Time stretched and warped in the windowless room. The only measure of its passage was the slow drip of condensation from a pipe in the corner and the ragged rhythm of Silvia's breathing, which had subsided from terrified sobs into a hollow, shivering silence. Lutz stood with his back against the cold stone wall, trying to merge with the shadows. Karl was a statue in the corner, eyes closed but impossibly alert. Gerhart leaned by the door, his presence a wall of impatient muscle.
The plan was simple. A whispered rumor had been sent slithering into the city's underbelly: The Vipers have the sister. The old lighthouse is a trap. Come to the warehouse if you want to see her breathe again. It was a dare, a test of Silas's character. Lutz had argued the man would run. Karl had simply said, "We'll see."
Hours bled together. The air grew thick with the smell of fear and damp stone. Lutz's mind, starved for external stimulus, turned inward. He replayed the meeting with Silvia in the market, the deft lies he'd woven. He had been so pleased with his own cleverness. Now, locked in this box with the consequence of that cleverness, the memory felt tainted. This is what it costs, he thought, the cynicism a weak shield against the grim reality. This is the machinery you're so eager to join.
A sharp, triple knock on the door shattered the silence. It was not a frantic pounding, but a coded signal. Karl's eyes snapped open. Gerhart straightened up, his hand going to the truncheon at his belt.
"He's here," Karl said, his voice flat. "Alone. And he's unarmed."
The door opened a crack. Rudel's face appeared, grimly satisfied. "Little weasel walked right up to the main gate. Offered himself up. Said he'd talk, but only if he sees the girl is alive."
Karl nodded. "Bring him."
A moment later, Silas was shoved into the room. He looked like a ghost of the man Lutz had known. His clothes were filthy, his face gaunt and etched with a desperation so profound it was painful to behold. His eyes scanned the room, frantic, until they landed on Silvia, still bound to the chair. A broken sound, half-sob, half-relief, escaped his lips.
"Silvia…," he whispered.
"You see?" Karl's voice was calm, conversational. "Alive. Unharmed. For now. You made a poor choice, Silas."
Silas didn't even look at Karl. His entire world had shrunk to his sister. "I'll do anything. I'll give you names. I'll work for you. Just let her go. She doesn't know anything. Please."
It was a complete and total surrender. There was no fight left in him, only a raw, pleading love. Lutz felt a wave of nauseating pity. This was not a rival; this was a broken man.
It was then that the atmosphere in the room changed. The air grew heavier, colder. A new presence filled the doorway. Baron Gunther Vogler stepped inside, his flint-like eyes taking in the scene with a single, comprehensive glance. The Vipers—Karl, Gerhart, Rudel—all stiffened into postures of absolute deference. The monsters had their master.
The Baron ignored Silas's pleading. He walked slowly around the chair where Silvia sat trembling, his gaze analytical, as if assessing a piece of flawed merchandise. He stopped in front of Lutz.
"You found the thread, Fischer," the Baron said, his voice low and measured. "You pulled it. And it led us here." He gestured dismissively at the sobbing Silas. "This is the result. A snitch, begging for a life that is no longer his to give."
He turned his attention to the room at large, his voice taking on a pedagogical tone. It was more terrifying than any shout.
"This is the lesson so many fail to learn," the Baron began, his words falling like stones. "Violence is a tool. But it is a crude one. Killing a man…" He glanced at Silas. "…is a transaction. It settles a debt. It is simple. Clean."
He paused, letting the silence amplify his next words. "But to truly enforce order, to make an example that will not be forgotten, you must understand the concept of value. Every man, no matter how wretched, has something he values above his own life. His pride. His reputation. His… family."
His eyes settled back on Silas, who had finally looked up, his face a mask of dawning horror.
"You see," the Baron continued, his voice dropping to a deadly whisper, "your error was not in talking to the Sharks. Your error was in believing your debt could be paid with your own life. That is a price you are willing to pay. Therefore, it is an insufficient price."
He took a step closer to Silas, and Lutz felt a bizarre, almost metaphysical pressure in the room, as if the very rules of reason were bending around the Baron.
"The true price," the Baron said, each word precise and final, "must be something you are not willing to pay. It must be the destruction of the value you placed above your own existence. It must be the eradication of your hope."
He turned to Karl. "The sister first. Let him watch. Then him."
The sentence was delivered not with rage, but with the absolute, chilling certainty of a man stating an immutable law of nature. It wasn't a punishment; it was a logical conclusion. A flaw in the equation of Silas's betrayal had been identified, and the Baron was simply correcting it.
In that moment, Lutz understood the true nature of the Baron's power. It wasn't just about finding physical or logical weaknesses. It was about finding the weakness in a man's soul, the foundational value that gave his life meaning, and then systematically, coldly, annihilating it. This was the power of a Baron of Corruption. And Lutz had just helped him exercise it. The lesson was not for Silas. It was for him.
For a heartbeat, the room was perfectly still, suspended in the moment before an atrocity. The Baron's words hung in the air, not as a command, but as a statement of fact, as inevitable as the tide. Then, the machinery of the Vipers engaged.
Karl nodded to Rudel. The big man's face, which usually bore a look of brutish anticipation, was unnervingly blank. This was not a brawl; it was a procedure. He moved toward Silvia.
Silas's pleading turned into a raw, animal scream. "NO! PLEASE! KILL ME! KILL ME INSTEAD!" He thrashed against the hands holding him, but Gerhart's grip was iron.
Lutz stood frozen, his mind screaming at him to look away, to shut down, but his eyes remained locked wide open. This was the result of his cleverness. He was the architect of this moment. He had to witness the foundation of the house he had built.
Rudel didn't use his fists. He didn't need to. He backhanded Silvia across the face. The sound was a sickening crack that echoed off the stone walls. Her head snapped to the side, a fine spray of blood arcing from her lip. She didn't even cry out, just made a small, choked gasp of pure shock.
"Look at him," Karl's voice cut through the room, calm and directive. He was talking to Lutz. "Watch what your work has wrought."
Rudel hit her again. And again. It was methodical, brutal, and horrifyingly intimate. This wasn't a fight; it was an dismantling. Each blow was a lesson in powerlessness. Silas's screams became a continuous, wordless wail of agony, a sound more piercing than any physical pain Lutz had ever felt. He was being flayed alive, his soul shredded with every impact that landed on his sister.
Lutz's stomach roiled. The cold, analytical part of his brain, the part that had always protected him, short-circuited. There was no calculation that could distance him from this. The cynicism that had been his shield melted in the furnace of this reality. You wanted to see the real world, a voice hissed in his mind. Well, here it is.
Then the Baron spoke again, his eyes on Lutz. "Fischer. The knife."
The words didn't register at first. They were just sounds. Karl pressed the hilt of a knife into Lutz's limp hand. The metal was cold.
"She does not need to suffer unduly," the Baron said, his tone still that of a teacher. "A quick end is a mercy. But the lesson must be completed. By you."
Lutz looked down at the knife in his hand. It felt alien, monstrous. This was the final step. Not just to be complicit, but to be the instrument. To have the physical sensation of the act etched into his memory forever. Silas was now silent, broken, his eyes vacant pools of horror, understanding that his presence was the only thing keeping his sister alive for these extra seconds of torment.
Lutz's legs carried him forward. He wasn't in control. He was a puppet, his strings pulled by the Baron's will. He stood over Silvia. Her face was a swollen, bloody mask. One eye was sealed shut. The other looked up at him, and in its depths, he saw not hatred, not even fear anymore, but a profound, bewildered plea for the pain to end.
It's a mercy, the Baron's voice echoed in his head. It's just a tool. You are just a tool.
His hand trembled violently. He saw the pulse beating in her neck. He saw the place. The geometry of the act was simple. The morality was an abyss.
He closed his eyes. He couldn't do it.
A hand closed over his. Karl's hand. Karl stood behind him, guiding the blade with an unnerving steadiness. "A clean cut," Karl whispered in his ear. "Swift. Like ending suffering. It's a skill."
Lutz felt the resistance, then the give. A warmth sprayed across his hand. There was a final, soft exhalation from Silvia. Then silence. A thick, absolute silence that was louder than any scream.
Karl released his hand. The knife clattered to the stone floor.
Lutz opened his eyes. He was still holding the pose. Silvia's head lolled to the side. It was over.
The sound that came from Silas then was not human. It was the sound of a mind and soul being torn out by the roots. A single, ragged, breathless keen of utter annihilation. Then, he too fell silent, slumping in Gerhart's grasp, emptied.
The Baron nodded, satisfied. "Now him." The order was an afterthought. Rudel drew his own blade and ended Silas's life with a single, efficient thrust. It was the least significant death of the night.
"Clean this up," the Baron said to no one in particular, and turned to leave. As he passed Lutz, he paused. "You are no longer a liability, Fischer. You are an asset. A sharpened tool understands the nature of the cut." Then he was gone.
The others moved to dispose of the bodies. The room became a hive of grim activity. Lutz did not move. He looked at the blood on his hands. It was sticky, warm. Silvia's blood. And his. He was the point of contact. The instrument.
Someone—Gerhart, maybe—clapped him on the shoulder. "Tough one, kid. First time's always the worst." The words were meant to be camaraderie, but they were the most horrifying thing Lutz had ever heard. First time. This was a normal occurrence. This was the business.
He stumbled out of the room, away from the warehouse. He didn't know where he was going. He found himself in a quiet, dark alley, retching until there was nothing left in his stomach. The images played behind his eyes on a loop: the betrayal in Silvia's eyes in the tenement, the Baron's calm pronouncement, the feel of the knife, the warmth of the blood.
He had thought he understood this world. He had thought it was about survival, about debt, about climbing a ladder of power. He saw now that he had been a child playing on the edge of a bottomless chasm. The Vipers weren't just criminals. They weren't just monsters. They were a fundamental force of corruption, and the Baron was its high priest. Their power wasn't just in violence; it was in the systematic destruction of meaning itself.
He looked at his hands again, scrubbing them against the rough brick wall until the skin was raw, but the stain felt permanent. He had wanted to become a Beyonder, to gain power. Now, the very thought was tainted. Was this the price? Was this the kind of soul one needed to possess to ascend?
The cold ember of spite inside him was not extinguished. It was forged in that alley into something new, something harder and more terrible: a vow. He would survive. He would gain power. Not to become like them, but to break them. To break the Baron, to break this system that treated human souls as disposable currency. The debt he owed now was no longer to the Baron. It was to the terrified woman in the chair. It was a debt that could only be paid in the currency of the world he now inhabited: absolute, uncompromising power.
He stood up, his body trembling, but his will solidified into a core of ice. He had seen the true face of the world. And he would never be able to unsee it.
"I will bury every last one of you fuckers"
He didn't know how long he stood in the alley, the cold seeping into his bones, the phantom warmth of blood still on his hands. The world had taken on a sharp, hyper-real quality, every sound and smell etched with painful clarity. He was a raw nerve, scraped clean of the illusions that had allowed him to function.
When the summons came, it was from a young, nervous Viper who wouldn't meet his eyes. "The Baron wants to see you. In his office."
Lutz followed him back into the warehouse, moving like an automaton. The usual sounds of the place felt distant, as if he were observing it all from behind a thick pane of glass. He walked past the door to the storage room. It was closed.
Baron Vogler was alone in the office. The ledger was closed. He watched Lutz enter, his flint-like eyes missing nothing: the pallor of his skin, the hollow look in his eyes.
"You have been tested, Fischer," the Baron began, dispensing with any preamble. "And you have passed. You have proven you understand the necessary costs of power. A tool that cannot bear the heat of its own work is useless." He picked up a single sheet of paper from his desk. It was a crisp, clean sheet covered in a precise, sharp script. "As I promised, utility is rewarded."
He slid the paper across the desk. Lutz's eyes fell upon the words at the top.
Pathway: Marauder
Sequence 9: Marauder
Below the heading was a list of ingredients. They were bizarre and specific, a catalogue of the grotesque and the arcane:
Main Ingredients:
1 Blood‑Speckled Black Mosquito.
1 Core of a Candle Devourer.
Supplementary Ingredients:
100 milliliters of Another's Blood.
Nail fragments from Nine Different Individuals.
1 Sapphire.
10 grams of Verbena Powder.
Lutz stared at the list. A mosquito? A candle devourer? These were not simple herbs or minerals. They were creatures, things that had to be hunted or found in dark corners. The supplementary ingredients spoke of intrusion and multiplicity—another's blood, the nail fragments of nine people.
"This is the first step," the Baron said, his voice cutting through Lutz's contemplation. "The formula for the potion that will set your feet upon the path. Do not ask me what these things are or where to find them. The search is the second test. A man who cannot find his own tools will never master them."
He leaned back, steepling his fingers. "When you have gathered every component, you will bring them to Karl. He will assist you with the final preparation. Not before. Is that clear?"
Lutz nodded slowly, his fingers tracing the word Marauder… that was clear. A thief. It fit the skills of the original Lutz Fischer perfectly. It was a dark mirror of the life he'd been living.
"The path…" Lutz started, his voice hoarse.
"Is long, and each step changes you," the Baron finished. "The power does not come without a price. It carries a madness within it, a whisper that can grow into a scream. To advance is to walk a razor's edge between control and annihilation. That is all you need to know for now. You are dismissed."
Lutz took the paper, folding it carefully with numb fingers. It felt heavier than any ledger.
Back in the relative solitude of his bunk, he unfolded it again, his mind latching onto the intellectual puzzle as a lifeline away from the horror.
Sequence 9. The number implied an order, a hierarchy. If 9 was the bottom, what was at the top? Sequence 1? Sequence 0? The thought was dizzying. Karl was clearly more powerful than Rudel. The Baron, with his terrifying ability to corrupt and distort, must be even higher.
And the pathways. Marauder. What were the others? He thought of Karl's control over fire and his heightened instincts. That felt like a different theme entirely. Rudel's immense physical prowess was another. The Baron's power over rules and flaws… that felt different yet again. How many hidden hierarchies of power existed in the world?
The name resonated with a dark part of him. It wasn't just about stealing coins or silk. It was about taking things that were not offered. Secrets. Power. One of the ingredients, Another's Blood, seemed to confirm this theme of theft and appropriation.
As Lutz stared at the cryptic list, a plan began to form. He would need to frequent places where strange creatures might be found. The Gallowsmarket. The forgotten corners of the docks. He would have to become a hunter of the bizarre.
He would become a Marauder. He would climb the sequences. He would learn to steal more than just objects. And once he had the power, he would settle all his debts. Especially the one written in blood, in a dark room.