I--- Ararza Vol 29 Young Female Fighter 314 -

It didn't matter. I had a new designation now, one I gave myself.

Survivor.

The bell didn't ring. In the Crucible, a light flashed—deep red—and then the gravity shifted sideways. I was suddenly running up a wall that had become the floor. 892 stumbled, its mass working against it. I didn't have mass. I had momentum and desperation. i--- Ararza Vol 29 Young Female Fighter 314

The arena that day was the Shattered Geode, a hollowed-out asteroid with gravity plates that flickered unpredictably. My opponent: a Vol 41 Warform, serial 892, a hulking thing with four arms and a core temperature that melted the floor beneath its feet. The crowd—wealthy patrons in private viewing pods—chanted for my death. They always did. Young Female Fighter was a genre to them, not a person. It didn't matter

I wiped the blood from my eyes and looked up at the viewing pods. Somewhere behind that one-way glass, the Oligarch was deciding my fate. Would I be promoted to Vol 30? Scrapped for parts? Or sold to a mining colony as a broken toy? The bell didn't ring

The announcer's voice crackled: "Winner: i--- Ararza Vol 29 Young Female Fighter 314. Status: Combat Effective."