Four years was enough time for the Lust Ring to swallow most people whole. It chewed them up, ground them to dust, and smeared the remains across the neon pavement until no one remembered who they had ever been.
But somehow, four years had done the opposite to us.
It hadn't erased us.
It had carved us.
Shaped us.
Sharpened us.
And tonight, standing on the second-floor balcony of Sin Rouge, watching demons laugh, drink, flirt, argue, and forget themselves under swirling clouds of pink pheromone smoke, I felt the weight of everything we had become.
The bar was unrecognizable compared to the half-collapsed ruin I'd found when I first arrived in the Lust Ring. The cracked walls had been replaced with reinforced beams, covered in layered sigils that vibrated faintly whenever chaos stirred too violently. The patchy wiring had become a complex web of hidden channels that redirected sound, heat, and emotional resonance through the building like veins.
And no one not a single patron in this packed room knew exactly why Sin Rouge felt different from every other slum bar in Lust Ring.
Safer.
Heavier.
More alive.
More attentive.
It was because of me.
Because of the Resonance.
And because of the demon I'd helped awaken.
Quill.
Before the four years began, Quill was already… unusual. A tinkerer in a place where most demons solved problems with their fists or with lust, not with gears and metal plates. He hoarded scraps of broken tech, ancient components taken from collapsed Hell fortresses, and the occasional stolen Goetia trinket.
But even with his talent, everything he touched had limits.
Hell's technology was old.
Old in a way that felt fossilized.
Stuck.
Stagnant.
Broken.
Even functioning devices behaved like barely-tamed beasts; unpredictable, unstable, ready to explode the moment a rune misaligned or a channel overloaded.
And then I walked in.
The first time my energy slipped into his workshop by accident during a sparring match we'd taken too close to the back wall Quill froze. Not because something broke.
But because something lit up.
Machines that hadn't worked in decades sparked to life.
Runes once dead hummed with soft white light.
An ancient Hell engine the size of a refrigerator opened its rusted petals like a mechanical flower stretching after centuries of sleep.
Quill stared at me.
Then at his machines.
Then at me again.
"Do that again."
I hadn't even realized what I'd done.
What?
"That," he said, grabbing my wrist and dragging my hand toward the malfunctioning engine. "Put your energy into this."
I Quill, I don't even
"Shut up and try," he snapped, eyes wide with something between terror and possibility.
When I focused gently Resonance slid from my palm into the metal.
Light flared through the grooves.
The engine purred.
Runes stabilized into a pattern Quill had been trying to decipher for years.
He whispered, "Holy shit."
That was the start.
In the four years that followed, Quill and I cracked open a field of technology Hell had forgotten. Or abandoned. Or simply never dared to touch because it required something Hell didn't naturally produce:
Order. Stability. Harmony.
My Resonance gave structure to Hell's chaotic energy.
Quill gave the structure purpose.
Together, we created something neither of us knew was possible.
A new discipline.
A new craft.
A new branch of demonic innovation the Lust Ring had never seen.
Resonance-Runic Technology.
Weapons powered by stabilized sin.
Traps that activated based on emotional spikes.
Metal fused with controlled harmonic pulses.
Rune cores capable of storing purified chaos.
Sound-triggered locks.
Silent alarms that pinged directly in my chest.
And deeper still, machines that responded to music
to the faint hum of life inside a building.
These inventions didn't exist before.
People whispered rumors about them
ghost-tech, cursed-crafted, impossible metal.
No one knew the truth.
But they would.
Eventually.
Not yet.
Tonight, the bar roared with life.
Donnie was slipping between tables, weaving through crowds with her notebook tucked under her arm, listening, collecting, dissecting every rumor worth hearing. Four years had turned her into the Lust Ring's unofficial intelligence hub.
A web of secrets in a single woman.
Dreg moved through the hall like a silent storm, not looking for trouble but vibrating with the promise of it. His mere presence shifted the behavior of three separate tables. He had become a beast of precision, a warrior shaped by years of sparring and training under my Resonance. Heavy but controlled, lethal but anchored.
And Quill
Quill emerged from the back hallway, wiping oil and shimmering runic dust from his hands, wearing his heavy leather apron over a half-burned shirt. His workshop had expanded three times in four years, built into every unused corner of the bar and the basement beneath it. He had created an entire network of tools, engines, scraps, half-active machines, and resonance-guided instruments.
And thanks to me
thanks to the Third Ring stabilizing each chaotic artifact he studied
he'd grown from a scrappy mechanic into something else.
A demon who had revived a dead branch of Hell's technology.
A demon who had forged a new path only we understood.
A demon whose work made our organization possible.
He noticed me looking down at him and shot me a grin.
"Bar's running hot," he called up. "Second stabilizer glyph is absorbing too much noise again. I'll fix it after closing."
You said that last week.
"And I fixed it then too. It's moody. Like you."
Before I could reply, the Third Ring pulsed
a sharp twist deep in my core.
Pressure.
A wall.
A threshold.
I inhaled sharply.
The neon blurred for a fraction of a second.
The Fourth Ring.
Close.
So close I could taste the metallic edge of it like a storm behind a door.
But it didn't open.
Didn't crack.
Didn't even whisper.
Just pressed.
Then retreated.
The pressure faded, and my vision cleared.
Quill frowned up at me.
"Again?" he asked.
Yes.
"Worse?"
No.
"Better?"
Closer.
Dreg appeared below the balcony, folding his arms.
"You gonna pass out this time?"
No.
"Then it's fine," he said, turning away.
Quill rolled his eyes.
"He's supportive in his own… hammer-like way."
I let out a slow breath.
Four years.
Three Rings.
One step from the Fourth.
And an entire organization built from the ground up.
Sin Rouge wasn't a bar.
It was a fortress with a heartbeat.
A machine with a soul.
A home for demons who'd never had one.
And a shadow growing under the Goetia's blind spot.
Four years ago, I was barely a whisper.
Tonight…
I was something else.
Something rising.
Something the Lust Ring would soon feel.
Something the Goetia would learn to fear.