Owen woke before the first sun.

He had not slept much. Two hours, maybe three, in fragments. Each time he closed his eyes he saw the silver threads circling, or Tessa’s face on the sand, or Wenrik’s calm tilt of the head. None of those were images that let a person rest.

He sat up on the cave floor. His left shoulder was stiff. The cut above his eye had scabbed but tugged when he moved. His core ached deep — the slow, hollow pain of something that had been pushed too far. The desolate channeling had cost him more than he’d told the others. He had perhaps twenty percent less channeling capacity today than he had yesterday. Maybe more.

It would have to be enough.

Yalira was awake on the far side of the cave, sharpening her daggers in the half-dark. She did not look up as he stirred, but he knew she had registered the moment he opened his eyes. That was the kind of scout she was.

Jorik was asleep against the wall, his broken arm tucked carefully against his chest. His face in sleep was older than it was awake. The grief had settled into him overnight in a way that would not fade quickly.

Owen stood. Gathered his gear. The refined Desolate gauntlet went on first, the way it always did. Then his belt. Then the small pouch of Crimson Hide jerky Yalira had set aside for him.

He moved to the cave entrance.

Yalira spoke without looking up. "You’re not going to say goodbye?"

"To Jorik? No. He doesn’t need to watch me walk out."

"To me?"

He stopped.

Looked back.

She had set the daggers down. Her amber eyes were on him now, quiet and direct.

"Yalira," he said. "If I don’t come back —"

"Stop."

"If I don’t come back, the credits in my account go to whoever can claim them off my body. Make sure it’s you. Use them to get Gorvax somewhere safer than the river chamber long-term. Find a way to —"

"Owen. Stop."

He stopped.

She stood up. Walked to him. Stood close enough that he could see the tiny gold flecks in the amber of her eyes. She did not touch him. She did not embrace him. She simply held his gaze, and her voice when it came was low and even.

"Come back," she said.

"That’s the plan."

"I do not care about the plan. Come back."

"Yalira."

"Come back, Owen."

He held her gaze a moment longer. Then he nodded once.

He left.

---

The walk to the canyon took him until midmorning.

He did not rush. Rushing would burn CE he did not have to spare. He kept his pace steady, his breathing measured, his suppression light enough that Wenrik would feel him coming. He wanted the Cantor to feel him coming. He wanted Wenrik to be standing in the canyon mouth, waiting, with no pretense of stalking or maneuver. He wanted this to be clean.

When he reached the canyon, Wenrik was there.

The Cantor stood exactly where Owen had left him the night before — at the canyon’s mouth, staff in his right hand, robe moving slightly in the morning wind. The silver burns on his ribs had healed. The blood at his mouth was gone. He looked rested in a way Owen did not look rested. He looked patient in a way Owen had stopped being patient.

"False Fist," Wenrik said quietly. "You returned."

"I said I would."

"You did. Many do not."

Owen stopped twelve meters away. Closer than yesterday. He wanted the engagement distance shorter this time. He wanted to deny Wenrik the full geometric space the Cantor used for his rhythm-cages.

"You killed someone yesterday," Owen said.

"I killed two prisoners yesterday on my approach. Three including the one we are discussing. That is the work of the hunt."

"Her name was Tessa."

"I do not learn names, False Fist. They do not help me."

"You’ll learn this one."

Wenrik tilted his head. The same small, considered motion he had made the day before.

"Will I."

"Yeah."

The Cantor raised his staff. The silver threads began to gather at its tip.

"Then begin," Wenrik said.

---

Owen began.

He did not wait for the first phrase this time. He did not let Wenrik set the geometry. He moved.

Five thousand units of CE were not available to him today. He had perhaps thirty-eight hundred in clean reserve and another five hundred in unstable, half-recovered storage that would tear him up if he used it wrong. He spent his clean reserves carefully. He flooded into the gauntlet — eight hundred CE, refined and tight — and sprinted the twelve meters between them in just under a second.

Wenrik’s first phrase was already moving when Owen arrived inside it.

The silver threads had no room to bloom. The Cantor’s body did not have time to do the rippling water-trick that had cost Owen his finishing strike yesterday. Wenrik was halfway through his third beat when Owen’s gauntleted left hand closed on the staff itself.

The staff did not break. It was not breakable by hand. But it was held.

For one full beat — the fourth beat of the phrase — the staff did not move.

Wenrik’s eyes widened, fractionally.

Owen’s right fist came up. Not a Cosmic Impact Fist. He could not afford to channel that much CE today. Just a fist — a knuckle-led punch into the soft point above Wenrik’s hip, where the Cantor’s robe gathered loosely over a vital cluster of nerves.

The strike landed.

Wenrik exhaled, a real exhale, surprised out of him. His weight shifted to his right leg. Owen used the shift. Hooked his foot behind Wenrik’s right ankle and pulled.

The Cantor went down.

Not all the way. He caught himself on his free hand, rolled, came up with his staff still in his grip, and put four meters of distance between them in a single clean motion. The water-rippling thing, the body-shifting thing — he used it now, but he used it for retreat, not for evasion of a finishing strike.

He stood up four meters back. The dust settled around him.

His eyes had changed.

He was no longer indulgent. He was no longer artisan-calm. He was, for the first time, working.

"You closed inside the phrase," Wenrik said.

"Yeah."

"That was not in your previous fighting profile."

"Profiles get out of date."

Wenrik’s grip on his staff adjusted. The silver threads at its tip thickened.

"Then we will not use first-order or third-order today, False Fist," he said. "We will use sixth-order. There is no version of you that is prepared for sixth-order."

The air around Wenrik began to hum.