Owen woke before dawn with a tightness in his chest he hadn’t felt in weeks.

It wasn’t fear, exactly. It was the body recognizing something the mind had been trying not to dwell on. Today the Cantor landed. Today the leaderboard began to bleed.

He sat up slowly on the stone slab he’d been using as a bed in the upper level of the station. The two moons of Prison World hung low in the western sky, pale and double-shadowed. Yalira was already up — he could hear her moving on the lower level, the soft clink of her daggers being checked. Tessa and Jorik were still asleep across the room, curled in their respective corners.

He dressed quietly. Strapped on his refined Desolate gauntlet. Tucked Gorvax’s sheaf of notes inside his jacket — by now he’d memorized them, but he wanted them close anyway, like a talisman.

He went down to find Yalira.

She looked up from her daggers as he came in, gave him a once-over, nodded.

"Slept?"

"A little."

"Eat something."

"In a minute."

She didn’t push. She just slid the small bag of dried Crimson Hide jerky across the stone toward him and went back to her blades.

Owen sat down across from her and ate.

---

The plan had been refined over the past seven days, then refined again, then again.

It was simple in shape and complicated in execution. Stage one: relocate. The station was too well-known among the leaderboard prisoners now, which meant it would be one of the first locations a competent hunter scouted. Owen’s group would abandon it the moment the Cantor’s landing was confirmed and move to a secondary position three kilometers north — a smaller cave system with three exits and natural CE-shielding from a thin iolite vein in the rock.

Stage two: scatter. Tessa, Jorik, Vren, and Yalira would not stay near Owen during the actual hunt. Wenrik the Cantor would be hunting the leaderboard’s number nine, not a four-person team. If the team stayed close, they all became targets. If they scattered, only Owen drew the focus. They’d reconvene after.

Stage three: bait and break. Owen would let the Cantor find him on chosen ground. He’d absorb the first rhythm. He’d identify the pattern. He’d break it.

Stage four: kill or escape. Whichever came first.

It was a plan. It was even a reasonable plan. But there were too many variables that depended on a Cantor he’d never seen and a fighting style he’d only studied in diagrams.

Tessa came up while he was finishing the jerky. Her face was serious.

"Drone activity just spiked southwest," she said. "Yalira’s right — landing’s confirmed."

Owen exhaled. "Where?"

"About forty kilometers out. Near the basin where the salt flats start."

"How long until he reaches our sector?"

"Cantors move fast. Half a day on foot. Maybe less if he calls a transport ride."

"Okay."

He stood. Brushed crumbs off his jacket. Looked at his small crew — Yalira sliding her daggers home, Tessa adjusting her pack, Jorik appearing in the doorway with his weapons already on him and his scarred face composed.

"Move out," Owen said. "Twenty minutes. We clear the station and break apart at the rendezvous."

They moved.

---

By midday, the station was empty.

They’d taken everything that mattered — supplies, maps, the small cache of Grade 2 cores Owen had been saving, the Tribunal signal beacon they still hadn’t figured out what to do with. Yalira had even removed the early-warning markers, partly so they wouldn’t telegraph the station’s recent occupation, partly because she was the kind of person who didn’t leave tools behind.

The secondary cave was three kilometers north and elevated — a position with a sight line back over the station, in case Owen wanted visual confirmation when the Cantor arrived.

He did want it.

They settled into the cave. Yalira took the highest exit, Tessa the lowest, Jorik the middle. Vren was already gone — he’d been sent back up to the original camp two days earlier, far from the projected hunt zone. The plan was for Tessa and Jorik to fade north as well once the Cantor’s approach was confirmed visible. Yalira would stay just long enough to confirm the hunter’s pattern, then withdraw.

After that, Owen would be alone.

He didn’t say anything about that. None of them did. The silence was its own conversation.

---

The Cantor arrived at the station an hour before sunset.

Owen watched him through Yalira’s spotting scope — a thin tube of polished bone Vren had bartered from a Lifer two months ago, fitted with a single CE-amplified lens. It made distant figures crisp.

Wenrik the Cantor was unimpressive at a glance.

He was slim. Average height. Green-skinned, with the deep red tribal markings curling down his neck and across his bare forearms. He wore a long, loose, dust-colored robe that moved easily around him as he walked. No visible weapon. No armor. He carried a single staff, polished black wood, no taller than his shoulder.

He moved with absolute economy. Every step placed deliberately. His head rotated in slow, scanning arcs as he approached the station.

He stopped at the perimeter. Stood for almost a full minute, motionless.

Then his head turned.

Slowly.

Until he was looking — directly, unmistakably — at the cave Owen and his team were hiding in.

Three kilometers away.

"He sees us," Yalira said quietly beside him.

"Yeah."

"He shouldn’t be able to. We’re behind iolite shielding."

"He shouldn’t, no."

Wenrik the Cantor raised one green hand. He did not gesture. He did not signal. He simply held the hand up, palm out, in the universal language of *I see you*.

Then he lowered it.

Then he started walking. Toward the cave.

Not fast. Not slow. Just steady.

"Move," Owen said. "Now."

---

Tessa and Jorik were gone within a minute, splitting north and northwest. Yalira held her ground.

"Yalira."

"Five more minutes. I’m watching his pattern."

"He’ll close the distance in twenty. You need—" 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝚠𝚎𝚋𝗻𝗼𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝚘𝐦

"Five more minutes. I’m watching his pattern."

Owen swallowed. Trusted her judgment. Started his own preparations.

He needed to choose the engagement ground. A Cantor’s rhythm-projection worked best in open space, where the patterns of CE could echo and reinforce off ambient particles. Constrained spaces — rock walls, broken terrain — would disrupt the resonance. He’d planned for a narrow canyon two kilometers east of the cave system, where wind-carved walls created chaotic echo geometry.

He started moving toward it.

Yalira caught up to him as he was crossing the second ridge. She fell into stride beside him without a word.

"Pattern?" he asked.

"Four-beat. Maybe five-beat. He walks in fours. He scans in fours. His breathing is in fours that I could see at three kilometers, which is unsettling on its own."

"So I should expect his combat phrases to be in fours."

"That’s my read. Assume four, and verify in the first exchange. If it’s five, adjust fast."

"Got it."

"Owen." Her hand caught his arm. "He saw us through iolite. That’s not normal Cantor capability."

"I know."

"Be ready for him to be more than what Gorvax’s notes described."

"I know."

She held his gaze a moment longer. Then she released his arm.

"Don’t die."

"That’s the plan."

She melted off into the broken ground to the north.

Owen kept moving toward the canyon.

---

Wenrik the Cantor caught up to him at the canyon’s mouth.

The light was failing. The first sun had set. The second was a blood-red sliver on the horizon. The wind moved through the canyon’s wind-carved walls in low, hollow tones — exactly the chaotic acoustic environment Owen had wanted.

Owen turned to face the hunter.

Wenrik stopped about thirty meters away. His green skin caught the dying light. His red tribal markings looked almost black in the shadow. His abyss-dark eyes were calm.

"False fist," Wenrik said. His voice was soft. Almost musical. "Number nine. I have been studying you."

"Wenrik."

"You know my name."

"I have a friend who shared it with me."

"Mm." Wenrik tilted his head — a small, considered motion. "The Sower."

Owen’s stomach went cold.

"Yes," Wenrik continued, as if Owen had answered. "I felt his hand in your preparation. The patterns of your training drills these past days carry his signature. Old. Particular. His."

"He’s dead."

"He is not." Wenrik’s mouth curved very slightly. "But that is a conversation for later, if there is a later."

Owen gathered himself. CE rising. Five thousand units of cosmic energy spreading through his body in a careful, controlled wave.

"You want to do this here?" Owen asked.

"I want to do this wherever you have prepared," Wenrik said. "I respect the preparation. The canyon is a thoughtful choice. The wind disrupts third-order resonance significantly." He raised his staff for the first time. "But not first-order, Dragon King. And first-order will be enough for you, I think."

He moved.

---

The first exchange lasted four seconds.

Owen counted, the way Gorvax had taught him to. Wenrik’s staff cut the air in a four-beat phrase: high strike, low strike, lateral cut, withdrawal. Each strike trailed a thread of green-edged CE that hung in the air for an instant after the staff passed through.

Owen blocked the first three with the gauntlet. Stepped inside on the fourth. Threw a Cosmic Impact Fist at Wenrik’s chest at point-blank range.

It should have ended the fight.

It didn’t.

Wenrik’s body rippled — not dodged, rippled, the way water ripples around a stone — and the fist passed through where his sternum should have been and met empty air. The Cantor was suddenly two paces to Owen’s left, staff already moving in the next four-beat phrase.

Owen rolled clear just in time.

The four threads of green CE that Wenrik had left hanging in the air during the first exchange — they weren’t dissipating. They were holding. Like notes held in a chord.

Wenrik landed his second phrase. Four more strikes. Four more threads of CE hanging.

Eight notes now. Suspended in the air around Owen.

He started to feel the resonance.

It was a low pressure first. Then a hum. Then a pull — the eight threads of CE were beginning to harmonize, and the harmony was reaching for Owen’s own CE, trying to lock onto its frequency and...disrupt it.

That was the trick. The Cantor wasn’t building up an attack. He was building up a cage. Once the resonance fully formed, it would lock Owen’s CE into Wenrik’s rhythm, and Owen wouldn’t be able to channel his own attacks.

He had to break it before the third phrase landed.

Owen surged forward. Closed the distance. Did not throw a finishing strike — a finishing strike would land on a ripple-form Wenrik again. Instead he threw a disruptor: a wide, low-CE projection burst, designed not to damage but to scramble the air.

The eight green threads wavered.

Wenrik’s eyes flickered.

For the first time, the Cantor moved off-rhythm. Just a quarter-beat. But it was visible.

Owen pressed.

He stayed in close. Threw fast, low-power strikes — each one designed not to land cleanly but to keep Wenrik’s staff occupied, to prevent the Cantor from completing his next four-beat phrase. Every time Wenrik tried to set up a new pattern, Owen broke it.

The eight threads began to fade.

The Cantor’s calm composure cracked, just slightly.

"False fist..." Wenrik said softly, between strikes. "You are not what the briefing described."

"Briefings are usually too short to explain much" Owen said.

He landed his first real strike of the fight — a hooked palm-heel that caught Wenrik in the ribs. The Cantor exhaled hard and stumbled back two steps. Real damage. Real blood at the corner of his mouth.

Owen pressed harder.

But Wenrik recovered fast. The staff came up. He was not going to give Owen a clean second strike. The Cantor’s eyes had gone darker now — focused, no longer indulgent.

"First-order," Wenrik said. "Was a mistake."

He shifted stance.

The CE around him changed.

The threads that had been green-edged turned silver.

And Owen felt — instantly, viscerally — that the next phrase was not going to be in fours.

It was going to be in sevens.

He had perhaps two seconds to figure out what that meant.