The temple wasn't a temple. It was code made architecture.

  Beatrix stood with the other fighters in the ceremonial hall, surrounded by Acheron's aesthetic of disciplined minimalism. White walls etched with circuit patterns that glowed faint gray. Holographic scripture drifted through the air, lines of code rendered as prayer, each character precise and elegant. The space felt monastic, stripped of everything unnecessary, devoted to the intersection of technology and transcendence.

  Virgil noted.

  She'd expected something grimmer. Blood and skulls and underworld theatrics. Instead, Acheron had built a church to clean lines and perfect algorithms. Even the contract tattoos on the fighters' skin, hers included, seemed less like brands and more like sacred text.

  Above them, giant holographic screens hung like gods peering down, names scrolling in anticipation. Swarms of broadcasting drones danced overhead.

  At the center of the stage stood an Alchemist, tall and theatrical. He wore flowing layers woven with threads of circuit-light, eyes rimmed with dark implants that never blinked. His voice carried amplified weight as he raised a staff capped with a slowly rotating App-core. When he spoke, his voice carried through the chamber without amplification, the architecture itself designed to carry sound with crystalline clarity.

  "In Code we Pray."

  The Acheron fighters responded in unison, their voices a practiced chorus. "In Code we Pray."

  Beatrix stayed silent, as the rest of the fighters from the other eight clans. They weren’t here for faith.

  “Acheron’s crazy juice.” A fighter commented in the back. Others laughed, briefly.

  The Alchemist raised both arms. Holographic displays materialized around them, lines of code flowing like waterfalls, too complex for Beatrix to parse but beautiful in their execution. She recognized fragments: initialization protocols, combat parameter definitions, the architecture of violence rendered as art.

  "The MAGI see all," the Alchemist intoned. "The MAGI judge all. Through Code, we ascend. Through combat, we transform."

  More responses from the faithful. Charon and Rauk One-Eye were two of the five Acheron fighters participating in this Circle. Charon was far from her, the screens showing him with minimal ascetic clothing, a predator monk. Rauk stood three fighters down from Beatrix, eyes closed in what looked like genuine reverence. His contract tattoos pulsed in time with his heartbeat, a steady rhythm of red light against his dark skin.

  The Alchemist gestured, and the holographic displays shifted. Names appeared, all thirty-two fighters scheduled for the First Circle. As each name materialized, the corresponding fighter's contract tattoos flared brighter. When "Beatrix" appeared in stark white letters, she felt the marks on her own skin warm and glow.

  The ceremony continued, blessings and invocations, references to divine architects and transcendent code. A small vial of Miracle drugware was displayed like a holy relic, the substance that supposedly connected users directly to the MAGI's consciousness. Beatrix watched both Charon and Rauk's faces as the Alchemist spoke of communion and clarity. Charon was a blank wall. Rauk drinked every word.

  She looked down at her own hands. Scavenger's hands, scarred and calloused, contract tattoos glowing over old wounds. She was here for money, not transcendence. But standing in this temple of code and faith, surrounded by people who truly believed violence was a form of worship, she felt something unexpected.

  Not belief. But respect for the weight of what they'd built.

  Near the edge of the gathered fighters, a young man with a black jacket and robotic hands shifted nervously. Non-aligned like her, no clan colors, just another desperate outsider. Their eyes met briefly, mutual recognition of not belonging. He looked away first, fear obvious in the tension of his shoulders.

  At least she'd learned to hide it better.

  The Alchemist’s staff touched the floor. The sound of a digital gong echoed through the chamber. The Acheron marketing spectacle was over. Now came the real deal.

  “I present to you the Arbiter of the First Circle of Limbo.” The Alchemist seemed to savor the silence in the hall. “Lord Gorgyra Blake.”

  A figure emerged at the center of the stage, as the Alchemist ceded the spotlight. Where the Alchemist was theater, this man was practicality made flesh. Plain matte white suit, scarred face, simple implants.

  He was nominally the High Priest of the Church of Miracles, the largest MAGI cult in the outer sectors. But everyone knew Acheron Clan was the driving force behind the cult. And everyone knew Blake was the leader of the clan.

  Virgil's voice was a cold line of text in her mind.

  "The First Circle," Blake announced, "begins with chaos and ends in clarity. Thirty-two enter. One wins. The rest..." He paused, then laughed. The people around him laughed too, the best joke ever.

  "Bring the Notary." He gestured with a bored movement towards some of the people on his left side, while he walked to sit in a large chair on the other side of the stage.

  A woman with a black minimalist robe and a strange mouth mask with asymmetrical spikes in the sides and the back of the head entered the stage, and announced “The Draw for the First Round begins.”

  Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

  Virgil kept feeding her context.

  The draw ceremony started with screens showing betting odds, fighter statistics, previous victories and defeats rendered as entertainment for the masses watching through feeds. Beatrix caught glimpses of her own face on the periphery, tired, young, obviously outmatched.

  A large holographic display materialized at the center of the hall, showing all thirty-two fighters arranged in a circle. One by one, the Notary announced pairings. Names appeared together, faces displayed side by side for comparison.

  “First match: Charon of Acheron clan vs. Corden Mohalkar of Minos clan.” The crowd, other fighters, clan representatives, media drones, reacted to each pairing with murmurs of approval or disappointment. The screens showed the record of each of the fighters. Charon had 33 victories and 2 defeats. Corden has a 5-5 record.

  She looked up, to watch her name being paired with her first rival.

  “Rauk One-Eye of Acheron clan vs. Beatrix, Non-aligned.”

  The reaction was immediate. Laughter. Not cruel, just dismissive. Rauk had a glowing 15-0 record. Unbeaten. Beatrix had a 0-0. The mismatch was so obvious it became comedy.

  Drones swarmed around her. On the display, their faces appeared side by side. Rauk: seasoned, confident, decorated with clan honors. Beatrix: unknown, young, wearing her desperation like a second skin.

  She watched Rauk's reaction on the displays. He smiled, turned to say something to a nearby Acheron fighter. They congratulated him. Easy first round. Don't waste too much energy. Make it clean.

  He looked across the hall then, found her in the crowd, and met her eyes. That smile widened. Not cruel, just certain. Professional.

  "You are sixteen," he said, voice carrying easily through the murmurs. Making it a statement of fact, not a threat. His sixteenth victory. Already decided.

  Beatrix held his gaze. Didn't smile back, didn't look away, didn't give him the satisfaction of visible fear. Just stared until he nodded, respect for the gesture if not the fighter, and turned away.

  The ceremony continued, but Beatrix stopped paying attention. She pulled up her comm unit, checking the social media feeds already analyzing the pairings.

  ChaosFeedLive:

  GrindAnalytics:

  BettingCorner:

  She kept scrolling, feeling detached from the person they were dissecting. That girl on the screens, rough and unpolished, looked like she'd already lost. Looked like prey.

  "I don't care about my image."

  She thought about that. About Charon's perfect presentation, every detail curated. About Rauk's clan-approved aesthetic, warrior monk meets sponsored athlete. Even Non-aligned Boy learned to present himself as something more than desperate.

  She pulled up the camera on her comm unit. Looked at her reflection in the black screen before activating it.

  Wild hair. Tired eyes. Scavenger's clothes adapted poorly for arena wear. She looked exactly like what she was: someone who'd crawled up from the maintenance tunnels and didn't belong in professional violence.

  Looking like prey made you prey.

  She thought about Kivi's hair app, sitting unused in her inventory. About how every other fighter here understood that image was armor.

  "Fine," she muttered. "I’ll ask Kivi for advice."

  The gear review station was all harsh fluorescent light and scanner arrays. A dozen officials moved between examination tables, methodically checking fighters' humanware for banned modifications. Most fighters passed through quickly, standard augmentations, nothing controversial. But Beatrix saw one woman get pulled aside, her external arm attachments declared illegal under Limbo's rules.

  The woman argued. The officials were unmoved. She left cursing, disadvantaged before the fighting even began. Drones buzzed around her, hunting reactions.

  Virgil noted.

  Beatrix's jaw tightened. This was it. If he flagged the Cyclops Core as non-standard hardware, she'd fight with thirty percent power and die in the first exchange.

  The judge examining her station was young, maybe mid-twenties, with eyes that glowed faint blue at the edges. Fresh humanware installation, expensive kind that enhanced processing speed and data visualization. He was talking animatedly to the previous fighter about servo calibration and response timing, hands gesturing as he explained optimal configurations.

  Not security. Enthusiasm. She'd seen that look before. Dante wore it when she brought home salvaged tech he couldn't stop asking about. Beatrix made a decision.

  "Virgil," she whispered, "run a complete diagnostic on all my augmentations. Full spectrum analysis."

  "Do it anyway. Make it thorough."

  Her HUD filled with cascading data as Virgil began intensive processing, neural pathway mapping, synaptic response times, cellular integration analysis. The AI's activity spiked, drawing power and generating the kind of complex data signatures that made tech enthusiasts salivate.

  The fighter before her moved on. Her drone zoomed in. The judge turned to Beatrix, and his expression shifted to professional neutrality. "Next. ID scan and core diagnostic."

  She stepped forward, extending her arm for the scanner. The machine hummed, painting her HUD with readouts as it probed her internal systems. The judge's eyes flickered with incoming data.

  His frown formed immediately when he reached the Cyclops core. "That's..."

  "Custom integration," Beatrix said before he could finish. "Fully functional, no external components, meets all Limbo specifications."

  "Custom." His eyes went distant for a moment, processing. "That's Cyclops architecture. Those were discontinued after the fourth gen for safety reasons."

  "Fifth gen," she corrected. "Modified fifth gen. Stable."

  The judge's frown deepened, but something else entered his expression. Curiosity. His glowing eyes flickered faster, enhanced processing working through the implications. Then his scanner caught Virgil's active diagnostic threads in her neural lattice, and his expression shifted. "But that's... different."

  "Dreadnought Protocol," She kept her voice flat, but her jaw ached from clenching. "OMEGA military hardware."

  His eyes lit up with pure tech enthusiasm, cycling through different spectrums, fascinated by the real-time data flowing through her systems. "The neural pathway mapping is unlike anything I've seen. These integration patterns..."

  Beatrix fed him technical details about the Protocol's architecture, watching him get lost in Virgil's active diagnostic display. His scanner continued running, but his attention was entirely focused on the AI's fascinating data streams. The Cyclops Core registered as just another power signature in the background noise.

  "Approved for competition," he said finally, marking something on his datapad. "I'd love to run a deeper analysis after your matches, if you're willing..."

  "After I win," Beatrix said, already moving away.

  Virgil observed.

  "Not a con." Beatrix said softly. "Just good bait"