The prep hall pressed against his nerves the moment he stepped inside.

Victor stayed near the wall, one hand braced behind him as if the concrete could keep him steady. The brand under his skin didn't just burn; it tightened like a cooling rivet, threading a cold pressure beneath his collarbone—a signal that didn't come from his body at all.

He reached inward for the Chimera, expecting the familiar surge of heat, but found only wet ash. The space behind his ribs, usually crowded with the entity's presence, felt hollowed out. The silence inside him was louder than the screams outside.

Rows of fighters sat along the benches. Most were hunched forward, eyes fixed on the floor. The ones who weren't sitting paced in short, tight lines, their steps rehearsed by anxiety rather than training.

Tamara's name had been called minutes earlier. The reaction had been mixed.

Two older fighters crossed their arms and nodded in grim acknowledgment. Another exhaled relief, rubbing a coin between his fingers until it caught the light. Someone else muttered, "She'll make them pay for it." Another voice replied, "Or the Warden will."

Victor tried to ignore the rising tension around him, but it crept into his breathing anyway. He could still taste the metallic air of the branding chamber on the back of his tongue. His body felt misaligned, as if something inside him had shifted half a degree off true.

A faint clink drew Victor's attention. A few fighters near the benches passed small gold fragments between them—thin discs no larger than thumbnails. They carried a dull glow, the same pulse that lived under Victor's skin.

The way the fighters handled them told Victor everything: these weren't coins. They were leverage. Power. Survival.

He scanned the room again. The fighters were settling into a tense stillness, the kind people adopt when they know they're about to watch something that shapes their own odds of survival. A few whispered to each other. Others held their weapons close, checking straps and grips. At the far end, a group of younger fighters traded more coins, their hands shaking with anticipation or dread.

Victor felt the silence gathering around him.

Then the first roar from the arena cut through the floor.

It rolled beneath the prep hall, a deep vibration that rattled the metal benches and loosened dust from the ceiling. A collective exhale moved across the room. Someone whispered, "She's in."

Another voice: "Let's see how long she lasts."

Victor felt the next vibration through his boots—a heavy impact that travelled up his legs and settled in his spine. His brand answered with a pulse that echoed the crowd's rhythm. The Chimera flinched deeper into itself, withdrawing as if the sound alone could hurt it.

No one looked at him. No one needed to. The room wasn't focused on him. It was focused on the sand above them, on the fight they could only hear, on the rules that governed every breath inside these walls.

The second impact hit harder.

Someone laughed nervously. Someone else murmured a prayer.

Victor didn't move.

Tamara's fight had begun.

And Victor was finally starting to understand how the Pit wanted him to think.

Victor drew a slow breath and felt it catch halfway down his chest. A tight, unwelcome knowledge settled under his ribs — the Pit wasn't just going to test him. It was going to change him. Twist the parts he'd spent years clawing back into place. The brand on his shoulder already knew where to pull.

***

The next roar from the arena wasn't like the first. This one had shape.

A low swell of sound rolled through the ceiling, gathering speed until it broke against the prep hall like a wave hitting stone. The floor trembled. Dust drifted from the rafters in pale threads. A few of the fighters straightened, their eyes tracking the ceiling as if it might crack open and show them what was happening.

Victor moved closer to the centre of the room, trying to angle himself beneath one of the vents. The air drifting down from there carried a dry, iron scent—blood warming on sand.

A man near him muttered, "That's the opening hit."

Someone else replied, "Tamara took it. She always takes the first one."

Victor tensed. "Why?"

The older fighter didn't look at him. "Because pain's her ignition. Makes the next hit hers instead of theirs."

Another boom followed, sharper this time. The ceiling shuddered, and Victor noticed the fighters' reactions shift in small ways: a few leaned forward, elbows on knees; others pressed fingers to the coins they carried, as if trying to divine the outcome from the vibrations alone. One woman near the corner whispered, "Come on, kid. Hold it. Hold it."

Victor forced his breath slow. Every impact transferred through the floor and into his bones. The brand pulsed in rhythm with the noise above, as if measuring the fight's tempo for him. He hated the sensation—the way it tried to sync him to a battle that wasn't his.

Another shockwave rolled through. This one had texture.

Not just force but momentum, layered and rebounding. Victor recognized that shape. A redirection. A punch that returned more than it received. The crowd's reaction confirmed it—the noise climbed in a sudden, wild upswing, a sound that belonged to surprise rather than bloodlust.

Victor's eyes widened. "She hit back."

The stone-jawed fighter finally glanced at him. "That's what she does. She endures, then she punishes."

A distant metallic clang rang out, followed by a deeper, almost animal groan that reverberated through the beams overhead. The fighters closest to the door exchanged looks. Someone whistled low. "She cracked it. Whatever they sent in… she cracked it good."

Victor swallowed. "What's she fighting?"

"You'll find out soon enough," the man said. "Everyone does."

It wasn't comfort. It wasn't even meant to be. Just fact.

Victor turned away, his heart hammering. For a split second, a flash of movement near the weapon rack caught his eye—a swirl of long white-blonde hair and the glint of a sniper scope. Liz.

Relief surged through him, so sharp it made his knees weak. He took a step toward her, his mouth opening to call her name, but the figure turned. It was just a lanky fighter with a spear, checking the edge.

The disappointment tasted like bile. The desert hadn't just taken his team; it had left a phantom limb in his mind, reaching for people who weren't there.

Above them, the tempo shifted again. Footsteps—heavy ones—pounded across the sand. Victor couldn't see the creature, but he could track its weight through the floor, the way it staggered, the way it adjusted.

Tamara's lighter steps were harder to distinguish, but he sensed the pattern in the impacts: one step, pivot, another blow redirected. She was moving with a rhythm that didn't belong to raw strength. It belonged to survival. Adaptation. Precision hammered into her body through years of living in this place.

Then came a sound Victor didn't expect.

A brief, sharp gasp from the crowd. The sound carried no triumph and no bloodlust—only surprise. And a ripple of fear.

The fighters in the prep hall stilled. Whatever emotion washed across the arena bled into them by familiarity alone. They knew Tamara's matches. They knew when something had gone wrong.

A young fighter whispered, "She's hurt."

A second later the floor shook again—hard enough that Victor staggered. The smell of blood thickened in the air from the vents. He caught the first hint of something else too, a scent that didn't belong to sand or sweat.

Burnt stone. Broken magic.

Whatever Tamara was fighting wasn't human.

The crowd roared again. This time the sound fractured into overlapping layers—chants, shouts, a rapid stirring of anticipation that clawed at the walls. Victor hated how easily it worked its way under his skin. The brand pulsed in time with the noise. The Chimera, buried deep, shuddered in response.

Another impact cracked through the room. Then another. A rhythm building toward something final.

Victor pressed his palm to the wall, steadying himself.

"What's happening?" he asked.

The man with the cracked jaw drew a slow breath. "She's building it. That final hit of hers. Takes everything she can store."

"And then?"

"Then either the beast dies," the man said, "or she does."

A high crack split the ceiling's metal supports. Victor jerked his head up. Dust and grit rained down, followed by a single, clean shockwave that shot through the entire prep hall. The benches rattled. The lights flickered.

And for a moment, the crowd didn't make a sound.

Silence wrapped itself around the room like a held breath.

Then the arena erupted.

The roar rose so fast it felt like the air might split. Fighters grabbed the bench edges. Some laughed, full of adrenaline not their own. Others sagged with relief. A few didn't react at all, their expressions fixed with the numb acceptance of people who had watched too many victories turn into funerals in the sand.

Victor exhaled slowly. The pulse under his skin steadied, but the Chimera didn't rise. It stayed curled tight, waiting.

And Victor understood why. The Pit didn't care who won. It only cared who fought next.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

The door at the end of the hall creaked, and a guard stepped inside.

"Prep for return," he said.

The room shifted, every fighter straightening in instinctive readiness.

Victor stayed still.

Tamara had survived. For now.

***

The door thudded shut behind the guard.

The prep hall settled into a restless quiet, the kind that clings after violence. The air thickened with the smell rising from the vents—sand, sweat, and fresh blood drying under heat. Victor wiped grit from his palms and moved to stand near the far wall, forcing his breath to steady. The brand on his shoulder pulsed beneath the skin, cold and deliberate, as though measuring the distance between him and the arena above.

The fighters shifted back into familiar patterns. Some cleaned blades. Others argued in low voices over the match outcomes, swapping scraps of information that meant little to Victor. A few simply leaned their heads back and closed their eyes, stealing rest while they could. None of them looked triumphant. Whatever celebration existed in this place lived only in the crowd.

A man with a shaved scalp—older than he looked, with eyes dulled from too many nights in these tunnels—walked past Victor and dropped onto a bench. When Victor didn't move away, the man jerked his chin toward the ceiling.

"She won," he said.

Victor nodded once. "I heard."

"You'll get used to listening. Sight is a luxury down here." The man leaned back, closing his eyes.

A younger fighter—barely out of his teens—approached with a nervous energy that made his footsteps uneven. "She'll get at least two Marks for that," he said. "The way the crowd yelled? They loved it."

"Yeah," the older man muttered without opening his eyes. "Love kills people here."

The boy frowned. "What's that supposed to mean?"

Victor could see the answer forming in the older man's expression before the words landed.

"If the crowd loves you," the man said, "it means you made them feel something. That's good for money. Bad for your life." His fingers tapped his thigh twice. "They cheer until you're not fun anymore. Then they cheer for the thing that tears you open."

The boy's lips tightened. He stepped away, looking unsettled.

Victor felt the weight of the hall settle differently now. The roar from above had softened, replaced by the murmur of handlers and shifting gates. Something heavy moved across stone—Tamara returning.

Victor exhaled once through his nose. "Whatever she fought," he said quietly to the older man, "it sounded… wrong."

"That's the Pit. The House sends in anything that keeps the crowd loud." The man finally looked at him, eyes dull. "Demons. Monsters. Broken things. And sometimes people so desperate they can't remember their own names."

Victor's stomach pulled tight. "Why did they send her against that?"

"Because she always gets back up," the man said. "People pay to see how long that lasts."

He paused, then added softly: "She doesn't break. That's why the House watches her."

Victor stood still for a long moment. The Chimera remained silent inside him, curled in fear or submission—he couldn't tell which.

The older man pushed himself to his feet and started toward the weapon racks. "She'll be through the tunnel in a minute. If you want to survive this place, watch her closely."

Victor nodded slowly. "I intend to."

The man didn't turn around. "Good. Because you're next."

The words hit Victor like a shift in gravity.

Above them, the crowd roared again—louder, sharper. A victory cry snapping into a single note.

Tamara had finished her fight.

And Victor's turn was coming.

***

The tunnel gate groaned open again. Heat spilled into the hall, carrying grit and the copper-sweet scent of fresh blood. Silence fell.

Tamara emerged a moment later.

She walked with her shoulders squared, posture controlled, but every line of her body hinted at the strain underneath. Sweat streaked dirt down her jaw. Her wrapped hands hung at her sides, the cloth torn and darkened. One leg dragged for half a step before she forced it into rhythm.

Fighters shifted subtly to make room. No cheers met her. No applause. Just the quiet acknowledgment reserved for people who survived something they shouldn't have.

Two handlers followed her, one carrying a shallow metal tray. On it sat two small discs, each the size of a thumbprint. They glimmered with a faint gold that didn't quite behave like light. Victor felt the brand on his shoulder tighten, the pulse rising through his chest.

Marks.

The fragments of Mammon's old ledger.

Pieces of a demon lord's soul—broken, reshaped, and fed to the Pit like treats for obedient dogs.

The handler extended the tray.

"Two," he said. "Crowd liked the ending."

Tamara didn't flinch. She picked up one Mark between two fingers, turning it once as though weighing it in her palm. The surface caught the light in a way that seemed impossible for metal—too fluid, too alive. Her expression flickered for a moment, something between resignation and calculation, before she slipped it into a pocket sewn into the inside of her wrap.

She reached for the second Mark.

A tall fighter stepped forward, voice sharp. "You owe one."

Tamara looked up. No fear in her eyes. No anger. Just tired clarity.

"Not to you."

"You borrowed from Garron last round," the man said, chin lifting toward a figure by the far wall. "We all saw it."

Garron didn't move or confirm anything. He simply watched, heavy arms crossed, expression flattened by exhaustion.

Tamara exhaled slowly through her nose. "Describe the debt," she said.

"You needed a healer. He paid for the medic to come early."

Victor felt something shift in the hall. A barely perceptible tightening. Favors mattered here. So did debt. So did Marks.

Tamara did not look at Garron. She held the second Mark out, the motion crisp and reluctant. He stepped forward and accepted it with a nod. No words exchanged. Transaction done.

When the handlers pulled back the tray, Tamara finally noticed Victor standing near the wall.

"Still breathing," she said.

It took him a moment to find his voice. "You earned two Marks for that?"

"Could've been more. Could've been less." She lowered herself onto a bench with controlled care. A tremor ran through her left hand before she forced her fingers into a fist. "Crowd attention changes the numbers."

Victor settled opposite her, posture tight, elbows on knees. He watched her hand hover over the pocket where she had hidden the first coin.

"Those Marks," he said. "What do they do to you?"

Tamara didn't answer immediately. She didn't even look at him. Her attention was entirely focused on the remaining Mark in her palm. Her thumb brushed the surface, and for a second, the metal seemed to yield like heated wax.

A shiver violently unrelated to the cold snapped through her. Her eyes rolled back slightly, pupils blowing wide, swallowing the iris. The tremor in her hand vanished instantly, replaced by a terrifying, chemically absolute stillness. The grey exhaustion drained from her face, overwritten by a flush of artificial vitality.

She exhaled, a sound that bordered on a moan, and slipped the second coin away.

When she finally looked at Victor, the exhaustion was back, but her eyes were sharp. predatory.

"You want the tutorial?" she asked. Her voice was raspier than before.

Victor nodded at her pocket. "I want to know why you looked like you just took a hit."

Tamara's expression flattened. She leaned forward, dropping her voice.

"Information isn't free in the Pit, New Blood. Nothing is." She tapped the bench between them. "You want to know the mechanics? The price is one Mark."

Victor frowned. "I just got here. I don't have any."

"Then we open a ledger," she said, the words coming out with the ease of a practiced banker. "I answer your question. You owe me one Mark. Payable immediately after your first win."

"And if I lose?"

"Then I loot it off your corpse before the handlers drag you out." She held out a hand, palm open, waiting. "Do we have a contract?"

Victor stared at her hand. The brand on his shoulder gave a hard, cold twist—not a warning, but an urge. Agree, it seemed to say. Debt is the only language spoken here.

He reached out and gripped her hand. Her skin felt fever-hot.

"Deal," he said.

Tamara released him and sat back, satisfied.

"It's not healing," she said, touching her ribs. "It's fuel. The Marks are empowered soul fragments. When you hold them, they feed whatever the brand woke up inside you. They force your body to ignore limits. Pain, fatigue, fear—the Mark eats them."

She tapped the side of her head. "But the cost is high. Every Mark you absorb stitches you tighter to the brand. You get stronger, but you become less you and more House."

"So fighters compete for them to get stronger," Victor said.

"We compete for them because if you don't have enough of them when the Pit throws a high-level demon at you, you die."

She looked at him again, eyes narrowing. "How's your brand?"

Victor hesitated. "Unpleasant."

"That means it's working." She leaned back, eyes tired. "You'll get your first Mark after your match."

He let that sit for a moment. Then he asked, "How long until they call me?"

Tamara wiped dirt from her cheek with the back of her hand. "New fighters are usually sent in fast. They don't want you thinking too long." A shadow crossed her expression. "And they'll want to see how your brand responds."

Victor's pulse climbed. The brand pulsed with it.

"It's my first time in this place," he said quietly. "I don't even know who Orobas is."

A few heads turned, just enough for him to notice. Even speaking the name carried weight here.

Tamara rubbed at a scrape on her jaw with a slow, measured touch. "You'll learn. Orobas built this city from the bones of the old Strip. He took control after the demons tore the world apart. Mammon disappeared. The others scattered." She folded her hands in her lap. "But Orobas stayed. And the Pit is how he keeps order here."

Victor studied her carefully. "You speak like someone who's seen him."

Her eyes went still.

"Everyone sees him eventually."

A chill rolled across Victor's spine. The brand answered with a faint tightening, as though reacting to the name.

The hall grew quieter. The roar from above faded to a steady rumble before rising again, louder, sharper—the sound of the crowd demanding another fight.

Tamara sighed. "It's starting again."

Victor looked toward the tunnel, a deep instinct inside him urging retreat. His shoulder burned under the bull's skull. The Chimera stayed silent.

Tamara stood slowly. Her breathing was uneven but controlled. She tightened the wrap around her right hand, testing her grip. Then she met his eyes.

"When they call you," she said, "don't rush. Don't posture. Listen to the brand. Use it before it uses you."

The advice landed with more weight than she intended.

Victor swallowed. "How do I know when it's using me?"

Her jaw tightened.

"You'll feel like you're fighting for someone else."

***

The horn sounded again—shorter than before, sharper, the kind of tone that didn't allow interpretation. A handler stepped into the prep hall and scanned the room with the bored precision of someone who'd done this too many times.

"Victor Drake," he called. "Prepare."

All other noise flattened.

Conversations stopped mid-sentence.

A gambler lowering a Mark froze with his hand half-extended. Two fighters sharpening blades paused without looking up.

Victor felt the shift before he understood it. A ripple through the air, subtle but unmistakable: one less person in the room, one more in the sand.

The brand on his shoulder responded a heartbeat later. A slow, cold tightening that pulled at something deep in his chest. It muted the familiar rush of intertwined dread and eagerness before a fight.

Tamara stepped out of the shadow of a support beam. Her earlier exhaustion still clung to her features, but her hands were steady as she adjusted the wrap around one wrist. She didn't look surprised. No one ever was, apparently.

"You move when they call," she said. Her voice was level, not unkind. "Any hesitation and they'll drag you."

Victor swallowed, his throat dry. "I'm not ready."

"No one is." She took a step closer, her gaze flicking to the burn beneath his collarbone. "Your mark is. That's all the House cares about."

The words landed in that uncertain place between warning and comfort—the kind he didn't trust either way.

The handler waited a few paces away, expression flat, attention already drifting toward the next name on some invisible list. The tunnels behind him glowed with a faint, sickly light—sand dust, torch smoke, the reflected gleam of Marks carried on belts or chains.

Tamara exhaled, long and slow. "Listen to me for one thing." Her tone shifted. Not gentler. Just more focused. "When the gates open, the crowd will try to shape you. They want theatre. They want dominance. They want you to belong to the spectacle."

Victor's jaw tightened. "I won't give them that."

"You might not get a choice," she said. "That's the point."

He couldn't tell if she pitied him or respected him. Maybe neither. Maybe both.

Tamara pressed her thumb briefly against the fresh bruise blooming beneath her ribs—a quiet reminder of what this place demanded, even from its veterans. Then she met his eyes again, holding them with a steadiness he didn't feel in himself.

"Keep control of your first move," she said. "Just the first. After that, you react how you need to. But that first one? Make it yours." Her voice dipped. "If you let the mark choose it for you… it will keep choosing."

A cold breath passed down Victor's spine.

He looked down the tunnel. The air there seemed thicker, vibrating faintly with each roar from the stadium above. A distant announcer's voice cracked through the noise, too distorted to make out the words. The ground beneath his boots shook from something massive slamming into the sand.

His shoulder constricted again.

Tamara saw it. Her expression didn't change, but her hands closed into fists at her sides.

"You'll survive the first round," she said. "If you stay present. If you don't rush." A tiny breath escaped her. "And if the mark lets you."

The handler raised a hand impatiently. "Drake," he repeated.

Victor stepped forward. His legs felt heavy, the weight settling low in his bones as the brand hooked deeper beneath his skin. The Chimera stayed silent — not asleep, but hiding.

That silence frightened him more than the arena.

Tamara didn't touch him—fighters in the Pit understood what contact meant. But she stood close enough that her next words cut through the roar behind them.

"You get one chance to enter on your own terms," she said. "Use it."

Victor nodded once.

He followed the handler toward the tunnel mouth.

Every step narrowed the world.

Every breath filled with the scent of sand and blood.

Every throb of the brand felt like a hand guiding him down the slope.

Light spilled across the floor a few metres ahead—the arena entrance.

The crowd's voice swelled, shaking the walls like a living thing.

Victor stopped at the threshold. He paused long enough to understand the shape of the moment.

The mark burned, cold and unmistakable.

Tamara's voice reached him from behind, distant under the roar: "Show them nothing."

The tunnel swallowed him, heat rolling in from the sand ahead. The roar rose like a single hungry breath. Victor stepped toward it. The fight wasn't waiting — it was claiming him.

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