Victor followed the guards down a stairwell that grew narrower with every turn. The air shifted with them, losing the dry sting of the desert and taking on a dense, metallic weight that collected in the back of his throat. Each step felt as though he was moving deeper into something designed, not built. The stairs were smooth, the walls cut into deliberate angles, the lighting steady and white. The rough edges of the city above vanished the moment he crossed the threshold.

The guards didn't speak. Their boots struck the metal treads with a steady, measured rhythm that never slipped out of sync. It wasn't training. It was habit.

Victor kept pace. He tried to stretch his senses ahead, to feel for danger the way he used to, but the Chimera inside him reacted strangely. Instead of flaring outward, it tightened. A silent contraction behind his ribs, as if something ahead had already noticed it and reached back.

The hum in the walls grew stronger.

He tilted his head, listening, trying to decide whether it was machinery or something alive. It held a tone too even to be a generator, too soft to be a threat. The sound insinuated itself under his skin, a vibration that brushed bone and marrow. His breath shortened against it.

One of the guards opened a reinforced door without a word. Another gestured him through.

The room beyond sat empty except for a bench, a drain in the floor, and a set of iron restraints bolted to the far wall. The air in here carried no desert smell, no sweat, no dust. It was colder than the stairwell, but not in a way that suggested relief. Victor felt the temperature most in his teeth.

"Remove your shirt," one guard said.

The voice was level. His tone held no texture at all. The words landed without weight.

Victor slid the fabric over his head, the cotton dragging across his shoulders. The skin along his shoulder still ached from the desert fall, a dull throb he hadn't been able to shake. He folded the shirt once and set it on the bench.

Two guards moved to stand behind him. A third shut the door. The latch clicked into place with a soft, final sound.

Victor swallowed, fighting the dry catch in his throat. He had been in rooms like this before — pits in old Nevada circuits, holding pens before underground fights, clinics run out of basements where old men patched broken bone with thread and antiseptic. Those places had felt crude. Brutal. Human.

This room did not feel human.

One guard inspected the restraints. Another adjusted a panel set into the wall, fingers moving with casual precision. Victor watched the man's movements carefully. No hesitation. No second-guessing. Everything done from muscle memory.

That meant this room saw regular use.

Victor's heartbeat climbed. He could hear it now, muffled but present, tight against his ribs.

"Stand by the drain," the guard nearest him said.

Victor stepped onto the metal grate, feeling its cold teeth through the thin soles of his boots. The room had no visible weapons. No medical equipment. No visible sigil plates. Yet the dread kept building, slow and certain, like water filling a sealed chamber.

The hum in the walls rose half a pitch.

Victor's palms dampened. The Chimera curled tighter, pressed into the smallest shape it could make. He hadn't felt it afraid since the first time Mammon had laid hands on him in London, and that memory flickered now, fast and uninvited: the taste of metal, Max shouting, the world turning red.

If this was the next step in whatever process this city used to swallow people, then dread wouldn't help him survive it. But dread was all the room offered him. No answers. No explanations. Just a cold metal grate beneath his feet and the steady rise of something waiting beyond the door.

A guard keyed something into the wall panel. A line of pale light traced itself across the floor in a slow circle around the grate, meeting itself with a faint pulse.

"Stay still," the guard said.

Victor forced his breathing slow.

He stared at the clean angles of the ceiling. The sealed door. The pale ring of light creeping around him.

Every part of the descent had felt like a narrowing corridor, a funnel designed to strip choices from him one by one. Now he stood in its centre. Shirtless. Surrounded. Unarmed. And waiting for the next door to open.

His pulse thudded once against the back of his throat.

Whatever waited past this point would change him. He felt it.

The dread only deepened.

***

The door opened without a sound. Two guards stepped inside, their movements so precise that Victor wasn't sure where the armour ended and the people began. One pointed at his chest, then toward the hallway.

"Move."

The word carried no emotion at all. Victor followed them out, the air growing colder with every step. The scrapwork look of the upper city vanished here; the walls were smooth, the angles exact, as though carved by something that disliked imperfection.

His Chimera shifted uneasily, curling in on itself as if the air carried a scent it remembered.

They guided him into a circular chamber.

Victor stopped at the threshold. The room sloped gently toward the centre, the walls lined with glowing rings that pulsed in slow, steady rhythm. It felt like standing inside a heartbeat.

In the middle waited the branding rig.

The sigil plate burned white-gold, heat shimmering above it. Victor's eyes adjusted, and the symbol came into view.

A bull's skull.

Stamped over the faint outline of a golden crown.

His breath caught. That crown had been burned into him years ago, when Mammon still wore Midas like a coat. He still remembered the Burrow's stone floor under his cheek, Mammon's voice turning bone into dust, Max losing pieces of himself to keep them alive.

Seeing the crown again stole the strength from his legs.

The bull's skull layered over it stole the breath from his chest. The sight hit him like a memory he'd spent years trying to bury. Vegas had taken him apart once. Someone meant to finish the job.

A guard steadied Victor's shoulder. Another lowered the mechanical arm.

The heat touched him first. Then the burn. Then something colder.

It threaded beneath the flame, moving through nerves and memory with a deliberate confidence that made him flinch. The Chimera snapped once, startled and afraid, then retreated so sharply that Victor staggered.

The two marks fused.

A faint click echoed behind his ribs, soft and final, as though the skin over his heart had been locked from the inside.

Something brushed the edge of his awareness, quiet as breath against glass.

Owed.

It echoed through him the way debts had echoed through Mammon's ledgers—cold, indisputable, final.

Victor fell to one knee. The floor wavered beneath him, the world spinning in slow, nauseating circles. His shoulder throbbed with a cold pulse that sank deeper with every heartbeat.

"That's done," a guard said.

Victor forced himself to stand. The skin around the brand glowed faintly, the crown still visible beneath the heavier shape of the skull. Mammon's claim lingered, but only as a shadow under something larger.

Something bolder.

Something that could overwrite a demon lord's mark without hesitation.

He pressed a hand over the burn. The chill in the metal floor travelled through his arm and into his chest.

"Who owns this?" he asked.

The guard didn't look up from securing the rig.

"You belong to the House. Nothing else matters."

Victor tried to swallow, but the back of his throat felt tight. The answer told him nothing and explained everything. Mammon hadn't returned. Mammon hadn't touched him. The crown was old history burned beneath a new sigil.

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And he didn't know which possibility cut deeper: Mammon returning for what he'd left unfinished… or something powerful enough to silence a demon lord taking his place.

He gripped the doorframe, steadying himself, and followed the guards out of the chamber. The corridor ahead felt colder than before, as if the mark on his shoulder had changed the way this place breathed around him.

The weight of it stayed with him, pulsing like a chain being pulled tighter with every step.

***

Victor didn't remember falling.

He came back to himself slowly, drifting up through a thick, aching fog until the cold floor pressed against his cheek. His breath rasped in a shallow drag. Every sound in the chamber felt distant, stretched thin, as if he were waking from too far down.

His shoulder pulsed once.

The sensation went straight to his skull: a cold bloom that spread outward in deliberate waves, each one tugging at the edges of his thoughts. His memories stuttered. Prague flickered out. Max's voice blurred. Liz's face warped at the corners before snapping back into place. Dan's shout slid away and returned a moment later, muffled and wrong.

Victor squeezed his eyes shut.

"Stop," he whispered, though he couldn't tell if he said it aloud. The mark didn't listen. It pulsed again, slower this time, settling into a rhythm he could feel in the back of his teeth.

He pushed himself upright.

The room swayed around him. His arms trembled from the effort. His pulse beat too fast, climbing and climbing until it felt like it filled his chest. He steadied his breath and forced his eyes back to the ground, then to the lights, to anything but the sensation gnawing at his senses.

The Chimera stirred.

It didn't rise the way it usually did. No hunger. No defiance. Only retreat. Something smaller, like an animal pushing itself deeper into the dark. Victor felt it curling inward, refusing the world, refusing him. The presence that usually filled his ribs with heat now hid behind whatever walls it could find.

He had never felt it recoil like this.

Victor pressed a hand over the mark again. His fingertips found heat, but the real burn lived beneath the skin. A tension that coiled through his nerves, feeding something unwelcome into his bloodstream.

His jaw clenched. His shoulders tightened. His breath hitched in a way that didn't feel like fear.

He wanted to fight.

The urge rose without shape or target, a need that pushed against his ribs with growing insistence. His fingers curled on their own. His pulse climbed higher. The feeling never gathered into anything familiar. No rage. Only a pressured intent. It sat somewhere deeper, a command without a voice. A push to act before he understood what he was acting for.

He forced his palm flat against the floor to steady himself.

"What did you do to me…" His voice cracked halfway through the words. Not because he was afraid to say them, but because something inside him resisted the question itself.

He closed his eyes again and listened to his breath. Slow in, slower out. He waited for the Chimera to answer him, to reach back. It didn't. The silence from it felt heavier than the room.

The mark pulsed a third time.

His thoughts cleared around the edges. It gave him no relief. The clarity that followed felt manufactured, shaped by pressure rather than understanding.

He felt it then. A new structure inside his body.

It didn't live in the skin at all. Something had been written into him, arranged with the precision of a ledger line. Written into the space the Chimera used to fill. A ledger line waiting to be completed. A shape that wasn't his, pressed under his sternum.

Victor's breath shortened.

The crown had belonged to Mammon. That was a debt he had escaped. The bull's skull was different. It carried weight without heat, presence without voice. It didn't ask for obedience. It didn't threaten. It simply existed in him, confident he would follow its direction when the time came.

He pushed himself to his feet, using the wall for support. His legs felt unsteady, as though something inside him had been knocked out of alignment. The room tilted once before settling.

The mark throbbed.

The urge to fight flared again, sharp and bright. It was a cold impulse, stripped of everything that made him human.

Move. Strike. Prove something.

Victor grit his teeth and held still until the feeling receded.

He understood then: this wasn't a brand. It was a hand inside his chest, adjusting the pieces.

This didn't carry Mammon's heat or the cold mockery he remembered from London. It felt older, more patient, and stronger. A presence that did not need to shout to be obeyed.

Victor's breath trembled once.

"Someone owns this mark," he murmured. "And they want something from me."

The Chimera stayed silent.

The pulse of the brand answered instead.

***

Victor followed the guards through a narrowing hallway until the air shifted again, taking on the thick scent of sweat and metal. The noise reached him next. A low, restless murmur, punctuated by the scrape of boots and the sharp clack of something striking stone.

The guards opened a door and waved him inside without ceremony.

The prep hall was larger than he expected. Fighters filled the space in loose clusters, some sitting on benches, some pacing in tight circles, others lying on their backs with arms over their faces as if trying to steal a moment of calm before being dragged back into the sand. The lighting here was harsh and flat, reflecting off old bloodstains embedded in the floor.

Every face looked hollowed by tiredness or strain. Every movement carried the weight of someone who had been pushed past the line where choices mattered.

Victor stepped inside.

Several heads turned. Not curious. Assessing.

He kept his voice steady. "Where am I supposed to go?"

A tall fighter with a shaved scalp and a scar twisting across his jaw barked a short laugh. "Where do you think? You're in the Pit now. People go out there. We fight. Most don't come back. That's the rule everyone learns fast."

Victor held his gaze. "Fight who?"

"That depends. Some nights you get beasts. Some nights you get each other. The worst are when the demons want to fight." The man leaned back against the wall, arms folded. "Orobas likes variety."

The name hit Victor like a breath of cold air. The brand on his shoulder pulsed, faint and unwelcome.

He frowned. "Who is Orobas?"

Another fighter—shorter, wiry, eyes flickering with a manic brightness—snorted. "Listen to him. Fresh meat. They really dragged you in without telling you anything." He tapped the side of his head. "Orobas runs the House. Runs the Pit. Runs all of us. If you are breathing, you belong to him."

Victor's stomach tightened. "I thought Mammon had a claim on this place."

The room went very still.

The scarred man's expression changed, losing its amusement. "Mammon? The crown mark is old history. Dead weight." He pointed at Victor's shoulder, where the fresh burn still throbbed. "That skull over yours is the only one that matters."

Victor swallowed before he could stop himself. The burn seemed to pulse harder, as though answering the man's words.

The wiry fighter grinned, showing teeth. "You are already shaking. Good. Fear keeps the new ones alive for at least a day." He leaned closer, voice dropping. "Maybe."

Victor stepped back, needing space, needing air. The room felt smaller with every passing second.

He reached inward for his Chimera, expecting the familiar surge of heat, the steady presence that had carried him through the worst years of his life.

The Chimera didn't answer. The space inside his ribs felt stripped out, as if someone had moved through him and taken the heat with them.

He tried again, harder, and felt only the cold pulse of the brand in response.

The short fighter's smile widened. "There it is. The look. You have realised it."

Victor said nothing, his pulse climbing.

The scarred man pushed away from the wall. "You do not flow with anything down here. The Pit does not care what you want. It does not wait for you to find your footing. Orobas built this place so only the strongest walk out of it. Everyone loses something here."

Victor breathed in slowly. The room carried the heavy scent of fear and old blood. Fighters sharpened weapons that looked more ceremonial than practical. Others sat with their heads down, lips moving in rehearsed prayers or personal mantras that had long since turned into rituals of survival.

He had walked into this room thinking he could observe, gather information, take his time.

Now he understood exactly how wrong he had been.

This wasn't a holding area.

This was a funnel.

Fighters filtered through it until they were pushed into the Pit. Some came back. Some did not. And whatever ruled this place had already placed a hand on his spine through the brand, nudging him into its rhythm before he even understood how deep he had fallen.

Victor rubbed at his shoulder again, trying to shake off the cold pulse.

He was in over his head, standing in a room full of people preparing to fight for their lives, while the thing inside him that was supposed to protect him had gone quiet.

He forced himself to breathe.

He was not going to die here.

He would find a way through this place. But first, he had to survive the next few minutes without losing the last pieces of himself still intact.

***

The crowd noise reached him first—low at the edges, then rising in uneven waves that rattled the beams overhead. Victor tried to ignore it, but the pulse of sound pressed in through the walls like a storm building behind a closed door.

He scanned the prep hall again.

That was when he noticed her.

A young woman sat alone on a bench near the far wall, her back straight, her posture controlled in a way the others' weren't. She wrapped her hands with slow, economical movements, each pull of the cloth precise. Scars climbed the inside of her forearms in narrow lines, some pale and healed, others newer, still pink beneath the skin. Her face held the same combination of youth and exhaustion he saw everywhere in this place, but something about her eyes didn't match the rest—focused, steady, measuring.

She looked up as he approached.

"You're new," she said. Her voice was low, not unkind, but shaped by too many nights in this room.

"Victor," he answered.

She nodded once. "Tamara."

Her gaze dropped to his shoulder. The fresh burn still pulsed through the thin layer of sweat on his skin. She winced in sympathy, the movement quick and involuntary.

"They hit you with the skull plate," she said. "Hard start."

He swallowed. "It felt like more than that."

"It is." She finished the last wrap and tightened it with her teeth. Her hands shook once as she pulled the cloth tight, the tremor small but earned. "Orobas doesn't give anyone a day to recover. The House wants fighters ready the same hour they're marked."

Victor tried to keep his balance steady against the wall behind him. "Someone told me I'd learn the rules. No one seems interested in explaining them."

"They're simple," she said. "You climb if you can. You fall if you can't. The ones who climb fast get fed. The ones who fall get forgotten." She paused. "Most don't climb at all."

Victor's shoulder throbbed again. A chill spread beneath the skin as the brand pulsed, but he forced his expression to stay neutral.

Tamara studied him for a moment, eyes flicking over his build, the way he carried himself, the tension in his jaw. Whatever she saw seemed to confirm something she already believed.

"Can you fight?" she asked.

There was no challenge in her tone. No bravado. Just a practical question, the kind someone asked when the answer determined whether they lived through the next few hours.

Victor didn't hesitate. "Yes."

She nodded once. "Good. Then you stay with me." She tightened her wraps again, checking the fit. "I need someone reliable. Most of the new ones panic when the gates open. I don't have time for that."

Victor opened his mouth to ask what she meant—what "reliable" required in a place like this—but a horn sounded somewhere above them, sharp and metallic. The fighters in the room stiffened. A few stood abruptly. Others whispered things that sounded like prayers, though their faces carried no faith.

Tamara stood as well.

"They're calling the next round," she said. "I'm up."

She took a step toward the tunnel leading to the arena, then stopped long enough to look back at him.

"Stay alive until I get back. If you can do that, we'll talk again."

Victor tried to answer, but the sound that erupted from the arena drowned his voice entirely. The roar of the crowd surged through the tunnels in a wave so thick it felt physical, shaking the metal benches and rattling the floor under his boots.

Tamara walked into that sound without flinching.

Victor stayed where he was, his shoulder burning beneath the bull's mark, the Chimera silent inside him, and the weight of the Pit settling around his ribs like a chain he hadn't agreed to wear.

The crowd roared again, louder and deeper, shaking the floor beneath him until the brand answered with a cold pulse of its own—like it already knew his place in the sand.

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