A restless energy thrummed beneath Lutz's skin. The following day dawned and bled into a sluggish afternoon, each passing hour a slow drumbeat counting down to the next convergence. Tomorrow, the fog would thicken over the scrapyard, and the Whispering Market would open its transient doors. Tomorrow, he would hold the products of his gamble: a ring to listen to the world's flaws and a stiletto that could steal the life of his victims. The thought was a bright, sharp shard of anticipation in the grim murk of his existence. For the first time in weeks, he felt a thrill that wasn't born of spite or survival, but of pure, undiluted potential.
This fragile buzz was interrupted by Karl finding him as he practiced his knife throws in a quiet corner of the warehouse yard, the blades sinking into a worn-out timber with a satisfying thwack.
"Fischer. Change of plans," Karl said, his usual focused intensity amplified. He smelled of soot and ozone, a sign he'd been actively using his powers. "The Baron's new… partnership. The one facilitated by your ledger. The meeting is today, at the main drydock. It requires a show of force."
Lutz lowered his throwing knife. "You need me there?"
"No," Karl said, his gaze sweeping the mostly empty warehouse. "I need you here. We're taking almost everyone. Rudel's down, which leaves us thin. Gerhart and a few of the other brutes will be staying to guard the Baron's office. You're to guard the warehouse itself. Consider it a testament to your reliability. Don't let anyone burn it down while we're gone."
The assignment was a dull thud after the excitement of the Market. Guard duty. Babysitting a building while the real power plays happened elsewhere. Yet, he understood the logic. He was the subtle tool, the lockpick, not the sledgehammer. A public display of force at a delicate negotiation wasn't his role.
"Understood," Lutz nodded.
Within the hour, the warehouse emptied. The usual cacophony of dice games, weapon maintenance, and loud boasts faded, replaced by an eerie, hollow silence. Lutz could feel the building's emptiness like a physical presence. He made a cursory round, his senses passively noting the locations of the few remaining Vipers—Gerhart's low grumble from outside the Baron's office, the hulking shadows of two other enforcers stationed at strategic points.
His feet, almost of their own accord, carried him towards the one source of familiarity in the sudden quiet: Henrik's workshop.
The old man was right where he expected him, seated on a stool, meticulously honing the edge of a long, wicked-looking dirk. The rhythmic shhh-click, shhh-click of the whetstone was a soothing counterpoint to the silence.
"Left you holding the bag too, eh?" Henrik said without looking up, his good eye squinting at the blade's edge.
"Seems so," Lutz replied, leaning against the doorframe. "Not much to hold. It's too quiet."
"Quiet's better than the alternative," Henrik muttered. "Usually."
They lapsed into a comfortable silence, punctuated only by the sharpening. Lutz watched the old man's hands, the practiced, economical movements. There was a peace in it, a world away from the violent, acquisitive nature of his own enhanced dexterity. He thought about their conversation from the day before, about mending things and the pieces of yourself you give away.
The thought was half-formed when the sound cut through the silence.
It wasn't loud. It was a wet, tearing sound, followed by a low, guttural moan that was utterly alien. It came from down the hall. From the direction of the infirmary.
Lutz and Henrik froze. Their eyes met across the dim workshop. The whetstone stilled in Henrik's hand.
"Rudel," Henrik breathed, the name a curse.
Another sound. A thick, dripping noise, like overripe fruit falling into mud.
Without a word, both men moved. Lutz's hands went to the hilts of his knives, his earlier restlessness instantly transforming into a survivor's focus. Henrik grabbed the newly sharpened dirk, his movements suddenly fluid and dangerous, the gentle craftsman vanishing in an instant.
They moved quickly and silently down the cold stone corridor, the oppressive silence making the wet, ragged sounds from behind the infirmary door all the more pronounced. A foul smell began to permeate the air—a sweet, cloying rot mixed with a metallic tang, like old blood and spoiled milk.
Lutz pressed his ear to the rough wood of the door. He heard a wet, rhythmic scraping, and a low, bubbling breath that didn't sound human.
He looked at Henrik, who gave a grim, single nod. Gripping his knives, Lutz slowly turned the handle and pushed the door open.
The scene inside was a vision from a fever dream, a blasphemy against nature.
Rudel was out of his bed. He stood in the middle of the room, but his posture was a broken, twisted thing, his limbs held at unnatural angles. His massive frame, once corded with muscle, was now swollen and distended, his skin stretched taut and stained a sickening, mottled blue. Tumors, pulsing with a vile inner light, bulged from his shoulders, back, and neck, some weeping a thick, yellow pus that mingled with the sweat and filth on his skin. His wounds, the ones from the alley fight, were now gaping, infected mouths, seeping the same foul substance.
But the most horrifying thing was his face.
Rudel's head lolled forward, then slowly, with a series of audible cracks from his vertebrae, began to lift. Where his two eyes should have been were only smooth, blue-veined skin, already starting to seal over.
In the center of his forehead, a single, massive eye was open.
It was too large, a grotesque orb of milky, veined white surrounding a pupil that was not a circle, but a jagged, star-shaped blot of deepest black. It swiveled in its socket, independent of the head's movement, and fixed its gaze upon Lutz and Henrik in the doorway.
The eye held no recognition, no rage, no humanity. It held only a vast, insatiable, and utterly mad hunger.
Rudel had lost control.
The grotesque figure in the doorway seemed to suck all the air from the room. Lutz's mind, usually a whirlwind of calculation, went terrifyingly blank for a single, paralyzing second. The sheer wrongness of it, the biological blasphemy, short-circuited his thoughts.
Then, a fragment of memory surfaced, Karl's voice, cool and instructive: "You could become one of the lost ones, a mindless abomination driven only by a desire you no longer control"
This was what he meant. This was the fate that waited for any Beyonder who stumbled, who faltered, who let the whispering madness take root. The potion wasn't just power; it was a cage for a monster, and the lock was your own sanity.
Why? Why now? The questions screamed in his head. Rudel had been stable, if comatose. The wounds from the assassins were severe, but they were physical. Unless…
The ritual.
The glowing inverted cross, the cursed sigils that had sapped Rudel's strength and rooted him in place. Taric's blasphemous prayers. It wasn't a temporary debilitation. It was a poison, a corrosive agent introduced directly into his spiritual framework. It had festered inside him for days, gnawing at the barriers that held his Beyonder nature in check, until finally, it had eaten through completely.
There was no more time for thought.
With a guttural, wet roar that tore from a throat not meant for speech, the thing that was once Rudel charged. It wasn't the controlled, powerful lunge of the Pugilist enforcer; it was a lurching, unbalanced avalanche of corrupted flesh, horrifyingly fast.
Instinct took over. Lutz sheathed one of his fighting knives, his hands a blur as he drew two throwing knives from his bandolier. He didn't aim to kill—the concept seemed absurd against such a creature—but to slow, to distract. The blades flew straight and true, sinking into the swollen blue flesh of Rudel's chest. They might as well have been thrown at a stone wall. There was no cry of pain, not even a flinch. The tumors around the wounds pulsed, and a fresh trickle of pus oozed out around the steel.
Beside him, Henrik, his face a mask of grim horror, hurled the dirk he'd been sharpening. It was a stronger throw, born of desperation, and it embedded itself deep in Rudel's shoulder. The result was the same. Nothing.
"Run!" Lutz snarled, shoving Henrik back into the corridor.
They fled. Lutz didn't look back, his hearing telling him everything he needed to know, the thunderous, crushing footsteps, the splintering of the doorframe as Rudel simply bulldozed through it. He focused on Henrik, on putting his own body between the old man and the abomination, herding him towards the main warehouse floor.
"The storage!" Henrik gasped, his voice ragged as they burst into the vast, open space. "I have something! Hold it off!"
Before Lutz could ask what, Henrik broke away, scrambling towards a locked cabinet near his workshop, fumbling for keys.
And just like that, Lutz was alone.
He turned to face the corridor entrance as Rudel emerged. The single, star-pupiled eye locked onto him, and Lutz felt a psychic chill, a sense of being seen in a way that had nothing to do with light. It was the feeling of being identified as prey.
The fight was a nightmare of asymmetrical warfare. Lutz was a darting sparrow facing a typhoon. He used every ounce of his Marauder agility, his body flowing around the chaotic, devastating attacks. He vaulted over crates, slid under tables, using the warehouse's clutter as a makeshift obstacle course.
He'd lunge in, his remaining fighting knife slashing a deep gash across Rudel's thigh. The wound would open, blackish blood welling up, and then seem to almost immediately stall, the corrupted flesh stubbornly refusing to acknowledge the damage. He'd throw another knife, this time aiming for the great eye. Rudel's hand, moving with shocking speed, swatted it aside, the blade clattering uselessly against the stone wall.
Rudel, in turn, fought with no technique, only overwhelming, mindless force. He didn't punch; he demolished. A fist slammed into a support pillar, and the wood splintered with a sound like a cannon shot, sending shards flying. He backhanded a heavy oak table, flipping it end over end as if it were made of parchment. It shattered against the far wall, scattering tools and broken wood across the floor.
Lutz was a ghost, irritant, but he was running out of space. The warehouse was being systematically dismantled around him. He grabbed a heavy metal flask from a shelf and hurled it at Rudel's head. It connected with a dull clang, and the thing finally paused, its head rocking back slightly.
It was the opening Lutz didn't know he was waiting for. He darted in, aiming his knife for the side of its knee, a joint, anything to cripple its movement.
He misjudged the speed.
As his blade bit into tendon and bone, a fist the size of a ham whistled through the air where his head had been a half-second before. The displaced air pressure alone felt like a physical blow, stinging his eyes and rocking him back on his heels. The force of the missed punch carried through, connecting with the brick wall beside them. The impact wasn't a crack; it was a deep, concussive thump that shook the foundations of the building. Dust and fragments of mortar rained down. A web of fractures spread out from the point of impact.
Lutz stared, his blood running cold. That punch wouldn't have just killed him. It would have unmade him. There would have been nothing left to bury.
He scrambled backward, putting distance between them, his heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird. He was out of tricks, out of space, and out of time. Where was Henrik?
The thing that was Rudel turned, its single eye burning with malevolent hunger, and took a step towards him, its heavy footfall cracking the stone floor. It was done playing.
The world had narrowed to the space between Lutz's heaving chest and the advancing monstrosity. The concussive thump of Rudel's punch against the wall still echoed in his bones, a promise of the obliteration that was one misstep away. He was a flicker of motion in a storm of pure, mindless destruction, and the storm was closing in. He could smell the sweet, putrid rot of the thing's breath, see the pus weeping from the tumors that pulsed with a vile, independent life.
He backpedaled, his boots slipping on the dust and debris. There was nowhere left to run. The main supports of the warehouse were compromised, the ceiling groaning ominously. To retreat further was to be cornered. To advance was suicide.
That was when the thunder began.
Not the chaotic, shattering thunder of Rudel's rage, but the sharp, percussive, and beautifully organized thunder of gunfire.
BAM! BAM! BAM-BAM!
A volley of revolver shots ripped through the air. Lutz flinched, his eyes snapping towards the source. There, standing near the entrance to the offices, were Henrik and Gerhart. Gerhart, his face a grim mask of fury, stood in a practiced shooter's stance, his heavy revolver barking flame and lead. And beside him, looking frail but with an iron resolve in his single good eye, was Henrik, firing a second revolver, his old man's hands surprisingly steady.
The bullets tore into Rudel's bloated blue flesh. Most sank in with wet, smacking sounds, seeming to do little more than irritate the beast. But one of Henrik's shots, a lucky or impossibly skilled shot, found its mark. It struck the great, single eye in the center of Rudel's forehead.
The effect was instantaneous and profound.
A shriek, high-pitched and utterly alien, tore from Rudel's throat. It was a sound of pure, psychic agony. He staggered back, his massive hands clawing at his face, blackish, viscous fluid now pouring from the ruined orb. The star-shaped pupil contracted and dilated wildly. For a precious few seconds, the mindless charge was broken, replaced by a blind, spasming torment.
"Boy!" Henrik's voice cut through the gunshots and the screaming. He tossed the spent revolver aside and, with a strength that belied his age, hefted an old, long-barreled shotgun from behind a crate. He threw it through the air, a heavy, oiled piece of death, followed by a handful of red paper cartridges. "Make them count!"