Another year slid into place without asking permission.
Hell didn't really have "years" in the way the living world did, but Malerion still counted them. Quietly. Steadily. Like markers on a road only he could see.
Seven years in the Lust Ring.
Four Echo Rings inside his soul.
For now, he had something far more immediate to deal with:
Sin Rouge was getting big enough to be noticed.
Not by random gangs.
Not by petty nobles.
By the Ring itself.
He stood on the upper balcony of the bar, looking down at the main floor. It was busy but not chaotic. That had taken time.
Dreg and his fighters kept an unobtrusive but very real order.
Quill's tech made the music cleaner, the lights more controlled, the hidden defenses tighter.
Donnie's network of favors and contacts kept most of the worst trouble from ever reaching the doors in the first place.
And under all of that, like a second heartbeat, Malerion could feel it:
His resonance.
The Uroboros mark glowed faintly on the forearms, shoulders, or backs of his people invisible to almost everyone, but clear as day to him. The serpent coiled and devoured its own tail, linked to his Echo Qi.
His organization had a symbol now.
A shape.
A spine.
Rafe appeared beside him at the railing, holding a rolled-up map.
"Territory update," he said. "Tried to compress it, but… it's a little bigger than last time."
Malerion took the map and unrolled it across a nearby table.
The Lust Ring sprawled across the parchment in crude but functional detail blocks, alleys, main roads, choke points. Some sections shaded in various colors.
Their color, however, was clear a deep, muted crimson marked with the tiny symbol of the Uroboros.
It covered a lot more than before.
"How many blocks?" Malerion asked.
"Forty-three fully under us," Rafe replied. "Seventeen partial. Five unofficial ally zones. And three… problem areas that keep flip-flopping depending on who gets paid last."
Malerion's finger traced some of the edges.
Here was where they had once struggled to keep a single street safe.
Now they held entire clusters of buildings, small markets, a pair of supply depots, and three clubs that nominally weren't affiliated with Sin Rouge at all but funneled their information and coin through Donnie.
"And resources?" Malerion asked.
Rafe flipped open his notebook.
"Two stable supply routes for metal and base components. One dedicated food line that doesn't get robbed because Dreg punched the last thieves through a wall. Three minor smuggling channels for special goods, mostly Quill's materials."
"Income?"
"Enough that we're no longer poor," Rafe said, lips twitching. "Not enough that the big players feel threatened. Yet."
That "yet" hung in the air.
Malerion understood it.
Welcomed it.
Feared it, just enough to stay careful.
Below them, a pair of demonic patrons laughed too loudly and were gently but firmly escorted out by one of Dreg's lieutenants. No violence. No drama. Just quiet control.
Sin Rouge didn't feel like a bar anymore.
It felt like a center of gravity.
"Quill ready?" Malerion asked.
Rafe nodded. "He said, and I quote, 'If he's late, I'm testing everything on him first.' So… yes."
They left the balcony and headed down the corridor, moving past familiar doors and newer ones reinforced, rune-lined, or disguised.
The deeper levels of Sin Rouge had grown the most.
Once, there had been just a basement and a storage room.
Now?
There were training rooms wrapped in sound-dampening sigils.
Hidden tunnels leading to fallback exits.
Safehouses only accessible to those with the Uroboros mark.
And at the center of it all, humming like a restless heart, Quill's lab.
They walked in on a familiar sight: Quill elbow-deep in a metal harness, Skit handing him tools, Bit recording numbers on a board with his tongue sticking out in concentration.
Liza leaned against the far wall, watching.
Dreg sat on a crate, flexing his arms inside a piece of equipment that looked half-armor, half-instrument of torture.
"You're late," Quill said without looking up.
"I'm precisely on time," Malerion replied.
"So, late," Quill muttered.
He finally stepped back from Dreg's frame and clapped his hands.
"Alright. Version Nine is live. Try not to die."
Bit raised his hand nervously.
"You… you're joking, right?"
Quill blinked. "Do I look like I'm joking?"
"Yes," Bit said honestly.
Quill rubbed his face. "We're working on that."
Malerion examined the new suit more closely.
It was sleeker than before thinner plating, cleaner lines, less visible rune clutter. The Uroboros symbol had been incorporated into the chest piece, faint and elegant.
"It's lighter," Dreg said, rolling his shoulders. "And I don't feel like I'm about to punch my own lungs out."
"That's a good thing," Quill said. "This version leans less on brute amplification and more on harmonizing with your existing enhancements. Your muscles keep doing what they do, the suit just makes sure energy isn't wasted. Think of it as… resonance-guided efficiency."
Malerion listened, eyes narrowing slightly.
"And drawbacks?"
Quill made a face.
"Don't get hit with heavy holy energy. The runes don't like that. They won't explode, but they'll shut down. And it still requires your resonance as a base. I can't power these off anything else."
"Good," Malerion said.
He meant it.
He didn't want a power system that could be easily stolen.
He didn't want soldiers someone else could copy.
If you wanted the Uroboros suits, you needed to be his.
Rafe looked over a nearby rack of half-finished gear.
"How many can you make like this?"
"If you stop changing the recruitment criteria every three weeks?" Quill asked. "Maybe a dozen in the next cycle. Then I'll need more rare components. That… will get expensive."
"We can afford expensive," Donnie said from the doorway, stepping in with a folder in hand. "We can't afford weak."
Everyone turned.
She tossed the folder toward Malerion.
"Report," she said. "Gossip among mid-level fixers. Word is… we're 'not small' anymore."
Skit gasped dramatically.
"We did it. We became a problem."
Bit whispered, "I always wanted to be an issue."
Donnie rolled her eyes.
"They're not calling us a threat yet," she continued. "But they're saying Sin Rouge is a 'factor.' Some gangs avoid our territory now. Some merchants raise prices when they see our mark. Some lower them."
"Respect and exploitation," Liza said softly. "Two inevitable consequences of being noticed."
Malerion opened the folder.
Names, locations, snippets of overheard conversation, notes about who was watching whom.
Nothing alarming.
But enough to prove one thing:
They were on the map now.
Not just as a bar.
Not just as a district gang.
As a force.
"Any movement from the lesser Goetia houses?" Malerion asked.
"Indirect," Donnie said. "They're not sending assassins, not after the last time. But they are quietly buying influence in neighboring zones. And there's a rumor they're funding a rival group in the east."
Rafe nodded.
"I've heard that too. A smaller crew. Hungry. Sharper than usual. They're not attacking us yet, but they're already adjusting routes to sidestep our area."
"So they're building a wall without calling it a wall," Liza said.
"Exactly," Rafe replied.
Malerion closed the file.
A rival crew funded by nobles.
Not strong enough yet to challenge him.
But strong enough, eventually, to cause trouble if ignored.
"Let them grow," he said.
Rafe looked at him. "You're sure?"
"We're not ready to waste resources crushing something that might crumble on its own," Malerion replied. "We watch. We adjust. If they become a real threat, we cut their legs out from under them."
Alastor's voice slid in his mind, amused.
"Cold. Efficient. Practical. You learn quickly."
"I don't have the luxury of acting on ego," Malerion thought back.
Quill cleared his throat.
"If you're done talking about politics," he said, "there's one more thing I want to show you."
He moved to a side table and picked up a small metallic plate, no bigger than Malerion's palm. The Uroboros symbol was etched into its center.
"This," Quill said, "isn't a weapon. It's a spine."
Rafe squinted. "That's… a piece of metal."
Quill glared at him.
"It's a node," he corrected. "A resonance anchor. We implant these in key locations hidden, protected. They sync with your energy. With enough of them, we can create a stable field around our entire territory."
Malerion listened more closely now.
"What kind of field?"
"Subtle," Quill said. "Not a shield, not a barrier. Think of it as… a filter. It helps your resonance spread more evenly. Makes it easier for you to sense disturbances. Eavesdrop on emotional spikes. Track marked individuals moving through our land."
"So it makes this territory more yours," Liza said quietly.
"Yes," Quill replied. "Less like you live in the Lust Ring, more like the Lust Ring lives slightly inside you."
Malerion turned the node over in his hand.
It vibrated faintly under his fingers.
A territorial backbone.
A structural extension of his cultivation.
"How many?" he asked.
"Five built," Quill said. "If you approve, we start installing them. It will take time to weave them into the infrastructure. But once they're all live… you'll feel the difference."
Malerion nodded.
"Do it."
Quill smiled a real smile, not a sarcastic one.
"On it."
The meeting dissolved gradually after that.
Dreg stayed to test more movements in the new suit.
Liza slid out to resume her quiet dance through the streets.
Rafe and Donnie went back to maps and negotiations.
The imp brothers argued about whether the Uroboros mark made them look cool or cursed.
Malerion lingered.
He looked again at the node, at the suits, at the glowing serpent sigils on his people's skin.
His organization had shape, structure, and growth.
His cultivation advanced slowly but firmly, every Echo Ring spinning a little more smoothly with each year.
And far from Sin Rouge, in a different part of the Lust Ring, there were posters of Verosika Mayday in venues he didn't control.
The world kept moving.
Enemies planning.
Allies rising.
Names gaining weight.
He slipped the node into his coat.
Alastor's voice answered, calm and amused.
"And by then, if you keep this pace… even princes will think twice before stepping onto your ground."
Malerion didn't smile.
He didn't need to.
He just turned toward the stairs and went back up, where his bar his fortress, his base, his growing name pulsed with life.
The serpent ate its tail.
And kept getting larger.