News of the first hit came from Wrath.
Not through magic.
Through Quill swearing.
He slammed a hand on the comms console, runes flaring.
"Dreg, they've crossed the line," Quill said, voice clipped. "Two Wrath gangs and one hired bruiser pushing toward our outpost. They're testing defenses, not sneaking."
Dreg's answering growl crackled through.
"Good. I was getting bored."
Malerion stood at the main table, eyes on the floating map. Red marks spread like bruises along their Wrath border.
"Rules stay the same," he said calmly. "No expansion. retreats. Anyone who crosses our line doesn't walk back."
"Understood," Dreg replied. You could hear the smile. "I'll make it educational."
Verosika sat on the table's edge, one leg swinging lazily, watching the dots move.
"You going?" she asked.
Malerion shook his head.
"No. Wrath is Dreg's field. If I go, it becomes a spectacle. Tonight needs to be a lesson."
"For them?" she asked.
Everyone," he said.
Quill muttered something under his breath and connected another link.
"Dreg, I'm tying Skit and Bit into your channel. Mobile backup. Don't get creative without telling me first."
Skit's voice chimed in, way too excited:
"Hell yeah, Wrath trip!"
Bit added, more dry:
"If we die, I'm haunting Quill's lab."
"You're not dying," Liz's voice cut in, smooth and sharp. "You're going to make an example. Dreg leads. You follow. No glory runs."
Verosika smirked faintly.
"Wow. Responsible murder."
"Efficient murder," Liz corrected.
Malerion closed his eyes for a brief moment, sending a small, controlled pulse outward not a domain, flare, just a subtle adjustment. A stabilizing echo quietly threading through the marks of Ouroboros soldiers deployed in Wrath.
Dreg felt it like a cool breath over burning stone.
"Boss?" he rumbled.
"You're covered," Malerion said simply. "Do what you do."
Wrath Ring did not believe in subtlety.
The sky was a permanent storm of ash and fire, the ground a battlefield that never really reset. The Ouroboros outpost stood like a carved piece of black iron in the middle of that chaos not the biggest fortress or flashiest, but clean, solid, and held.
The attacking gangs didn't come in a neat line.
They flowed.
Dozens of demons, metal, teeth, roaring engines, improvised armor. Their banners weren't united, but their intent was: push the serpent's border, see if it flinches.
At the front of Ouroboros' defense line stood Dreg.
Massive, armor tightened, runic gauntlets faintly glowing from Quill's careful work and Malerion's energy humming under the metal.
Skit was on his left, goggles on, knives ready.
Bit on his right, grip on a short spear, eyes scanning the side flanks.
Behind them, a row of disciplined fighters not gang muscle, not street thugs. Trained. Resonance-tempered. Each one carrying the Ouroboros sigil on their gear, invisible to outsiders.
The air shook with war cries as the enemy charged.
Skit swallowed.
"Uh. There's a lot of them."
Bit answered calmly.
"Good. Easier to hit."
Dreg cracked his neck once and stepped forward, not waiting for them to reach the line.
"Remember," he said, voice cutting through the noise, "we don't back up. We don't step over. We hold."
He grinned, teeth bared.
"And we break whoever thinks we can't."
They hit.
The first wave came in messy chains, flaming blades, crude axes.
Dreg moved like a landslide.
One punch took out three at once, his gauntlets amplifying the impact, Malerion's resonance turning weight into something sharper. Bones cracked, armor crumpled. A demon twice Skit's size flew backwards, rolled, and did not get back up.
Skit darted through gaps, cutting tendons, hamstrings, wrists not killing if he didn't need to, but disabling. Bit took the heavier side, spear flipping, twisting, using momentum instead of brute force.
"Left flank!" Bit shouted.
"I got it—" Skit started, then yelped as a flaming chain flew toward his face.
Dreg's arm snapped up, catching it mid-air and pulling. The chain's wielder a towering brute wrapped in spiked gear stumbled forward.
"Bad toy," Dreg snarled.
He yanked the demon in and swung him like a weighted hammer into his own allies.
Bodies scattered.
Wrath laughed and screamed around them.
On the hill above, a larger figure watched the "bruiser" Quill mentioned. Not quite an Overlord, but close enough in ego. Sinner-born, scars like trophies, aura flaring with raw, uncontrolled power.
He jumped down, cracking the ground on landing.
"You Ouroboros?" he shouted toward Dreg.
"Maybe," Dreg replied. "You auditioning for stupid or is it natural?"
The brute roared and swung a massive two-handed blade at Dreg's head.
The strike never landed.
Dreg stepped under it, shoulder slammed into the brute's ribs, then grabbed his arm and twisted. Runes flashed along Dreg's gauntlet as he drove a heavy blow into the sinner's chest.
The hit echoed.
Even the Wrath sky seemed to flinch.
The brute staggered back, shocked.
"…That all muscle?" he wheezed.
"No," Dreg said.
He hit him again.
This time, Malerion's stabilizing echo pulsed through the blow not as raw force, but as refined impact. Power that didn't spill, didn't flare wild, but dumped entirely into one point.
The sinner's armor caved in.
He dropped to his knees.
Skit whistled under his breath.
"That's… yeah, that's ugly."
Bit corrected:
"That's a warning."
The brute tried one last wild swing. Dreg caught his wrist, broke it with a twist, then slammed him face first into the dirt.
Silence rolled over the battlefield for a few seconds the kind that only follows something undeniable.
Then Dreg straightened and roared over the field:
"THIS IS THE LINE."
He pointed at the ground.
"You cross it, you don't walk back."
The gangs hesitated.
Wrath demons didn't usually do hesitation.
But they did now.
Because they weren't just seeing strength.
They were seeing control.
No wild slaughter.
No over-chasing.
No greedy push into their territory.
Ouroboros wasn't grabbing. It was holding.
That spooked them more than any screaming berserker.
Some broke and ran.
Another pulled back slowly, eyes never leaving Dreg.
None advanced.
Skit exhaled, legs shaking just a bit as the adrenaline came down.
Bit rolled his shoulder, wincing faintly.
"You okay?" Skit asked.
"Fine," Bit said. "You?"
"Terrified," Skit replied cheerfully. "Let's do it again sometime."
Above them, Quill's voice crackled through the comm:
"Wrath side is clear. Lust docks report similar pullback after our patrol showed up. Old sinner territory stabilized. No losses."
Liz added, tone warm for once:
"Nice work, Dreg."
Dreg grunted.
"Wasn't work. It was cleaning."
Skit raised a hand.
"Should we… chase them? Just a little? Teach them deeper"
"No," Malerion's voice cut in over the link.
Everyone fell quiet.
"We showed enough," Malerion said. "We don't turn a warning into a war."
Dreg looked over the smoking ground, the scattered unconscious bodies, the shattered weapons.
"Copy," he said.
He looked at Skit and Bit.
"Get our people patched up. Strip the weapons. Leave the bodies where they dropped."
Skit blinked.
"Message?"
"Message," Dreg confirmed.
Bit nodded.
"Understood."
Back in Sin Rouge, Verosika watched the live feed Quill projected grainy, smoky, full of chaos and focused not on the battle, but on how it ended.
No glory charge.
Mad pursuit.
Just a firm stop.
She glanced at Malerion from the side.
"You know," she said quietly, "most Overlords would've used this as an excuse to start carving new territory."
Malerion's eyes remained on the map.
"Most Overlords," he replied, "die faster than they think."
Verosika's lips curved.
"And you?"
Malerion's voice was calm, but under it there was iron.
"I'm not here to entertain Hell," he said. "I'm here to outlast it."
Far away, in Envy, the Watcher watched his monitors, fingers steepled, expression unreadable.
He had wanted chaos.
He'd gotten control.
Interesting.
"Alright, serpent," he murmured. "Show me how long you can hold the line."
First test was over.
Attacks would not stop.
But now everyone gangs, syndicates, rising monsters, and the thing watching from the Sixth Ring knew one thing very clearly:
Ouroboros had paused.
It had not weakened.