They left at dusk.

Gorvax walked under his own power for the first time in over a week, leaning on a staff Vren had carved for him. The staff had a Crimson Hide tooth set into the head—Vren’s idea, half practical, half ceremonial. Gorvax had accepted it with a small, formal bow that had clearly meant something neither of them had bothered to translate.

The first night, they made twelve kilometers.

Owen was suppressing again, holding his CE down to 4,200 to mask Gorvax’s slowly recovering signature beneath his own. Yalira ranged ahead, scouting drone patterns. Tessa took rear guard. Jorik moved point with Owen, the broken arm still favoring slightly but functional.

By the second sunrise, they’d reached the first hide site—a collapsed rock formation Yalira had mapped during her old scouting runs. They slept in shifts through the heat of the day. Drank carefully. Ate Crimson Hide jerky.

The second night they made fifteen kilometers.

The third night, eighteen.

Gorvax was getting stronger. His pace lengthened. The deep-tissue healing the Crimson Hide core had triggered was still working its way through his body, repairing things in layers, week-old damage flaking off like bark from a tree.

By the fourth night, he was walking without the staff.

"You’re sure?" Owen asked, the first time he saw Gorvax leave it leaning against a rock and just step away.

"I’m sure."

"Don’t push it."

"Dragon. I have spent more centuries in this body than you have lived. I know its limits."

"You also let yourself get gutted by a Nullborn so I wouldn’t have to."

Gorvax smiled faintly. "Yes. Well. Most centuries."

Owen rolled his eyes but didn’t argue further.

---

They reached the Zone 18 ruins on the fifth night.

The ruins weren’t what Owen had been expecting. He’d imagined something dramatic—broken towers, old battlefields, monuments to forgotten empires. What they found instead was subtler. Lower. Older.

The ruins spread across maybe six square kilometers of a rocky basin. Foundations of buildings, half-buried. Stone roads, mostly cracked, some still partially intact under centuries of dust. Strange geometric markings carved into outcroppings—not writing, exactly, but something older. Older than language, maybe.

"What was this place?" Owen asked Yalira.

"Don’t know. Theory is, it was a Tier 1 colony from before the Tribunal era. They left. Or they died. Or they got moved off-world and the rock got repurposed as a prison. Take your pick." She gestured downhill, toward a darker depression in the basin. "Underground river’s that way. Through a collapsed temple structure. The way down is narrow—we’ll have to crawl in places."

"Lead on."

The way down was every bit as bad as she’d warned. They squeezed through fissures, dropped down rope-assisted slopes, navigated tight bends. Tessa and Jorik moved like they’d done worse. Vren—who’d stayed back at the original camp—wasn’t with them, and Owen found himself missing the steady gray-eyed presence already.

After almost an hour of descent, the air changed.

Cooler. Damper. Carrying the unmistakable scent of moving water.

They emerged into a cavern.

It was vast. The roof curved away into darkness above them. Bioluminescent moss grew in patches across the stone walls, casting a pale blue-green light over everything. And through the center of the chamber, smooth and dark and silent, ran a river. Not fast, but steady. Clean. The kind of water that had been hidden from sun and contamination for thousands of years.

The mineral content of the air made Owen’s CE prickle. He felt his suppression loosen automatically, his energy responding to whatever was in this place.

"CE-shielding mineral deposits," Yalira said, watching him notice. "Iolite veins in the rock. They scatter cosmic energy signatures. We could light up like a star down here and the drones up top wouldn’t read a thing."

"It’s perfect," Gorvax said quietly.

Owen looked at the Sower. Gorvax was staring at the cavern with an expression Owen had rarely seen on him—something close to peace.

"Old," Gorvax murmured. "This place is old. The minerals are speaking. They remember."

"Remember what?"

"Whoever left them here. Whoever shaped this chamber. There’s intentionality in the way the iolite veins are placed. This isn’t natural geology. This is engineering. From a long time ago." He stepped closer to the river, knelt, dipped a blue hand into the water. Closed his eyes.

When he opened them again, he looked steadier than he had since the trial.

"This will work," he said. "I can heal here. I can hide here. The minerals will mask my recovery work for as long as I need."

Tessa looked around the cavern. "How do we make it livable?"

"It’s already livable," Gorvax said. "I need very little. Water, which I have. Cover, which I have. Time, which I’m being given. The rest, I can handle."

"You’ll be alone for stretches," Owen said. "I’ll come back when I can. Yalira will scout periodically. But I have hunts to run."

"I know."

"And you can’t fight at full strength yet."

"I know that too."

"So you stay hidden. You don’t go out. You heal. We bring you supplies."

Gorvax looked at him with abyss-black eyes that, for the first time in a long while, held humor instead of pain.

"Yes, Dragon. I understand the parameters of being a healing fugitive. Thank you."

"Just making sure."

"Mm."

---

They spent the next day setting up.

They brought supplies down from the surface—dried meat, water flasks, scavenged blankets, a second heat-coil from Vren’s original stash. Tessa worked out a signal system: small carved stones placed in specific patterns at the entrance to the descent route, to indicate threats above-ground or all-clear conditions.

Yalira mapped two backup escape routes from the river chamber, in case the main entrance was ever compromised.

Jorik—surprising everyone—turned out to know stonecraft. He spent half a day shaping a small alcove off the main chamber into something more like a room, with a flat sleeping area and ledges for supplies. By evening, the alcove looked almost cozy. Almost.

By the second day in the ruins, Gorvax had a base.

They sat together on the riverbank that evening, the bioluminescent moss casting its pale glow across the water. Gorvax was eating slowly. Owen was watching the river, listening to its low constant murmur.

"How long?" Gorvax asked.

"Until what?"

"Until you have to leave again."

Owen sighed. "Tomorrow morning. Month one’s almost over. Month two’s hunter is going to land in about three weeks, and I need to be back near the leaderboard by then. I have to keep grinding credits. Pardon track."

"Mm."

"You’ll be okay?"

"I’ll be okay."

"You sure?"

Gorvax turned his head, looked at Owen directly. "Dragon. You found me bleeding out in a cave six days ago. You carried me across a desert. You went into a canyon and killed a Tier 5 four-star apex predator with a regenerative core because you knew I needed it. You convinced three Season 47 strangers to risk their lives to keep me hidden. You walked me to the safest place on this planet."

He paused.

"I’ll be okay."

Owen looked at his hands.

"Yeah," he said. "Okay."

---

The next morning, Owen left.

Tessa and Jorik came with him. Yalira stayed one more day to finish mapping the cavern systems, then would catch up. The plan was simple: head back to the surface, return to a workable hunting zone, and start grinding.

He was rank nineteen. He needed to climb. He needed credits—a billion of them, eventually. He’d accumulated three million so far. Long road ahead.

But he could do it now.

Not because anything had gotten easier. Because the weight he’d been carrying for the last week and a half—the weight of believing Gorvax was dead, then finding him alive, then keeping him alive—had finally been set down somewhere safe.

The Sower would heal in the river chamber. Yalira would visit. Vren would relay supplies through the network they were building. Tessa and Jorik would help cover the routes. 𝓯𝓻𝒆𝙚𝒘𝓮𝙗𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝒍.𝙘𝓸𝙢

And Owen could hunt.

---

They reached the surface by late afternoon. The two suns of Prison World hammered down on the rocky basin. Tessa pulled her hood up against the heat. Jorik grunted, flexing his arm.

"All right, Dragon King" Tessa said. "What’s the play?"

"Northeast," Owen said. "Back toward the central hunting grounds. There’s a Lifer cell I’ve been tracking from Korvan’s old intel. Mid-tier prisoners. Maybe ten of them. They’ve been running raids on solo hunters."

"Worth it?"

"Couple hundred thousand credits if we clear them. Maybe more if any of them have bounties."

"Couple hundred thousand sounds good."

"Yeah."

Jorik rolled his shoulders. "Let’s hunt."

They moved.

---

That night, Owen made camp under a ridgeline, ten kilometers from where the Lifer cell had last been spotted. Yalira caught up just before dawn, her amber eyes bright in the dim light.

"He’s settled," she said quietly, sliding down beside him. "Safe. Healing. Reading the iolite veins like a book."

"Good."

"And you?"

"What about me?"

"You okay?"

Owen thought about it. The fire crackled low between them. Tessa and Jorik were asleep on the other side of camp.

"Yeah," he said finally. "I think I am."

Yalira nodded. She didn’t push. She just settled in beside him, tail curling, and watched the stars over Prison World begin to fade as dawn approached.

Three weeks until the next hunter arrived.

Three weeks to grind.

He’d make it count.