[Location: Gluttony Circle, Third Hell]

The Gluttony Circle was never silent. It seethed with endless hunger—streets built of pulsing flesh, markets trading in screaming livestock, and air so thick with the stench of rot and grease that even demons gagged. Above it all, the Capital of Mawthorne loomed, a metropolis carved into the ribs of a fallen behemoth, its bone towers glowing with sickly green fires that never died out.

And in the middle of it—an unnatural cold was spreading.

The citizens of Gluttony—demons with jaws too wide for their skulls, ghouls whose bellies bulged grotesquely with unending hunger, and glutton-fiends that carried hooks to drag prey into their throats—paused in their feast-screams. They were creatures born of bottomless appetite, whose flesh healed the instant they tore it open just to eat again. They didn't understand stillness. They didn't understand cold.

But Grayfia Lucifuge made them learn.

A single snap of her fingers, and the cobblestone beneath her feet froze into crystal lattices of ice, racing outward like silver lightning. The greasy stench of meat and bile was replaced with a biting purity that cut lungs like knives. The first row of fiends screamed as their legs crystallised, their bodies locking in mid-motion, jaws still dripping gore.

"—khyrrrk!" One tried to finish a swallow. His throat froze with the meat still inside.

Grayfia walked past him, her heeled steps echoing crack, crack, crack on the ice sheet. Her silver hair fanned out behind her in the wind she conjured, the storm of her aura shredding the banners of Mawthorne.

"Orders from the House of Morningstar are absolute," she murmured, her voice soft as falling snow, yet carrying across the frozen street. "This cesspool will not harbour gluttons who swore fealty to the Satans."

The Gluttony Circle was vast, a dominion built on indulgence and cannibalistic commerce. But Grayfia was not a soldier. She was an executioner. And her patience for carrion dogs was gone.

From the skeletal towers, war drums began to thunder. The capital's defenders—legions of Glutton Knights clad in fat-forged armour, wielding cleavers longer than horses—marched out. Their captain, a bloated demon with seven tongues and a crown of butcher hooks, bellowed.

"Silver-haired witch! You dare trespass into Mawthorne? Do you think your frost can starve us?" His tongues whipped out, snaring the bodies of frozen fiends, shoving them into his gullet. His throat bulged, his armour creaked. "We feast even as we fight! You are nothing—"

He never finished.

Grayfia raised a hand.

The Frozen Execution bloomed.

A sphere of perfect silence appeared in the air above the capital gates. Then, in an instant, it expanded outward—whoomph—a blast of glacial death. Towers split in half, their marrow-bone foundations turning brittle and fracturing into powdered snow. Demons screamed, their bodies flash-freezing mid-charge, weapons snapping like glass in their hands.

The captain staggered. His tongues, hardened into icicles, snapped off and fell like frozen chains. His swollen gut cracked, meat expanding against ice, and with a final scream, he shattered into fragments of steaming gore.

The silence that followed was absolute. The city of Mawthorne—the proud den of Gluttony's filth—stood paralysed.

Grayfia lowered her hand. Her eyes, glacial and merciless, scanned the field. The snow fell thicker now, burying corpses under white purity.

"GRAYFIAAAA!!!"

"I DARE YOU TO STOP RUNNING!!!"

Yes, running. Because Grayfia has been harassing the capital for some time now, but every time, the Satan of Gluttony—Mawloc Beelzebub.

Though she could defeat a satan one-on-one quite easily, if she did that, it would provoke all the remaining satan into a state of active pursuit. Which could be dangerous for her master, and she doesn't want to draw attention unnecessarily. Grayfia's icy glare swept over the battlefield, calculating, precise, every step deliberate. She wasn't here for spectacle. She was here to send a message—and leave before the rest of the Satans of the Seven Circles could assemble a proper response.

From the shattered gates, a massive shadow detached itself. Mawloc, the Glutton Satan, waddled forward, his bulk dwarfing the frozen corpses beneath him. His seven bellies flexed as he moved, each swelling with grotesque life, tongues lashing and eyes blinking independently. The air thickened, rancid and suffocating, a miasma of decay that could rot flesh at a distance.

"You think you can enter my domain and leave unscathed, bitch?" Mawloc bellowed, his voice a choir of hungry mouths. "I am the Glutton, the insatiable! You cannot touch me!"

"Nor do I want to, or even need to, as you seem to have forgotten what happened a millennium ago~"

She still remembered that moment, two of the seven satan lay brutalised, while one was injured beyond recognition.

Grayfia's lips curved into the faintest, cold smile. "A millennium is a long time, Mawloc. Long enough to forget who crushed your kind like insects."

The ground beneath his bloated feet trembled as he let out a guttural roar. Each belly writhed independently, tongues snapping, eyes rolling. "I remember all too well, witch. And yet you—" He lunged forward, massive fists swinging like wrecking balls, each impact sending waves of nauseating force across the frozen plaza.

Grayfia tilted her head, watching the tidal wave of gluttonous mass come at her. With a single, deliberate step backwards, she allowed the first impact to crash into the ice. The shattering was audible—a sound like hundreds of bone towers crumbling simultaneously—but her footing remained perfect. Her heels sank only slightly, anchoring her against the blow, her aura flickering like a living glacier.

"Predictable," she murmured, almost softly, as if commenting on the weather.

The Satan's next attack came faster, fists swinging in unpredictable arcs, tongues lashing, bellies wriggling like living hammers. Each strike threatened to crush or impale—but Grayfia didn't move her feet. Instead, the Frozen Execution rippled outward again, tendrils of ice wrapping around Mawloc's massive form, coating him in a lattice of mirrored frost.

"—Khyrrrk!" Mawloc bellowed, struggling against the sudden imprisonment. His tongues snapped and thrashed, trying to lick free the encasing ice, but it only spread faster, branching like a network of glacial veins.

Grayfia's hands remained by her sides, elegance in motionless fury. "Your hunger… your power… it is meaningless. You are a glutton, and gluttons cannot fight against discipline. Against precision. Against inevitability."

With a single snap of her fingers, the ice constricted. Mawloc's massive bulk groaned under the pressure; each belly cracked, the sounds echoing like drums of death across the frozen streets. His head whipped in every direction, screaming independently, eyes rolling wildly.

"You… bitch!" Mawloc finally spat, the miasma of rot and bile intensifying as he tried to inhale and speak simultaneously. But Grayfia didn't flinch. She never did.

The plaza itself began to tremble. Ice sheets expanded, climbing up the skeletal towers, coiling around broken spires, and even the distant markets of Gluttony trembled under the sudden cold. Grayfia's aura flared brighter, and the very air hissed as frost began to consume the scent of decay.

And then she moved.

Not a step, not a rush—but a graceful shift in posture, her hand flicking outward, releasing a wave of ice so pure, so absolute, that it felt like the first snow of creation. It didn't just freeze; it petrified, crystallised, and devoured. Mawloc screamed as shards of frozen glass pierced through his seven bellies, each shard forming an intricate lattice that immobilised him further.

Grayfia's eyes narrowed, silver hair billowing in the unnatural wind she conjured. "Remember this day, Glutton. Remember it not as the day you fought… but the day you were reminded why the House of Morningstar is not to be trifled with."

Mawloc's bellies quivered, some cracking, some throbbing like trapped hearts. Tongues lashed at the ice, eyes blinked in panic—but Grayfia wasn't finished. Not yet.

A subtle gesture—a tap of her boot against the frozen cobblestone—and the ice under Mawloc expanded upward, lifting him, suspending him in a cruciform of glacial chains. The air around him shivered, the stench of rot and decay now muffled, almost purged.

"You… cannot digest this, cannot consume it," Grayfia whispered, almost to herself, her voice carrying across the frozen plaza. "You cannot understand a power built not on appetite… but on discipline, control, and loyalty. You will remember who rules here."

Mawloc's roar fractured, echoing through Mawthorne like a chorus of shattered organs. But Grayfia didn't advance; she didn't even blink. Her presence alone—pure, merciless, and utterly inhuman—was enough to make the Glutton Satan quake.

"Now," she said, her tone dropping to a lethal whisper, "consider this a warning."

Another snap of her fingers, and the ice tightened, splitting some of Mawloc's bellies entirely, freezing the contents in place. His bulk convulsed, his cries reduced to a low, gurgling rhythm. The city trembled in silence, the surviving demons too paralysed with fear.

"This is Morningstar bloodline's authority," Grayfia finished, her voice echoing like the strike of a silver bell across the frozen streets. "This… is what it means to defy the House of Morningstar."

Mawloc thrashed violently, but the ice held firm, each movement only tightening the glacial prison, sending cracks echoing through his grotesque body. His seven bellies shivered independently, each a separate chamber of agony, as the cold gnawed at the very marrow of his being. The stench of rot still clung, but Grayfia's aura sucked the filth from the air, replacing it with a biting purity that felt almost sacred in its cruelty.

From the skeletal towers above, her silver hair glinted like fractured moonlight, and the air itself seemed to obey her command. Every breath of wind carried the hiss of frost spreading, freezing water puddles, splintering bone spires, and silencing the wails of lesser demons. The streets were hers; the Circle itself had acknowledged her presence with fear, awe, and trembling.

A low rumble echoed from Mawloc's throat, vibrating the ice beneath him. "You… you cannot… stop… me… witch…!" His seven tongues lashed in all directions, attempting to tear free, but each lashing merely struck more ice, cracking and embedding themselves, anchoring him further. Grayfia tilted her head, watching the dance of futile violence with cold amusement.

"You mistake my intent," she murmured. "I am not here to kill you… yet. I am here to remind you that the Morningstar bloodline is not to be trifled with. That discipline is stronger than indulgence, control stronger than appetite, and loyalty… stronger than greed."

Mawloc's eyes, each independent, darted around wildly, seeking a weakness, a moment of distraction. But Grayfia's gaze was unyielding, a silver lance piercing through flesh, mind, and spirit alike. Every inch of her being radiated command, and even the Glutton Satan, an apex predator of the Third Hell, could not escape its weight.

"You will carry this shame," she continued, voice dropping into a whisper that sliced through the miasma of decay. "You will remember today. And if the other Satans of the Seven Circles dare move… they will know what awaits them."

She raised her hand once more, tiny movements with immense precision, and the ice surrounding Mawloc constricted further. His massive frame groaned and cracked under the pressure, fragments of frozen gore spraying outward in harmless arcs, as if the very embodiment of his gluttonous excess was being punished by the purity of her frost. Each movement she made was fluid, deliberate, cruel in its beauty.

The surviving Glutton Knights, still clad in fat-forged armour, whimpered in fear. Their leader's collapse had shattered their morale completely, and now they dared not breathe too loudly, lest Grayfia turn her attention toward them. Her eyes flicked briefly over the masses, silver light glinting in the frozen chaos, and they felt the weight of inevitability pressing down on them. There was no escape. There would be no mercy.

A long, deliberate pause. Grayfia allowed the cold to deepen, to settle, to ensure every demon in the Circle understood the message without a single blade being drawn against them. Mawloc's cries had slowed to whimpers, his bulk straining against the frozen cruciform, eyes blinking in helpless recognition.

Finally, she spoke, each word a scalpel: "Tell your master… tell the others… the House of Morningstar does not forgive. It does not forget. And it does not yield."

"War is coming."

***

Stone me, I can take it!

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