Victory was a taste, metallic and bright, like the first bite of a rare fruit. It lingered on Kyon's tongue for days after the Rourke fight. The muted respect from the gym regulars deepened. He was no longer just Thorne's intriguing project; he was a fighter with a "W" next to his name. The rhythm of camp resumed, but the tempo had changed. The specter of the next fight—the quarter-finals—was a sharper spur.
His opponent was drawn: Terrell "The Truth" Jackson. Thorne got the scouting report from his network of gym-rat informants. "Different animal," Thorne grunted, handing Kyon a greasy napkin with scribbled notes. "Kid from the east side. 5-1 amateur record. His loss was a dodgy decision. He's not a brawler. He's a boxer. Long reach, good jab, fights tall. Likes to keep it at range and pick you apart."
A boxer. Not a bull to be dodged, but a fencer to be out-dueled. This presented a new geometry.
Thorne adjusted the training. Sparring sessions with Miguel intensified, focusing on fighting from the outside, beating a jabber to the punch. They worked on parries—using his gloves to redirect incoming jabs, creating openings for his own. They drilled the pull-counter: baiting a jab, pulling the head just out of range, and firing a right hand over the top of the extended arm. It was a high-risk, high-reward move that required millimeter-perfect timing and preternatural reflexes.
Exactly what Kyon had.
"He's gonna try to establish his jab and keep you on the end of it," Thorne said, holding the mitts as Kyon practiced the pull. "You can't just slip and weave against a guy like that. You have to disrupt his rhythm. You have to take his jab away. You do that by countering it, by making him pay every time he throws it."
Kyon's world became a matrix of distances and angles. He saw lines of attack not as threats, but as vectors to be manipulated. The river stone in his pocket was a talisman of density in this abstract world.
The week before the fight, during a brutal session on the double-end bag—a maddening, rebounding apparatus that taught precision and timing—Miguel leaned on the ring ropes, watching.
"You nervous, Fantasma?" Miguel asked.
Kyon didn't break rhythm, his gloves pop-pop-popping against the small, fast bag. "No."
"You should be. A little. The Truth is good. He's the first real test. This ain't fighting some charging rhino. This is chess with concussions."
Kyon caught the bag, stopping its erratic dance. He turned, breathing steadily. "What's his truth?"
Miguel grinned. "That he's the better boxer. That he's gonna outclass the new kid. That's what he believes. Your job is to show him a different truth."
The night of the quarter-finals, the venue was larger—a VFW hall with a proper, if slightly sagging, ring. The crowd was bigger, louder, more invested. The air crackled with the cheap beer and cigar smoke of serious local fight fans. Kyon felt the difference in the atmosphere. This was no community center curiosity. This was the meat of the tournament.
In the locker room, a cramped space that smelled of mildew and liniment, Thorne wrapped his hands with a solemn, ritualistic care. "You're not the unknown anymore. They've seen the tape of your first fight. Jackson will have a plan. Expect him to be cautious early. He'll try to figure out your timing. Don't give it to him for free. Make him work for every piece of information."
Kyon nodded, his focus turning inward. He visualized Jackson's long frame, his high guard. He saw himself parrying the jab, sliding inside its reach, ripping body shots. He saw the pull-counter landing clean.
"Wilson vs. Jackson! To the ring!"
This walk felt different. The eyes on him were assessing, not curious. He heard his new name in the crowd murmur. "That's The Phantom… kid who moves like water…" "Facing The Truth tonight… gonna be a technical fight…"
Terrell Jackson was already in the ring. He matched the scouting report: tall, maybe 6'2", with a lean, wiry build and arms that seemed to go on forever. He had a calm, detached expression, like a mathematician about to solve an equation. He eyed Kyon with cool appraisal.
The referee gave the instructions. Jackson gave a slight, professional nod. Kyon met his gaze, seeing not malice, but calculation. This was business.
The bell.
Round one was a feeling-out process of exquisite tension. Jackson did exactly as predicted. He moved laterally, flicking out a long, probing jab. It was fast, snakelike. Kyon, used to slower, wider punches, found himself getting tagged on the forehead and shoulder. Pap. Pap. The shots weren't powerful, but they were scoring, establishing dominance.
Kyon tried to slip, but Jackson's reach meant the jab was still in range even as Kyon moved. He tried to pressure forward, but Jackson used his footwork to circle away, reset, and jab again. For the first minute, Kyon was losing the battle of distance. The crowd murmured, sensing the more experienced boxer taking control.
Thorne's voice was a calm imperative from the corner. "Time it! Don't chase him! Let him come to you! Parry and counter!"
Kyon took a breath, settling his feet. He stopped chasing. He stood in the center, a still point. Jackson, confident, stepped in with another jab.
This time, Kyon didn't slip. He deflected. He used his right glove to parry the jab outward, just a few inches. It created a fleeting opening. Kyon fired his own jab over Jackson's now-extended arm. It landed cleanly on the nose.
Jackson blinked, surprised. He reset, threw another jab. Kyon parried again, this time following with a straight right hand that grazed Jackson's cheek.
A shift. Jackson's mathematical calm flickered. He wasn't used to his primary weapon being neutralized so effectively. He began doubling up his jab—one to gauge, one to land. Kyon parried the first, slipped the second, and cracked a left hook to Jackson's ribs.
Thump.
Jackson exhaled sharply and took a half-step back. The round ended with Kyon landing two more clean counters to Jackson's now-tentative jab.
In the corner, Thorne was all business. "Good adjustment. He's questioning his jab now. Second round, he'll either abandon it or try to power through. If he abandons it, he's yours—he's got nothing else. If he powers through, that's when you pull."
Round two began with Jackson showing his mettle. He didn't abandon the jab; he tried to vary it, throwing it to the body, feinting with it. But the seed of doubt was planted. His punches lost a fraction of their snap, a fraction of their conviction.
Midway through the round, Kyon saw the pattern. Jackson would feint a jab, then throw a real one a half-beat later. Kyon decided to gamble.
Jackson feinted. Kyon reacted with a tiny, convincing flinch. Jackson took the bait, firing the real jab, hard and straight.
Kyon executed the pull. He leaned back, his torso bending at the waist, letting the glove whisk past his chin, missing by less than an inch. As Jackson's arm fully extended, leaving his chin exposed, Kyon uncoiled.
The right hand wasn't a looping punch. It was a laser, a straight line of fury down the central channel. It connected with the perfect, sickening crunch of knuckle on jawbone.
Jackson's eyes rolled back in his head. His legs folded beneath him as if his strings had been cut. He crumpled to the canvas in a loose heap, out before he hit the mat.
The crowd erupted. A stunned, explosive roar.
The referee leaped in, waving his arms over the motionless Jackson before even starting a count. It was over. A one-punch, highlight-reel knockout.
Kyon stood over him for a second, his fist still clenched, watching the medics rush into the ring. The cold precision of the act receded, replaced by a wave of something hotter, more primal. He had not just won; he had erased his opponent. He had solved the chess match with a sledgehammer.
Thorne and Miguel were in the ring, Miguel whooping, Thorne's hand a heavy weight on Kyon's shoulder. "That's it! That's the one!" Thorne shouted, his usually grim face split by a fierce grin.
They led him back to the corner as Jackson, groggy and ashamed, was helped to his stool. The announcer's voice boomed. "Winner by KNOCKOUT… at one minute forty-two seconds of the second round… KYON 'THE PHANTOM' WILSON!"
The applause was thunderous. This was the kind of victory fight fans remembered. A star-making knockout.
Back in the locker room, the energy was electric. Miguel replayed the punch on his phone for anyone who would watch. "Look at this! He pulled back like Neo in the Matrix and BAM! Poetry, man!"
Thorne was more subdued now, checking Kyon's hand. "Good. No swelling. Perfect technique." He looked up, his eyes serious. "You felt it, didn't you? The moment he was open."
Kyon nodded, the adrenaline still singing in his veins. "I saw the feint. I knew the real one was coming."
"Instinct and study," Thorne said. "That's the combination. You're a quick study, kid. A damn quick study."
The victory was transformative. As they left the VFW hall, people Kyon didn't know clapped him on the back. A local sports blogger stopped them for a quick comment. "How did it feel to land that shot?" Kyon, uncomfortable, just said, "It felt like the right punch at the right time." Thorne handled the rest.
In the car, riding through the neon-washed night, the high was immense. He was 2-0. He was in the semi-finals. He had a knockout that people would talk about.
But in the quiet of the storage room later, as the roar of the crowd faded to a memory, a different feeling crept in. He replayed the knockout in his mind, not from the perspective of the victor, but from the vantage point of Terrell Jackson, waking up on the canvas, confused and defeated. The geometry of that punch wasn't just angles and force; it was the delivery of pain, the administration of a brutal, public lesson.
He squeezed the river stone, its solidity a comfort. He had wanted to hit back. He was hitting back now, with devastating effect. The hollow inside him, the old void of hunger and fear, was being filled with something new: power. It was intoxicating, but it had a weight, a responsibility he was only beginning to sense.
---
The semi-final opponent was a different beast altogether. His name was Vince "The Anvil" Kovacs (no relation to Thorne's old nickname). The scouting report was a single, grim line from Thorne: "Pressure fighter. Bulgarian-American club style. He will walk through fire to get to you. Never stops coming. Chin of granite."
Kovacs was shorter, squat, built like a fireplug. His amateur record was 8-3, with all three losses coming by decision. No one had knocked him down. He was a human bulldozer.
"Forget the sweet science with this one," Thorne said as they watched grainy footage of Kovacs mauling an opponent against the ropes. "This is a trench war. He's going to try to make it ugly. He's going to smother you, lean on you, wear you down. Your movement is your life. You cannot let him trap you. You have to make him miss and make him pay until his engine runs out of gas. It's a stamina fight. A test of will."
The training became grueling, focused on fighting off the back foot, on punching while moving backwards, on clinch-breaking and inside fighting. Thorne brought in Big Ben again to mimic the relentless pressure. Ben, still remembering the body shot, obliged with a vengeance, giving Kyon hell in close quarters.
"You're too pretty in there!" Ben growled after a particularly brutal inside exchange. "When I get this close, you gotta get dirty! Use your elbows, your forehead, your shoulders! Make space any way you can!"
Kyon learned the dark arts of infighting—the subtle head positioning to obstruct vision, the short, digging uppercuts to the solar plexus, the foot stomps (illegal, but useful for creating distraction). He learned to spin out of corners, to use the ropes to propel himself sideways.
The semi-finals were held in a small, smoky athletic club downtown. The atmosphere was raucous, partisan. Kovacs had a loud, beer-swilling contingent from his neighborhood gym. Kyon's following was quieter but growing—gym mates, a few fight aficionados who'd been impressed by the Jackson knockout.
Kovacs glared across the ring during instructions, his face a mask of grim determination. He didn't see a skilled boxer; he saw an obstacle to be flattened.
The bell rang, and Kovacs came forward like a landslide. No feeling out. No jab. Just relentless, plodding forward motion, his gloves held high in a peek-a-boo style, his chin tucked.
Kyon went to work, sticking and moving, landing crisp jabs and straight rights that snapped Kovacs's head back. But Kovacs didn't react. He didn't flinch, didn't slow. He just kept coming, eating three punches to land one. And the one he landed, a clubbing overhand right that caught Kyon on the shoulder, felt like being hit with a sack of bricks.
The pattern was set. Kyon was the matador, Kovacs the bull. But this bull couldn't be wounded, only exhausted.
By the end of the second round, Kyon's arms were beginning to feel heavy. The constant movement, the relentless punching to keep Kovacs at bay, was draining. Kovacs's face was a red, swollen mess from the accumulated punishment, but his eyes were clear, his march undeterred.
In the corner, Thorne saw the fatigue. "You're winning every round! But you gotta hurt him! Go to the body! Slow him down! Dig those hooks in! He's a tree—chop him down!"
Round three. Kyon, heeding the advice, started targeting the body. He'd slip Kovacs's wild swings and fire left and right hooks into his ribs. Thud. Thud. Kovacs grunted, his forward momentum stuttering for the first time. A flicker of something—pain, frustration—crossed his face.
Encouraged, Kyon doubled down. He landed a three-punch combination: jab to the head, right to the body, left hook to the liver. The liver shot landed perfectly. Kovacs froze, a strangled gasp escaping his lips. For a second, he was vulnerable.
Kyon saw the opening and unleashed a right uppercut aimed for the chin. But Kovacs, in a display of inhuman toughness, instinctively lowered his head. Kyon's fist collided with the top of Kovacs's hard skull.
A blinding, white-hot pain exploded in Kyon's right hand. It felt like he'd punched a concrete wall. He gasped, stumbling back, his right arm dropping to his side.
Kovacs, sensing weakness through his own pain, surged forward. He trapped Kyon against the ropes and unleashed a barrage of short, ugly punches to the body and head. Kyon covered up, shelling against the onslaught. The world narrowed to the thudding impacts on his arms and ribs, the smell of Kovacs's sweat, the roar of his supporters.
The referee watched closely, looking for a reason to stop it. Kyon, through the pain in his hand and the storm of blows, felt a familiar, cold survival instinct kick in. This was the crucible. This was the "never lose again" promise staring him in the face.
He couldn't punch with his right. He couldn't move; he was trapped. So he used his head. Literally. As Kovasses reared back for another overhand right, Kyon surged forward, not away. He drove his forehead into Kovacs's face.
It was a foul. A blatant, dirty headbutt. But in the tangle of limbs, it looked like a clash of heads. Kovass's nose erupted in blood. He reeled back, stunned, his assault broken.
The referee jumped in, pushing them apart. "Break! Break! Heads! Watch the heads!" He looked at the blood pouring from Kovacs's nose, then at Kyon, who was cradling his right hand. "You okay to continue?" he asked Kyon.
Kyon nodded, his jaw clenched. The brief respite had allowed him to think. His right hand was useless. He had one round left.
The bell rang to end the third. He staggered to his corner.
Thorne was already examining the hand. It was already swelling, the knuckles mis-shapen. "Boxer's fracture. Maybe two. You can't use it."
"I know," Kyon panted.
"You're up on points. You gotta survive. Move. Hold if you have to. Run. Do not engage. One-handed, you cannot win a firefight with this guy."
The bell for the fourth and final round.
Kovacs, bloodied and furious, charged like a wounded animal. Kyon had one weapon left: his legs. He ran. He circled, dodged, clinched when caught, and immediately turned Kovacs, using the referee to break them. He used his left jab to keep a faint offense, but it was a pathetic thing. He was in pure survival mode, the elegant Phantom reduced to a scrambling survivor.
The crowd, initially sympathetic, began to boo. Kovacs's fans screamed for a knockout. Kyon's supporters watched in anxious silence.
With thirty seconds left, Kovacs cornered him again. He threw a huge, looping right. Kyon, exhausted, ducked under it. As he came up, he saw an opening—Kovacs's jaw was exposed. His right hand screamed in protest, but his body remembered the motion. He threw a one-armed, half-powered left hook, putting every ounce of his remaining strength and body weight into it.
It landed on Kovacs's jaw with a solid smack.
Kovacs, already off-balance from the missed punch, staggered. He didn't go down, but he wobbled, his legs betraying him for the first time. He grabbed onto Kyon to stay upright.
The referee saw it. The bell rang, ending the fight while they were in a clinch.
Both men collapsed onto their stools, utterly spent. Kyon's right hand was a throbbing orb of agony.
The decision was announced: "By unanimous decision… the winner… Kyon Wilson!"
There was no celebration this time. Thorne and Miguel helped him out of the ring, his right arm held gingerly against his chest. Kovacs, in his corner, was having his nose packed, glaring across at Kyon with a look that promised a rematch that would never come in the amateurs.
At the urgent care clinic, the X-ray confirmed it: two metacarpal fractures in his right hand. The doctor put it in a soft cast. "No contact for six to eight weeks. You're lucky it's not worse."
In the car on the way back to the gym, the silence was heavy. The high of the Jackson knockout was a distant memory. This was the other side of the coin: a ugly, Pyrrhic victory bought with pain and a dirty tactic.
"You won," Thorne said finally, his eyes on the road. "That's what matters in the book. You found a way. It wasn't pretty. It wasn't the way I want you to fight. But you showed heart. You showed you can win ugly. That's important."
Kyon looked at his cast, a white flag of surrender on his primary weapon. The finals were in four weeks. He was in them, but he couldn't fight.
"The finals…" he started.
"You're out," Thorne said bluntly. "You can't fight with that. Kovacs broke your hand with his head. It happens. You'll get a medical withdrawal. The other guy gets a walkover to the title. It's a setback. Not the end."
A setback. The word was too small for the devastation Kyon felt. He had clawed his way to the finals, through a boxer and a brute, and now he was stopped not by a better man, but by a bone snapping against a harder bone.
Back at the gym, he sat on the rubbing table as Thorne packed his hand in ice. The euphoria of his earlier victories had completely evaporated, leaving behind the raw, aching reality of the sport. It wasn't just geometry and beauty. It was also blood, broken bones, and the taste of your own desperation.
The Phantom had been forced to brawl. And he had broken in the process. The unseen boxer was now visibly wounded. The journey to the greatest of all time, it seemed, would be paved not just with highlight-reel knockouts, but with pain, casts, and the silent, stubborn will to heal.