The apartment was silent when Malerion closed the curtains.
Not the silence of peace
but the silence of withdrawal.
Lust Ring still throbbed outside like a living organism, neon veins pumping heat and SIN through its streets, but none of that reached him anymore. He sat cross-legged on the cold floor, palms resting lightly on his thighs, eyes half-lidded but focused inward.
The Echo Rings trembled.
Not violently.
Not chaotically.
But with intention.
"Are you ready?" Alastor's voice asked inside his mind smooth, calm, almost ceremonial.
Malerion inhaled.
Yes.
"Then begin. But understand something first."
Alastor's tone sharpened.
"You are about to enter a state of resonance depth no demon could survive.
Only you because your soul is foreign can sustain it."
Malerion's heartbeat steadied.
I understand.
"This meditation will not take minutes… or hours," Alastor continued.
"It may claim months. It may claim seasons. It will not stop until the Third Ring decides you are ready."
Malerion lowered his head slightly.
I'm prepared.
"Good," Alastor said softly.
"Then fall."
And Malerion let himself slip downward.
THE DESCENT
At first, it was simply darkness.
But the deeper he sank, the more the world dissolved:
the floor under him vanished,
the walls melted into haze,
the sounds of Lust Ring stretched thin until they snapped away entirely.
Within moments, his consciousness existed in a vast, soundless expanse
a hollow space illuminated only by the First and Second Rings floating ahead of him like twin suns.
The First Ring rotated steadily, a perfect circle of resonance.
The Second Ring trembled
but its trembling had structure now, like a heartbeat learning to regulate itself.
Malerion drifted closer.
His thoughts began to dissolve.
Not disappear
transform.
Memories lost their shape, becoming tones instead of images.
Fear became pressure.
Determination became vibration.
Awareness became rhythm.
The Rings pulled him deeper.
He followed willingly.
He became resonance.
SIN ENTERS THE VOID
Hell's ambient SIN seeped inward.
Not visually.
Not as smoke or color.
But as discord chaotic frequencies pushing toward him, desperate to corrupt, dissolve, claim, twist.
Normally, SIN ate souls alive.
But this time
The First Ring brightened.
The Second Ring expanded.
And together they pulled SIN apart, shredding it into threads of raw emotion:
fear, hunger, lust, hatred, loneliness.
They converted these threads into ordered vibration.
Structured resonance.
Energy his soul could use.
The Rings began to harmonize slowly, painfully, but inevitably.
Only then did Malerion realize the truth:
He wasn't meditating.
He was evolving.
THE OUTSIDE WORLD MOVES ON
Days passed.
His body in the apartment sat frozen, unmoving, cold but alive.
Weeks passed.
The dust settled on his clothes.
Lust Ring's neon lights flickered across his still form each night.
Months passed.
His heartbeat slowed to one per minute.
The room around him grew stale with unmoving air.
But inside
a storm of resonance.
The Rings rotated tirelessly.
The Third Ring waited in the darkness, an unformed circle of potential, refusing to appear until the conditions were perfect.
Silence deeper than Hell wrapped around him.
PRIDE RING POV ALASTOR
Far above the neon jungles of Lust Ring, the Pride Ring gleamed like a crimson crown.
Alastor walked the upper districts with his usual pleasant smile, cane tapping rhythmically against the marble ground. Demons bowed, stepped aside, averted their eyes. Even Overlords stiffened when his static-laced aura brushed close.
Not because he grew stronger
Alastor never grew.
His power had been delivered in full the day Rosie crowned him with her contract.
But because his presence was absolute.
His smile flickered as a new wave of static brushed through his consciousness.
Malerion.
Deep.
Far deeper than before.
Alastor paused beside a balcony, overlooking the Pride skyline, the Hell sky glowing in shades of red and black.
He spoke softly, to no one and nothing.
"So… he has begun."
The air tasted like radio interference.
"Not many would dare attempt a meditation of this scale. Even fewer would survive the first hour."
A small chuckle.
"And yet he dives without hesitation."
Alastor traced a circle on the railing with one gloved finger.
"He will surpass me. Not because he grows faster…"
He smiled wider.
"…but because I stopped growing the day Rosie gave me her blessing."
He tapped his cane.
"One gift. One moment. One transformation."
He stepped away from the view.
"While he will spend decades assembling himself Ring by Ring."
The static deepened around him.
"And that is why, someday, he will look down at me from a height even Rosie never foresaw."
Alastor's grin sharpened feral, eager, hungry.
"And I will be proud because part of him is me.
Then he vanished into a ripple of shadow moving deeper into Pride Ring's labyrinth of power games and silent wars.
RETURN TO MALERION THE THIRD RING WAKES
Inside the void, Malerion floated motionless.
The First Ring glowed steadily.
The Second Ring hummed with sharpened clarity.
Then
A tone.
Not sound.
Not thought.
A vibration.
Soft.
Pure.
Perfect.
The darkness behind the Rings rippled.
A thin line of light formed.
Then another.
A third.
The unformed circle tightened into shape.
A newborn Ring emerged behind the others, faint but real, like a moon rising behind two suns.
The Third Ring pulsed once.
Then everything went silent.
Malerion's eyes opened.
Breath returned to his lungs like he had been underwater for years.
He was awake.
Changed.
Different.
The Third Ring had formed.