finally began to blur and her mind shut down, finally allowing her to slip into a nap in the presence of her favorite people. It was surprising she'd stayed awake this long as is, what with how comfy she'd become and how hard it had been to fall asleep of late.

Hopefully, she'd dream of the kisses she thought she just heard him ask about, but more than likely it would just be another blank night.