The next night, Sin Rouge looked wrong with the lights fully on.
Bright light revealed everything:
the cracked tiles,
the peeling paint,
the exposed wiring,
the scratched metal railings.
It was a bar with the bones of a mid-tier Lust club and the scars of abandonment and repurposing.
But tonight it wasn't a bar.
It was a war room.
The main floor was cleared. Tables pushed aside. In the center sat a makeshift round table covered in maps Donnie had "borrowed" from people who wouldn't miss them for now.
Quill stood to my right, arms folded.
Donnie sat with a quill he absolutely did not know how to use.
Liza and Dreg took their seats.
A few strengthened recruits lingered nearby.
"Alright," Quill began. "No customers, no noise, no distractions. Time to give your system real shape before it collapses under its own ambition."
Donnie whispered, "Collapsing sounds bad."
"Yes, Donnie," Quill sighed. "Very."
I tapped the map of Lust Ring.
First, I said, we decide what this bar is.
"Home," Liza said softly.
"Base," Dreg added.
"A lightning rod," Quill guessed.
All of the above, I said.
Sin Rouge is a front and a shelter.
"And our goal?" Quill asked.
"That when someone whispers 'Sin Rouge,' the Goetia think: small, noisy, irrelevant."
Donnie perked up.
"I can help spread that!"
"You already do," Quill muttered.
I circled three clusters on the map: slum lanes, bar rows, and warehouse sectors.
These are where our threads already exist, I said. People who trust us. People we've helped. People who owe us.
Quill leaned in.
"So we grow here first."
Yes.
Dreg frowned.
"And the wealthier side of Lust?"
"Not yet," I said. "Step in too early and the Goetia dogs will notice."
Quill smirked.
"We grow where nobles aren't looking."
Exactly.
I held up three fingers.
Our focus:
People.
Supply.
Information.
Liza watched closely.
"Explain?"
People, i said. We recruit selectively. We watch how they speak, how they move, how they react under pressure.
Quill's gaze sharpened. He knew I meant more than body language.
Those who pass become outer or inner circle.
"Supply?" Dreg asked.
We don't own trade. We sit near the pipes. We make sure our people get what they need. And those who oppose us… mysteriously get worse deals.
Donnie scribbled inaccurately.
"I love subtle sabotage."
And information, I finished. We want to know what moves before it moves. Gang shifts. City patrol sweeps. Noble attention. Anything that hints at danger.
"So Donnie," Quill said dryly.
And anyone with ears, I added.
I drew a circle on the table.
From here on, I said, we stop reacting. We start shaping.
Alastor chuckled softly inside me.
We must think years ahead, I continued, because once this grows, we won't have time to redesign anything.
Quill studied the map.
"What do you see?"
I see streets where our people walk safer, I said. Workers who listen to us before gangs. A bar everyone knows but no one understands.
"And us?" Dreg asked.
You'll be the ones who keep it from falling apart.
Quill huffed.
"No pressure."
We're not building something grand, I said. We're building something stable. Something the Goetia won't crush the moment they notice.
Liza exhaled.
"I never planned long-term here," she murmured. "Just to make it through the week."
This is still Hell, I said. We're not fixing it. We're carving out a place inside it.
Donnie raised a hand.
"And if all this works?"
In a few years, I said, as resonance hummed faintly, we'll have something that holds even if one of us breaks.
Quill stared for a long moment, then nodded.
"Well then," he said. "Let's live long enough to see it."
Alastor's laughter buzzed in my mind.
"In four years, boy… we'll see."
I looked at the messy maps, the mismatched group, the rough wooden floor.
It was small now.
Fragile.
Unfinished.
But soon…
It wouldn't be.
Let's begin, I said.
And under the dim lights of a half-repaired bar deep in Lust Ring, the skeleton of a future empire quietly took shape where no Goetia eyes were looking.