The days after Wenrik's withdrawal moved in a strange rhythm.
The leaderboard prisoners who had scattered for the hunt began to filter back into the central hunting grounds within seventy-two hours of the Cantor's departure. Some of them had stories. Some of them had wounds. Many of them had losses — Wenrik had killed at least eleven prisoners during his approach and engagement window, a higher-than-average count for a single Ordained hunter. The leaderboard updated several times in those three days as positions shifted around the dead.
Owen rose to rank seven, then to rank six on Day 65 when the prisoner who had held that slot turned up missing. He passed seven and a half million credits. Then eight. Then he stopped tracking the daily climb because the climb itself was no longer the urgent part. The credits would accumulate. Survival was the urgent part.
