Ash started Body Refinement Layer 16 in the afternoon of Day Eight.
He had rested. He had eaten. He had cleaned the room and let the quiet settle for a few hours. When he sat back down on the platform the silver rings glowed the same steady way they always did. The energy lines under the floor hummed at the familiar ceiling Marsh had set. Nothing felt different at first.
He formed the nine black holes in their star pattern, settled his breathing, and began the cycles the way he had for every layer since the rebuild started.
He expected another two-hour layer.
It took four.
The Star Cycles ran exactly the same. The black holes pulled the same amount of energy. The Nova pulses washed through muscle, bone, and organ with the same clean force. But each pass changed less than it used to. The tissue still refined. The density still rose. The improvements were simply smaller. Most of what could be improved had already been improved. Each cycle now found less to fix.
