Morning came hard.

Owen woke with his back against stone, neck stiff, the taste of dust in his mouth. The two suns of Prison World had just cleared the horizon, throwing long red shadows across the camp. Gorvax was still asleep beside him, breathing deep and even—the kind of sleep he hadn’t managed in weeks.

The Sower looked different now. The blue of his skin had returned to its proper depth. The hollow under his cheekbones had filled out. The deep lines around his mouth had softened, though they hadn’t disappeared. His left arm rested across his chest in a relaxed curl rather than the tight wounded clutch of the past several days.

He looked like a man who would live.

Owen sat up slowly. Across the camp, Tessa was already awake, crouched by a small heat-coil, brewing something in a battered tin cup. She looked up as he stirred.

"Morning, False fist"

"Morning."

"Sleep okay?"

"Like a corpse."

"Romantic." She gestured to a second cup beside her. "I made enough for two. It’s not coffee. It’s not even close to coffee. But it’s hot and it has caffeine analogs, so."

Owen took the cup. Sipped. Bitter, slightly metallic, with an aftertaste like burnt cinnamon. But she was right—it had something in it that pushed against the fog in his head.

"Thanks."

"Mm." Tessa watched him over the rim of her own cup. "Jorik and Vren are up. We’re ready when you are."

Owen took another sip. Buying time.

"All of it, Owen," she said quietly. "That was the deal."

"Yeah."

He drank the rest of the cup.

---

They sat in a loose circle under the camouflage tarp—Tessa, Jorik, Vren, Yalira, and Owen. Gorvax slept on through it, which was probably for the best. He didn’t need to relive his own history right now. He needed sleep.

Jorik had his broken arm out of the sling for the first time, flexing it slowly. The bone had set well. Vren still had a bandage across half his face from Raxka’s claw-slash, but he was alert, watching Owen with calm gray eyes.

Tessa spoke first. "Start wherever you want. But don’t skip anything."

Owen took a breath.

"Okay," he said. "I’m going to tell you something that’s going to sound insane. Just... stay with me."

He started at the beginning.

The version of the beginning that mattered, anyway. He told them about Earth. About being human. About dying. About waking up in a dragon’s body in a dungeon, where dragons hadn’t existed for thousands of years before he arrived. About growing into his power, fighting demons, becoming what they called the Dragon King.

He watched their faces while he talked. Vren’s eyes narrowed but didn’t widen. Jorik’s jaw tightened. Tessa’s expression didn’t change at all.

He told them about Gorvax. About the Sower’s true role in his story.

About the vial.

About what Gorvax had done with it.

That was when the silence got heavy.

"You’re telling us," Tessa said slowly, "that he stole biological material from a Progenitor Matriarch. And used it to create dragons...you?."

"Yeah."

"Fucking hell."

"Yeah."

"Which is why the Tribunal sentenced him to indefinite isolation here."

"Yeah"

"Which means," Vren said quietly, speaking for the first time, "the Noble Races still don’t know. Specifically. That dragons exist."

"Right."

"And you..." Tessa’s eyes narrowed.

"Yeah...they think I’m some diluted descendant."

"...On Prison World."

"Yeah."

"With the Progenitor Matriarch’s biological signature, however diluted, still present in your CE pattern."

Owen exhaled. "Yeah."

Tessa sat back. She stared at him for a long moment. Then she laughed. It was short and dry and not particularly amused.

"Owen, you’re a walking war crime."

"I prefer Dragon King."

"You’re a walking political bomb. If the Progenitors find out a foreign biological derivative of one of their Matriarchs was successfully used to create a new being...."

"They’ll come for me. I know."

"They’ll come for us!. Anyone who knew. Anyone who helped." Tessa pressed her hands to her temples. "Owen. Why in every god’s name would you tell us this?"

"Because you asked?"

"I asked for context. I didn’t ask for a reason to be marked for execution. You could’ve lied !"

"Then you shouldn’t have asked."

She glared at him.

He held her gaze.

After a moment, she let out a long, slow breath. "Okay. Fine. We’re in it now." She gestured at Gorvax’s sleeping form. "And he kept this from the Tribunal because admitting where the genetic material went would have meant—what?"

"War..." Owen said. "Or something close to it. The Progenitors would have demanded the dragons’ eradication. The Tribunal would have had to comply. Every dragon-derivative In my world would have been hunted and killed. He took the smaller punishment to protect the species he’d made."

"Including you."

"Including me."

Jorik spoke for the first time. His voice was rougher than the others. Older. "And the bounty hunter. Raxka. The Nullborn. She knows?"

"I believe She suspects. Strongly. She placed a tracker on me. She came here as the first hunt to confirm. Gorvax sacrificed himself—or appeared to—to give me cover. She let him live because of an old Nullborn honor code."

"Right of Offering."

"Right."

"So the Nullborn faction will know," Jorik said. "Eventually."

"Probably."

"And when they know...."

"Then it’s complicated."

The four of them—Tessa, Jorik, Vren, Yalira—sat with that for a long moment.

Yalira broke the silence. "Well. That was a hell of a campfire story."

Tessa snorted despite herself. "Understatement of the season."

"What now?" Vren asked. His voice was quiet but firm. "We know. We’ve heard it. What do you want from us, Owen?"

Owen leaned forward.

"Two things," he said. "First, I want you to keep this quiet. Not because I’m asking for charity. Because if it gets out, you’re as dead as I am. Whatever you think of me, your survival is now tied to mine."

"Understood," Vren said.

"Second—" He hesitated. "I’m going to keep hunting. I need the credits. I need the pardon. And while I’m hunting, I’m going to have to leave Gorvax somewhere safe. Yalira knows about an underground river system in Zone 18 ruins—mineral deposits, low drone coverage, natural CE-shielding. We were trying to get him there. The Crimson Hide core bought him time, but the deep healing isn’t done yet. He still needs months of stable, hidden RCT to rebuild fully."

"You want us to host him here," Tessa said.

"Or to come with us to Zone 18. Or to set up a relay system—we move him in stages, you provide one of the safe points along the way." Owen looked at each of them. "I’m not asking you to risk yourselves for free. I’ll share credits from every hunt. Special beast cores—the medicinal ones, not the high-bounty ones—those go to Gorvax. The standard credits, I split with whoever helps me protect him. Fifty-fifty after expenses."

Tessa raised an eyebrow. "Fifty-fifty? You’re rank nineteen on the leaderboard. That’s a lot of credits to give up."

"I’d rather have him alive."

She studied him. "You really would, wouldn’t you."

"Yeah."

She glanced at Jorik. Jorik glanced at Vren. Some silent agreement moved between them.

"All right," Tessa said. "We’re in. Conditions: we don’t move him without all of us agreeing on the route. We don’t take unnecessary fights. And if anything turns and the Tribunal mobilizes for him specifically, we get clear—we don’t die for him. That’s not the deal."

"That’s fair."

"Then we have a deal."

She extended her hand. Owen shook it.

---

Gorvax woke an hour later.

He sat up slowly, testing his body the way someone tests ice before walking on it. Left arm flexed. Ribs stretched. He turned his head left, right. Took a careful breath, deeper than he’d managed in weeks.

His abyss-black eyes opened fully.

"I’m not dying," he said, almost to himself.

"No," Owen confirmed.

Gorvax looked around the camp. Took in Tessa, Jorik, Vren—all of them watching him with the wary curiosity of people who’d just learned the secret history of the universe.

"They know?" Gorvax said.

"They know."

"All of it?"

"All of it."

The Sower took that in. He nodded slowly. Then he turned to the three Season 47 prisoners.

"I won’t insult you by apologizing," he said. "What I did, I would do again. But I’m aware of what knowing this costs you. So I’ll say only this: thank you. For not turning him in. For not turning me in. For the cover. For the food. For the time."

Tessa met his gaze. "You’re welcome, Sower."

"Just Gorvax. Please."

"All right. Gorvax."

He bowed his head once, formal, almost old-fashioned.

Owen smiled despite himself. There was something deeply weird about watching a cosmic gardener who had created entire species be polite to three half-broken prisoners in a sand-scoured camp on a forgotten rock.

But it was also right. In a way he couldn’t quite name.

---

That afternoon, they planned.

The route to Zone 18 was longer than Owen had originally calculated—about four days at Gorvax’s current pace, with multiple drone-shadow windows to navigate. Yalira drew up the map. Tessa marked alternate hide sites. Jorik would scout the first leg. Vren would stay at the camp as a relay point in case anyone needed to fall back.

They’d move tomorrow at dusk.

Owen sat with Gorvax through the late afternoon. The Sower was eating again—real food now, not just water. His color was steady. He moved more easily. He’d never be at full Tier 4 five-star strength again without weeks more of recovery, but he was alive, and he was healing, and he was going to keep healing.

---

That night, Owen sat at the edge of the camp on watch. The two moons of Prison World had risen, casting a strange double-shadow across the dunes. Yalira joined him at some point, settling beside him without speaking.

After a while, she said: "We’re really doing this, huh."

"Yeah."

"Hiding the Sower from the Tribunal. Walking him across half a prison world. Splitting credits with three Season 47 randoms."

"That’s the plan."

"It’s a stupid plan, Owen."

"I know."

"It’s also the right one."

"I know."

She bumped her shoulder against his, light. "Okay. Then let’s go do it."