The Graafenhuis Wager

In the Graafenhuis Circuit, blood is cheap but statistics are sacred. Every fighter's strength, agility, and stamina are public knowledge, projected for the crowds and the betting syndicates. Joost de Klerk is an archivist, charged with maintaining the immaculate ledgers of the dead. He believes that people are temporary, but records are eternal. When his closest associate is killed in a match that defies statistical probability, Joost discovers a hidden variable in the Circuit's perfect system. Bound by a promise to uncover the truth, he signs the wager contract himself, trading his archivist robes for the arena sand. Armed with nothing but an obsessive memory for historical fight patterns and a starting build everyone dismisses as a joke, Joost must outthink an ecosystem designed to bleed its competitors dry.