Prime-ball exchange lemma

In a complete decomposing sphere system for a knot, a disk inside a prime-factor ball that meets the knotted arc once cuts its factor into a connected sum of knots. One side must be an unknot. Replacing the ball by the side carrying the prime factor therefore preserves the unordered factor list. A disk missing the arc cuts off an empty ball and gives the same conclusion. After a small transverse perturbation, such a replacement removes an innermost intersection circle with another sphere system. If a chosen innermost disk contains both marked points, another innermost disk, or its complementary disk when it is the only intersection, contains neither. Iterating produces a prime-factor ball disjoint from both systems. The replacement changes only the location of a joining arc in the intervening punctured ball; capping the other boundaries still recovers the same oriented factors.