"He's at it again," the night guard whispered, watching Rhys trace intricate patterns on his cell wall. Dancing fingers mapped invisible geometries while he carried on animated conversations with empty air. "Been going for hours."
The day guard checked his tablet. "Hasn't touched food in two days either. Just arranges it in these weird patterns." He brought up an image – prison gruel shaped into configurations that made his eyes hurt to look at directly.
Neither guard noticed how those food patterns perfectly matched the crystal array frequencies seven tiers above.
In the yard, other inmates gave Rhys a wide berth. His presence created empty spaces, zones where even hardened killers feared to tread. He wandered between precise points, stopping to stare upward and laugh, having intense discussions with shadows that weren't really there.
"It's spreading," Vale muttered to his crew, watching from a safe distance. "Whatever broke in his head after our fight, it's getting worse."
The Wolf's distant howl grew stronger with each passing day.
"Prisoner 3479," the speaker crackled. "Report for bout preparation."
Today's opponent was Malik – ex-military specialist, three kills in his last fight. The yard bookies had the odds at 5-to-1 for hospitalization, 10-to-1 for survival past ten minutes. The crime bosses running F-Block's gambling rings had started treating his matches like a special event. Not for the fighting, but for the sheer unpredictability he brought to their calculations.
The processing room felt different. Guards kept their distance during the pre-fight scan, hands tight on their batons. The medic's fingers trembled checking his vitals.
"Blood pressure elevated," she noted, avoiding his eyes. "Pupils dilated. Recommending—"
"The crystals sing differently today," Rhys interrupted, voice childlike. His fingers danced through the air, matching harmonics only he could hear. "Listen... can't you hear it? One-seven-three-nine... no, no, that's not right. The Wolf says the frequencies are shifting."
The medic stepped back so quickly she knocked over her tablet. "Psychiatric hold after the bout. Mandatory."
Her words were lost as Rhys began to hum, the melody perfectly matching the resonance of the nearest crystal node. Three levels up, in C-Tier, a containment field flickered. A technician marked it as routine variance.
"Five minutes to bout," the speaker announced.
Guards led him to the holding cell like he was made of glass, afraid he might shatter at any moment. In the opposite cell, Malik stretched his combat-hardened frame, studying his opponent with professional assessment.
"Heard interesting things about you," Malik called out. His voice carried the flat tone of someone used to killing. "They say you're fusion burned. That true?"
Rhys pressed against the bars, smiling too wide. "Do you want to know a secret?" His voice dropped conspiratorially low. "The Wolf showed me where they hide the truth. In the spaces between. In the harmonics where reality bends." His fingers danced along the bars, tapping out crystal frequencies. "Would you like to see?"
Something flickered across Malik's face – the first hint of uncertainty from a man trained never to show weakness. In the premium boxes above, more observers than usual had turned their attention downward. F-Tier fights rarely drew interest from the elite, but rumors of the mad ex-Hunter had begun to circulate.
The walk to the arena floor was a performance in calculated chaos. Rhys alternated between fluid grace and broken shambling, never settling into a pattern. His eyes remained fixed on points where crystal nodes pulsed with power. Their resonance sang through his consciousness, each frequency another piece of the puzzle he was assembling.
"Fighters ready!"
Malik settled into a military stance, professional and lethal. Rhys swayed like a drunk, giggling at shadows.
"Begin!"
The first exchange was pure calculation. Malik's strikes came in measured combinations, testing defenses. But Rhys moved like mercury, flowing between perfect technique and total chaos. One moment he'd slip a punch with trained efficiency, the next he'd fall over his own feet while laughing about wolves.
"Stop playing around," Malik growled, launching a sequence that should have ended the fight.
Should have.
But Rhys moved through the attacks like water through stones, each seemingly random motion actually guided by crystal harmonics pulsing above. His techniques flickered between styles – Hunter forms, military patterns, street brawling, and something else entirely. Something that made Malik's combat instincts scream warnings.
In the premium boxes, more elite viewers leaned forward. There was something fascinating about the fusion burnout's erratic movements. Something almost... deliberate?
The thought vanished as Rhys began singing a children's song about moonlight, his strikes becoming wild and uncoordinated. Malik pressed his advantage, landing solid hits that drew blood. The F-Tier crowd roared their approval.
But with each fall, each roll, each seemingly random movement, Rhys's fingers traced new patterns. Crystal resonances rippled through the Vault's structure, creating minute fluctuations in the containment fields. In C-Tier, a fusion bout was briefly delayed due to "technical adjustments."
Twelve minutes in, everything changed.
Rhys stopped mid-motion, head tilting as if listening to distant music. His eyes snapped into focus with an intensity that made Malik take an involuntary step back.
"Can you feel it?" Rhys asked in a voice that wasn't quite his own. "The way the patterns want to break? The way the Wolf howls through the cracks?"
Then he moved.
What followed wasn't combat in any traditional sense. Rhys flowed through Malik's defenses like smoke, each motion corresponding to a crystal harmonic pulsing overhead. His techniques shifted between styles with liquid grace, creating patterns that hurt the eye to follow. All while laughing, always laughing, as if reality itself was some cosmic joke only he understood.
Malik never saw the final strike coming. One moment he was defending against what seemed like six different styles at once, the next he was on the ground, unconscious. Rhys stood over him, giggling as he traced patterns in the air that perfectly matched the crystal array frequencies.
"Winner: 3479," the official announced, confusion evident in his voice. "Time: seventeen minutes, twenty-two seconds."
The F-Tier crowd fell silent. In their private boxes, Guild representatives made urgent calls, voices hushed as they tried to explain what they'd just witnessed.
As medics lifted Malik's unconscious form, one of them noticed something odd. Where Rhys's blood had dripped onto the concrete, tiny fracture patterns spread outward like frozen lightning. The same patterns that pulsed through the crystal arrays high above.
But by the time anyone thought to look more closely, the patterns had vanished.
That night, a Guild observer sat in his premium box long after the fights had ended. He replayed footage of the fusion burnout's matches, searching for something he couldn't quite name. On his sixth viewing, he noticed how the containment field fluctuations coincided perfectly with the madman's movements.
He reached for his communicator, then stopped. Who would believe him? What could he even say?
In his cell, Rhys pressed his palm against the cold wall and smiled. Above him, crystal arrays thrummed with power, their frequencies singing songs of imprisonment. But in the space between those songs, in the harmonics that no one else could hear, the Wolf's howl was changing.
It wasn't just distant anymore.
It was hungry.