Lutz sat on the edge of his bunk.
This world, the true world beneath the grime and graft of Indaw, was not just dangerous. It was actively predatory. It didn't just wait for you to make a mistake; it laid traps in the very concepts you took for granted. To survive it, let alone navigate it, he needed a foundation. A code. Not the lofty, philosophical garbage of the university men, but something forged in the alley muck and tempered in the silence between heartbeats. A thief's catechism. A Marauder's first principles.
He stared at the cracked, sweating stone of the opposite wall, his mind stripping away the complexity, searching for the bedrock.
First Principle, what is left unseen and unguarded is mine to take.
It wasn't a suggestion. It wasn't even a opportunity. It was a right. His right. The world was full of careless people, people who left valuables in coat pockets, who trusted flimsy locks, who spoke secrets in rooms with thin walls. They created these little pockets of neglect, these voids of attention. And nature, as Lutz understood it, abhorred a vacuum.
His mind flashed to a specific memory: a loose brick in the wall of a baker's back alley, behind which the man hid his day's earnings, believing no one knew. Lutz had known. He'd taken only a few coins, never enough to cause alarm, just enough to eat. He hadn't felt like a thief in that moment; he'd felt like a force of nature, like rain finding a crack in a roof. The baker had created the gap through his own arrogance and carelessness. Lutz had simply filled it.
This applied to everything. An unwarded window was an invitation. An unspoken fear in a mark's eyes was a leverage point. The "Indaw Harbor Butcher"... the name itself felt like something unseen, a truth everyone was glancing at but no one was truly seeing. That, too, felt like it could fall within his domain. If he could see what others missed, it belonged to him by the simple, ruthless law of perception. A Marauder didn't steal. He collected what the world had carelessly abandoned.
Then, he thought, the concept forming with the clarity of a honed blade.
The second principle was colder. It came not from the street, but from the chilling, alien certainty growing in his spirit since he'd swallowed that first, shimmering characteristic. It was the difference between who he was and what he was becoming.
Second Principle, a Marauder takes because they must, not because they need.
He thought of the gnawing hunger of Lutz's childhood, the desperate, sharp-toothed need that had driven him to lift his first loaf of bread. That was a theft of necessity, a reaction to the world's cruelty. This... this was different.
Now, when he saw a complex lock, his fingers didn't just itch for the challenge; they felt a profound, almost spiritual compulsion to defeat it. When he learned a secret, it wasn't just for leverage; it was because the existence of hidden knowledge was an offense to his very nature, a wrong he was compelled to right by making it his. The act of taking was no longer just a means to an end. It was the end itself. It was the purpose of his existence, written in the blood of his Pathway.
He didn't need the red metal charms he'd left hidden. He didn't even fully understand them. But the urge to have them, to possess and control that unknown power, was a physical pressure in his chest. He had to. It was the same impulse that would make a hawk dive or a river flow to the sea. It was an identity. To not take, to not acquire, to not unravel and claim—that would be a violation of his own being. It was a terrifying realization, this sublimation of his will to the Pathway's inherent nature. He was no longer a boy stealing to live. He was becoming a force that lived to take.
Third Principle, The Take is Never Worth the Fall.
It was so simple, so fundamental to any street rat who wanted to see adulthood. Greed was the universal killer. It was the fool who reached for a second purse when the first had already set the guards shouting. It was the amateur who tried to crack a safe while the family slept in the next room. You assessed the reward, then you tripled the perceived risk, and only then did you decide. In this new context, it meant not chasing a Beyonder artifact if the ritual to claim it felt like it would peel your soul away. It meant walking away from a secret if the cost of learning it was your sanity. Survival was the only profit that mattered. Everything else was just interest.
A memory surfaced, sharp and clear: a skinny boy named Eli, who'd tried to lift a gold-chained watch from a well-dressed man near the financial district. Lutz had watched him. The man's posture was too relaxed, his eyes too aware. Eli, dazzled by the shine, had reached. The man's hand had moved like a striking snake, not to grab Eli, but to casually adjust his cuff, a subtle, silver pin glinting on his lapel—a known enforcer's mark. Eli had frozen, and in that frozen second, his fate was sealed. Lutz had melted into the crowd, the lesson etched into him deeper than any scar. The take was not worth the fall. Eli was never seen again.
He continued, the thought solidifying. Know Your Prey, Not Just Its Lair.
Anyone could case a building, note guard rotations, find the weak points. That was mechanics. True understanding went deeper. It meant learning the shopkeeper's habits, his debts, his fears. Did he check under his counter three times before leaving? Then that's where he kept his real valuables. Did the scholar (his mind flicked to Brennen) have a tell when he was lying, a specific way he touched his spectacles? Did a particular spirit, rumored to haunt the old sewers, respond to offerings of rust or blood?
Next, your Exit is Your First Step, Not Your Last.
You never went into a situation without knowing, with absolute certainty, how you were getting out. And you never had just one way. Before his foot had even crossed the threshold of the dockmaster's office, Lutz had identified three separate escape routes: the window to the drainpipe, the main hallway, and a false panel in the wainscoting he'd discovered during a previous, legitimate visit. In the Whispering Market, his "exit" had been the pre-arranged signal to Henrik, a specific phrase to be sent via a cheap, single-use charm if he wasn't back by dawn. On the Beyonder pathway, this was even more critical. Before attempting any ritual, you had to know the abort condition. Before using any artifact, you had to know how to contain it or discard it. Advancement wasn't the goal; walking away from advancement was.
He sat with the developed principles, feeling their weight and rightness. They were a compass for the darkness. What is left unseen and unguarded is mine to take. A Marauder takes because they must, not because they need. The Take is Never Worth the Fall. Know Your Prey, Not Just Its Lair. Your Exit is Your First Step, Not Your Last. All Things are Tools.
A grim, quiet satisfaction settled over him. This was the frame. Now he could build.
The squeal of rusted metal hinges shattered his contemplation. The warehouse door swung open, slicing a blade of grey light through the gloom. Henrik wasn't due back. Lutz's hand slipped under his blanket, fingers closing around the cool, familiar grip of his knife.
A figure was silhouetted in the doorway, tall and lean, wearing a long coat that smelled of perfume and tobacco. Karl.
Lutz relaxed his grip, but every other sense went taut. Karl never came here. This was a breach of their usual, arms-length protocol. It meant something was wrong, or the job was too sensitive for their usual canal-side bench.
"Lutz," Karl's voice was a low rumble, devoid of its usual lazy amusement. He stepped inside, letting the door clang shut behind him, his eyes taking a moment to adjust to the dimness. "We need to talk. A job."
Lutz remained on his bunk, not offering a seat. "What's there to take?"
"Documents. From the dockmaster's office. I need you to steal them."
Inside, Lutz went perfectly, utterly still. The ledger. The very same one, currently hidden under a loose floorboard not ten feet away. It was the crown jewel of his personal, three-night effort—a solo job, done for his own private stockpile of leverage. Karl knew nothing of it. No one did.
Know Your Prey. The Vipers were desperate. This wasn't a test; it was a genuine, panicked need that had just landed in his lap.
He kept his face a neutral mask, raising a single eyebrow as if considering a complex new task. "The dockmaster's office? That's a hardened target. Guards, locks, night watchmen. It'll take planning."
"Don't play dumb with me," Karl hissed, leaning in. "We know you've been casing it. We have eyes. This isn't a request anymore, Lutz. It's a priority. Get the ledger. The remaining Fifty Hammers will be taken off your debt."
Lutz let a silence hang, just long enough to sell the illusion of a man weighing a real risk. What is left unseen and unguarded is mine to take. He had already taken it. And now, the world was offering to pay him for it a second time.
A Marauder steals because they must, not because they need. He didn't need to do this job. But he must take this opportunity. It was clean, risk-free profit, and it would ingratiate him with the Vipers at a moment of their need.
"Fine," Lutz said.
In his mind, the plan was already crystalline. He would simply retrieve the ledger from its hiding place, spend a day doing absolutely nothing, and hand it over tomorrow. He'd claim the break-in was tense, that he'd nearly been caught, but that he'd secured the prize. Karl would be satisfied, the Vipers would be appeased, and Lutz would be free for a job he'd already completed for himself.
"Tomorrow. Not a moment later," Karl warned, his body tense with a relief he was trying to hide. "Don't fail."
"I don't," Lutz replied, his voice flat and final.
As Karl turned and left, Lutz looked at him. Then his gaze drifted to the floorboard. A slow, cold smile touched his lips.
He wouldn't be stealing a ledger tonight.
Saint Chevalier Cathedral, Church of Steam and Machinery, Indaw Harbor
The Church of Steam and Machinery had not so much arrived in Indaw Harbor as it had installed itself. It had taken over a former Feysac naval logistics office, a stout, functional building of grey stone near the customs house. Where once the emblem of a crossed anchor and warhammer had hung, now gleamed a new, brass-inlaid sign: stylized gears interlocked with a flawless triangle.
The transformation within was even more profound. The air, once thick with the smell of salt and old timber, now carried the crisp scents of ozone, hot metal, and lubricating oil. The dim, torch-lit halls had been replaced by the unwavering, white glow of gaslamps housed in complex brass fixtures. The rhythmic, metronomic ticking of a dozen perfectly synchronized clocks created a constant, underlying hum of order, a sound that sought to drown out the harbor's chaotic symphony of gulls and shouting stevedores.
In an office on the second floor, Captain Signeil Krieg stood at attention. Before him, seated at a steel-framed desk that was a masterpiece of minimalist engineering, was Deacon Reverie Noire.
She was exactly as her dossier suggested: an instrument of the Church given human form. Her posture was impossibly straight, accentuated by her impeccably proportioned, tall figure. Her hands—clad in fine, grey leather gloves—resting flat on a report. Her hair was the color of a deep, old wine, a stark contrast to the pallor of her skin. Her eyes, the shade of twilight amethysts, held a disconcerting quality, as if they weren't just seeing the surface of things, but were perpetually analyzing, disassembling, and cataloging their underlying structures.
"Your report on the Eisner Lane incident is… precise, Captain," she said, her voice a low, resonant contralto that seemed to vibrate in the air like a plucked cello string. "A Dr. Albin Metzger, deceased. Signs of parasitic mutation. A laboratory fire of 'suspicious origin.' And evidence of a professional looting prior to the conflagration." She looked up, and her gaze felt like a physical weight. "You attribute this to the Harbor Vipers."
Krieg, his own ginger hair tied back severely, gave a sharp nod. "The spiritual residue was muddied by the fire, Deacon, but there was a trace signature. Acquisitive. Hungry. It aligns with the Vipers' known activities, though this represents a significant escalation in both method and ambition. It suggests they may be dabbling in unsanctioned mystical research."
"Or merely containing it," Noire replied, her gaze turning to look out the window, where the chaotic rooftops of the Salt-Weep district sprawled. "A gang, even a successful one, is a simple mechanism. It exists to generate profit. This… feels different. This feels like a symptom of a larger system failure."
She turned back to him, her expression unchanging. "And the other matter? The 'Butcher' in the alley?"
"The two deceased were Beyonders," Krieg stated, his hand unconsciously brushing the brass device at his belt. "Their pathways are unregistered. There were no items on them. Their methods, professional. The scene was… excessively thorough. We theorize they belonged to the Aurora order and Demoness sect respectively, it would seem they are working together.
Reverie mused, her gloved finger tapping a precise rhythm on the desk. "The political situation is the true catalyst, Captain. Feysac's spiritual foundation is cracked. The God of Combat is silent. Into this vacuum, disorder festers. The Vipers, this 'Butcher,' the evil cults, even the pathetic remnants of the Gray Sharks—they are all merely rust forming on unprotected metal."
She stood, moving with an unnerving, fluid grace to a large map of Indaw Harbor pinned to the wall. Various colored pins marked territories and incidents.
"Our mandate is not merely to clean the rust," she said, her voice dropping to a near-whisper that nonetheless filled the room. "It is to replace the entire mechanism. The Loenish pressure, the internal corruption, these criminal enterprises… they are all interconnected failures of a system that has lost its guiding principle."
She pointed a single, gloved finger at the map, first at the Vipers' territory in Salt-Weep, then at the Upper Anchor district, and finally at the customs house.
"We will not waste our strength on a war of attrition with street thugs. We will identify the key nodes of this corruption—the Baron Vogler, this 'Korbinian Hass' who whispers in Loenish ears, the corrupt officials on our own payroll—and we will remove them. Surgically. Efficiently."
Her amethyst eyes settled back on Krieg, and in their depths, he saw not fury, but the cold, absolute certainty of a mathematician solving for an variable.
"Continue your investigation, Captain. But shift your focus. I am less interested in the Vipers' petty thefts and more interested in their connections. Who supplies them? Who protects them? Who fears them? Find the pressure points. When the time comes, we will not only crush the Vipers. We will also turn off the valve that gives them life."
Krieg bowed his head. "By your command, Deacon."
As he turned to leave, the synchronized ticking of the clocks seemed to grow louder, a relentless, mechanical heartbeat heralding the new order that had come to Indaw Harbor. It was an order that promised precision, progress, and a cold, absolute finality for anything it deemed… corrupt.