And Saint Victor, the Iron Faith, was cast into the Arena of the Beast, where the dust drank the blood of the unfaithful and the air was thick with the cries of the condemned. Around him the multitude roared, hungering for the fall of the righteous.

But the Saint did not bow, for the Almighty Lord of Hosts had set His hand upon him. His chains were made as nothing; his wounds were as whispers before the wind. And the Lord spoke into his heart, saying: Stand, and I shall make of you a sword in the midst of jackals.

Thus did the Saint lift his blade against the servants of the Enemy. One by one they fell, the beasts and the blasphemers, the proud and the profane, until the ground was made clean beneath his feet. And the people beheld it, and they cried out in awe, for they saw that the power of the Ever-Burning King was upon him.

So it was in the days of trial, that the Saint became as a lion among wolves, and the wolves fled before him.

So it is written. So it shall be.

— Book of the New Saints, 5:1–5:8

***

The ground hit him a second time when he tried to stand. Heat rolled off the sand in thick waves, so dry it scraped his throat raw with every breath. Victor spat grit and blinked through the shimmer rising from the earth. For a moment he couldn't tell if the horizon moved or if his vision was failing.

He pushed up on one knee. His muscles shook. The sunlight felt wrong. It had weight, like someone had draped a furnace over the sky and forgotten to turn it down.

He steadied his breathing and looked for prints. A boot mark. A scrap of fabric. Anything. The desert stretched out in broken ridges and wind-cut trenches, all of it the same bleached colour. No signs of Max. Or Liz. No shadows that looked like Alyssa, Chloe or Ying. No gold flicker that might have been Dan.

He turned in a slow circle. The emptiness tightened something in his chest.

The last thing he remembered was the bridge in Prague. Smoke. Sirens. Max hauling Liz closer. The air tearing open with that impossible pull. Then nothing except a cold rush across his face and the taste of metal. Now the world smelled like scorched bone.

A tremor passed through his ribs. The Chimera pushed against him, restless and hungry for answers. Victor let it rise a little, testing the edge of it. The instincts came back sharp, ready to bite, but there was a tremble underneath, as if something far ahead in the heat had its attention. That unease settled between his shoulders like an itch he couldn't scratch.

He wiped sweat from his brow and forced his eyes open wide, fighting the blur. Heat distorted the distance, but he caught a line of movement near the ridge to his right. Figures. A long chain of them. Some limping, some barely upright. Armed guards flanked the line, their silhouettes too big in the shoulders and too still in the heat.

Victor took a step toward them. His boots sank half an inch into the sand. He hesitated, searching again for the others. Nothing. Just the wind brushing over the dunes.

"Max," he whispered. It came out cracked. He tried again, louder. His voice died in the heat.

He walked toward the chain-gang anyway. The figures resolved into people. Dust covered their clothes until they all looked the same shade of defeat. Wrists linked by shackles. Bare feet dragging through sand so hot he wondered how they stayed conscious.

A guard glanced his way. The eyes were pale, almost reptile-flat. Victor stopped without meaning to. The guard's gaze slid over his body, down to his hands, up to his throat. No hostility. No curiosity. Something colder. A calculation.

Victor's pulse picked up. He forced himself forward.

One of the chained men stumbled. Victor reached for him on instinct. The guard snapped a hooked pole across the sand with a sharp crack. It didn't hit Victor, but it stopped him where he stood. The message sat clear between them.

He stepped back. The man in chains regained his footing and kept moving.

Victor swallowed air that felt like steam. His thoughts ran too fast. If this was Nevada, then he had been thrown across half the world. If it wasn't Nevada, then he had no idea how far from Max he'd fallen.

The procession crested a small rise. Victor followed, slow at first, then faster when the wall came into view.

It wasn't a wall in the way cities usually had walls. It looked like someone had dragged every piece of armour, scrap metal and smashed concrete they could find into one place and told it to stand. Layers of shield plates and shipping container iron sat welded together in jagged sheets. Concrete slabs had been moulded around bone pillars that rose in spirals. Massive skulls jutted from the upper seams, each one big enough for a man to stand inside. Lanterns burned inside their hollow sockets, casting feverish light across the sand.

The sight pulled a breath from him. The structure carried the weight of something built to discourage hope long before it repelled danger.

A low hum vibrated through the skulls as the chained prisoners approached. The sound wasn't loud, but it resonated in Victor's teeth. He wiped sweat from his palms and felt the Chimera stir, uneasy now rather than eager.

The gate yawned open without a sound.

No one gave an order. The line of captives moved inside on instinct, as if the heat itself pushed them forward. Victor hesitated at the threshold. The shade beneath the wall looked colder than it should be. Too cold. His skin tightened just seeing it.

He glanced once more at the empty desert behind him. He tried to picture Max walking toward him out of the heat. Or Alyssa. Or Chloe. Anyone.

Nothing moved except the wind.

A tightness settled in his stomach. He stepped into the gate before the silence behind him could grow any larger.

The wall swallowed him whole.

***

The shade inside the gate pressed close around him. Victor paused while his eyes adjusted to the shift in light. The sun had dropped away behind him, yet the air here carried a clammy weight that belonged underground rather than at the entrance to a city. He took one steady breath, then another, trying to calm the heat rising in his chest.

The chained prisoners kept moving. Shackles scraped the stone in a rhythm that sank into the corridor, each step shaped by exhaustion. The guards didn't shout or strike. They guided the line forward with short, practised gestures of their hooked poles. That quiet authority made Victor's pulse climb faster than open violence would have.

He walked behind the last man in the chain, staying close enough to track the group but far enough to keep his hands free. The anger came in a slow wave that crept up from his stomach. He tried to push it down. It settled lower instead, dense and hot. Old bruises ringed the prisoners' wrists. Several older women leaned on one another, shoulders touching as they moved, as if everyone here had already agreed that falling meant the end of the road.

A guard stepped across Victor's path. Close enough that Victor could feel the man's breath, taste the stale tang of it in the air between them. The creature's eyes held that same pale, steady look he had seen outside the wall, a gaze that assessed value rather than humanity. Victor met the stare only long enough to read its intention. No challenge. No curiosity. The guard expected obedience.

Victor lowered his chin slightly and let him pass. The anger edged higher in his throat.

The corridor opened into a broad antechamber with uneven ceilings and support beams scavenged from half a dozen places. Bone fixtures had been worked into the walls. Lantern fire danced across them, casting sharp shadows that crawled upward. Victor took it in piece by piece, the way he scanned a warzone before choosing a position. The architecture had a rough, assembled feel, a structure built from whatever someone could salvage in a hurry and then reinforce until it could hold the weight of a city's fear.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

He caught the faint smell of cooked iron beneath the smoke. A memory pulled at him again, thin and slippery. It slid away when he tried to follow it.

One prisoner stumbled near the centre of the group. Victor stepped in before he could stop himself, instinct pulling him forward. The guard nearest him lifted the hooked pole without hesitation. No raised voice. No show of force. Just a small correction that carried a clear message about how things worked here.

Victor froze in place. The man regained his footing and continued walking. Victor's jaw tightened until his teeth hurt. He forced a slow breath out through his nose, grounding himself. A fight here would be suicide. Max would tell him to stay calm. Dan would call him reckless for even thinking about stepping in without knowing the rules. Ying would simply drag him back until he behaved.

He stayed where he was.

The procession moved deeper toward another gate at the far end of the antechamber. Three guards sat on crates nearby, armour mismatched. A woman with a ledger watched the group approach. Her hair was pulled back in a rough knot, and her eyes moved with a quiet, practised detachment. Her gaze swept over faces and brands and the way people carried their weight.

The lines around her mouth belonged to someone worn down by repetition, not someone who took pleasure in any of this. That did nothing to make the scene easier to accept.

Victor stepped forward.

"Why are they chained?" His voice came out lower than he intended.

The woman glanced up. Her eyes met his without flinching.

"Because they are prisoners," she said. She returned to her ledger. "Keep walking."

Victor swallowed against the frustration rising in his throat. He could have asked more, but her tone made the answer clear. She might have opinions. The structure around her had already decided what they were worth.

The gate ahead shuddered and began to open. The prisoners passed through without hesitation, their steps shaped by routine. Victor took a moment longer. He did not want to give his anger control of his body. That had killed him once before. He placed his palm against the cold metal frame of the gate and let the sensation steady his breathing.

The air on the other side felt thicker. Sweat, ash, and the heavy scent of bodies kept under stress. Voices echoed from deeper corridors, carrying the raw exhaustion of people who had stopped expecting their freedom to return.

Victor drifted further into the room, careful not to draw attention.

He would not lose control here. Not while Max was missing. Not while the others were scattered across the world. Every breath he took in this place would have to count.

The guards closed the gate behind him. The metal lock clicked into place with an ease that made him wonder how many times it had been used.

Victor kept walking. The anger followed him like a second shadow, waiting for a moment when he would allow himself to act.

***

The corridor beyond sloped downward before curving sharply to the left. The temperature shifted with each step. The cold from the inner gate gave way to a slow, climbing heat, the kind that gathered in enclosed spaces crowded with machinery and bodies. Victor felt it coil around his ribs as he walked.

The tunnel opened without warning.

Light struck him from the side, broad and hazy, reflecting off steel plates and mirrored surfaces. Victor stepped toward the edge of a metal platform and let his eyes adjust. The city stretched out beneath him in a wide basin, framed on all sides by the bone-and-metal wall he had entered through.

He knew this layout.

Las Vegas.

He recognised the shape long before the new structures resolved. The skyline had shifted over the years, but the bones of the city remained. Hotels reworked into fortresses. Old casinos built into tiered habitats. Fire escapes welded into new shapes across towers half swallowed by sand. Smoke drifted from chimneys he did not remember, and high walkways stretched like ribs between former high-rises.

Activity filled every available space. Crowds moved along the narrow streets beneath him, funnelled by barriers and checkpoints. Vendors operated from platforms bolted to the sides of buildings, their voices rising above the murmur. Bikes weaved in and out of clusters of people, and the occasional armoured transport rolled through with guards perched on the roof.

Every route led toward the centre.

The Strip had been transformed. The long stretch of road that once held casinos and glittering marquees had become a single, immense stadium. Tiered seating rose from both sides of the boulevard, leaning inward as if the city itself were craning its neck to watch. Screens hung from cables that crossed the open space, flickering with images of fighters in mid-strike. Even from this distance Victor could hear the crowd. The roar rolled through the basin in long, uneven waves that shook the metal under his feet.

Above the stadium, a massive scaffold supported a glowing sigil, a circle of broken rings arranged around a stylised bull's skull. The glow had a strange density to it, as if the light itself carried weight. The light pulsed in slow, deliberate rhythm. Victor could not see the full design from this angle, but the shape radiated intent. Whoever ruled this place wanted their mark visible from every corner of the city.

He stared at the Strip for a long moment, absorbing the scale. Vegas had not just survived the fall of the world. It had learned from it. Every market, every street, every transport route now fed into the stadium the way veins fed a heart.

A guard nudged him forward.

"Screening is below," the man said. His voice carried a flat certainty that told Victor arguing would achieve nothing.

Victor followed the stream of new arrivals along a grated walkway that spiralled toward the city's lower platforms. As they descended, the noise grew louder. Someone played music nearby, a low rhythmic beat that provided a spine for the constant chatter.

Faces watched from higher balconies. Some looked curious. Others looked eager. A few had a thinness to their eyes that reminded Victor of spectators at the worst pits from his past, the ones who arrived for more than distraction. He felt the tension crawl along the back of his neck. The Chimera took that tension, turned it into readiness.

The walkway levelled out into another enclosed passage. Guards checked papers, marks, and collars at a narrow checkpoint, then waved people through with brisk efficiency. When Victor reached the front, one of them gave him a short, assessing look.

"New intake?" the guard asked.

Victor nodded once, the corner of his mouth twitching at the absurdity of it. "Bridge in Prague. Then here."

The guard stared at him for a long moment, as if waiting for the joke. "Prague," he muttered. "You people are getting thrown in from everywhere now." He shook his head once. "Move along. The House will sort you."

***

They guided the newcomers into a holding corridor lined with doors that led down into the city's lower levels. Victor caught glimpses through open arches as they passed: cramped courtyards, stacked walkways, staircases spiralling away from sight. Life had been compressed into layers, everything pressed close to the Strip as if afraid to stray too far from its gravity.

He stayed with the flow until the group came to a halt near a narrower doorway guarded by two men in heavier gear. One of them checked a slate, looked at Victor, then jerked his chin toward the entrance.

"Inside," the guard said. "You will be processed there. Stay until someone calls your name."

Victor stepped through.

The room beyond felt like an intake office that had been repurposed too many times. Desks salvaged from casinos and back offices sat in rows, each one staffed by a clerk with a ledger or a battered terminal. People queued in front of them, answering questions in low, resigned voices. Names, skills, health. Where they had come from. How long they expected to last.

He joined the back of one line and waited. When his turn came, the woman behind the desk looked up with eyes that had seen too many versions of this moment.

"Name?" she asked.

"Victor Drake."

She wrote it down with a blunt stylus.

"Previous occupation?"

He hesitated, then gave the simplest version of the truth. "Fighter."

Her hand did not pause. "Health?"

"Good enough."

Her gaze flicked up, took in his build, the way he held himself, the burn of the desert still on his skin. She made a small mark beside his name.

"You arrived without chains," she said. "Someone will want to see you. Wait by the far wall."

He could have asked who. Could have pushed. The weight in her tone suggested it would be pointless. He stepped aside and leaned against the wall where she had indicated. The concrete felt cool through his shirt.

From here he could see more of the room. A groove had been worn into the stone floor where countless feet had shuffled forward, a shallow trench carved by years of quiet surrender. The smell of old fear hung beneath the newer sweat, a stale presence that never seemed to leave the room. People argued quietly over assignments. A clerk sent an old man toward the medical wing with a gesture that carried no warmth. A boy barely into his teens was told to join a group bound for the kitchens. The line of prisoners never stopped moving.

Victor let his head tilt back until it touched the wall. His shoulder still burned from the heat of the desert. His bones felt heavy.

He closed his eyes for a breath and saw the bridge in Prague. Max's face lit by voidlight and fire. Liz braced beside him. Alyssa and Chloe flanking Dan. Ying somewhere at his back. One team. One line.

He opened his eyes to the intake room of a city that had turned survival into spectacle.

After a while, a guard crossed the room and stopped in front of him.

"Drake?" the man asked.

Victor pushed off the wall. "That's me."

"You are cleared for entry," the guard said. "Housing and work will be assigned after evaluation. Stay alive long enough and the Pit will notice you."

Victor's fingers curled before he could stop them. "I did not come here to fight."

The guard's mouth curved, a dry, humourless hint of a smile.

"No one ever does," he said. "The city hears what it wants."

He gestured toward a side door.

"Through there. Down the stairs. You will be collected."

***

Victor walked toward the door. The guard opened it and the noise from the Strip rolled in again, louder now, closer, wrapping around him like heat.

He stepped out onto a narrow balcony that clung to the side of a former hotel. The stadium loomed straight ahead, its tiered seating packed with bodies. The roar of the crowd rose and fell in a rhythm that tugged at the edges of his memory.

He gripped the rail.

Las Vegas.

He felt the word settle in his chest, heavy with years he had tried to leave behind. He saw flashes now, clearer than the half-memories from the antechamber: a younger version of himself walking these same streets; lights that never went out; blood on sand that soaked into the Strip's cracked asphalt and would not wash away.

He had walked out of this city once, convinced it would never see him again.

The years had peeled away in an instant.

He had come home.

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