He watched as two burly Vipers, under Gerhart's direction, picked up the crate containing Rudel's body and carried it out towards the scrapyard for disposal. Then, they picked up the second crate. Henrik's crate. They handled it with the same impersonal efficiency, one man at each end, their faces blank with the task. They were going to toss him onto the same pile of refuse, to be burned or buried in an unmarked pit with the other waste of the Vipers' violent existence.
A cold, sharp clarity cut through the numb fog enveloping Lutz.
"Stop."
The word was quiet, but it carried, freezing the two men in their tracks. Gerhart looked over, his brow furrowed in annoyance.
"Put it down," Lutz said, his voice flat, leaving no room for argument. "I'll handle it."
The men looked at Gerhart, who stared at Lutz for a long moment. He saw the same unnerving stillness he'd witnessed after the fight, the same glacial fire in the boy's eyes. He gave a curt, dismissive jerk of his head. The men lowered the crate with a dull thud and shuffled away, glad to be free of the morbid duty.
Lutz walked over and stood before the long, wooden box. It was just a container. It held no spiritual weight, no sense of Henrik's presence. The old man was gone. This was just the shell he'd left behind, the final, broken piece of a life that had ended in a storm of violence he never asked for. But it was a shell that deserved better than a garbage heap.
He couldn't do this covered in the evidence of the slaughter. He went to his new room, the lock on the door a mockery of the security he truly craved. He stripped off the blood-stained, dust-ground clothes, dropping them in a corner like a shed skin of the day's horror. He washed his hands and face in the basin, the water turning pink, then brown. The grime came off, but the feeling of contamination did not. He changed into a clean, dark shirt and trousers, simple and unadorned. It felt like a ritual purification, a necessary step to approach this task with something resembling respect.
Back in the main warehouse, the reconstruction was in full, noisy swing. He ignored it. He found a sturdy, long-handled shovel leaning against a wall where the dockworkers sometimes used it to shift gravel. He tucked it under his arm. His eyes scanned the clutter of Henrik's domain—the workshop now felt like a tomb itself. He saw a stack of leftover planks of good, solid oak, salvaged from some forgotten shipment. He took two. He found a small hammer and a pouch of nails on Henrik's own workbench, the tools the old man had used to mend the world, now to be used to mark his exit from it.
He returned to the crate. He hefted one end, testing the weight. It was heavy, but his enhanced strength and training made it manageable. He adjusted his grip, hoisted it onto his shoulder, the wood pressing against his clavicle. With the shovel in one hand and the planks and tools under his arm, he walked out of the warehouse.
The shift from the dim, chaotic interior to the late afternoon light of Indaw Harbor was jarring. The fog had lifted, leaving a sky the color of tarnished silver. He walked, not with any hurried pace, but with a slow, deliberate tread. He moved away from the docks, away from the stench of fish and industry, and began to climb the gradual incline that led towards the city's outskirts.
As he walked, the crate on his shoulder should have been a crushing burden. It was the weight of a man, of a life, of his own guilt. But he felt nothing. His body was a machine, carrying its load. His mind was a frozen lake, thoughts trapped beneath the ice.
The city changed around him. The cramped, grimy streets of the Salt-Weep district gave way to slightly wider lanes, where the buildings were made of whole stone and had small, fenced patches of earth instead of piles of refuse. The air began to smell of damp soil and cooking fires instead of rot and ozone. People looked at him—a young man carrying a long crate, a shovel, and wood—with curiosity, then quick aversion. They saw the intensity in his eyes, the grim set of his jaw, and looked away.
The numbness was a shield, but it was thin. With every step, memories, sharp and unbidden, began to stab through it.
Henrik's voice, gruff but not unkind: "The sharpest knife in the drawer, but you're still just a tool in someone else's hand."
He passed a cobbler's shop, the smell of leather and polish reminding him of the old man's hands, always working, always mending.
"A price is always exacted for what fate bestows, right?"
He saw two children chasing a dog, their laughter a sound from another universe. He thought of Henrik's story, of a wife, of a life that had been stolen from him long before today. A life of love, reduced to a name whispered with a dying breath. Annelise.
The guilt, now a physical coldness in his gut, twisted. This was his doing. His greed, his choice to hoard the characteristics, his lie. The Marauder's path was one of taking, and he had taken Henrik's last days and corrupted them into a nightmare. He had been so focused on taking power to fight the Baron, he had become the very instrument of the kind of casual, collateral damage the Baron represented.
"Choose your path… carefully, boy. A path… you can look back on… without regrets."
He was on that path now. It was paved with the wood of this crate. There would be no forgiveness, no redemption for what he had done. The only thing left was to see it through to the end, to make Henrik's death mean something more than just another entry in the Vipers' ledger of casualties.
He finally reached the city's edge, where the cobblestones gave way to a dirt path that wound through a scrubby, wild plain. This was the place. He'd seen it once during a long, aimless walk, a moment of fleeting peace amidst his turmoil. It was a small, secluded clearing on a gentle rise, overlooking the sprawl of Indaw Harbor below and the vast, grey expanse of the sea beyond. The air was clean here, scented with wild thyme and damp earth. The only sounds were the wind sighing through the grass and the distant, mournful cry of gulls.
The sun was beginning its descent, painting the tarnished silver sky with streaks of bruised purple and weak gold. It was a beautiful, lonely, and utterly appropriate place.
He lowered the crate to the grass with a gentle reverence he hadn't known he possessed. Then, he picked up the shovel, positioned the blade, and drove it into the earth.
The physical labor was a relief. A simple, honest task. The shovel bit into the turf, the soil yielding with a soft crunch. With each thrust and heave of dirt, a memory surfaced.
The feel of the whetstone Henrik had chosen for Gerhart. "The coarse to set the bevel, the fine to hone it." Lutz was setting the bevel of his new life now, with coarse, brutal strokes.
The old man's warning about the apron. "A box stitch, or even a cross-stitch, would hold it." Lutz was building something now that had to hold, a resolve that could not fray.
The walk through the city, the simple talk of mending things. He was mending this one, last thing. Giving a broken story a proper ending.
He didn't rush. He let the burn build in his muscles, let the sweat soak into his clean shirt. He dug until the hole was deep enough to deter scavengers, long enough to hold the crate, deep enough to feel like a true resting place. The pile of dark, rich earth grew beside him.
When it was done, he stood at the edge of the grave, chest heaving, the sunset casting his long shadow across the open ground. He looked down at the crate. The finality of it was absolute.
He took the two planks of oak and the hammer and nails. He didn't have the skill for a proper cross, but he could make a marker. He fashioned a simple, stark T-shape, hammering the nails in with sharp, decisive blows that echoed in the quiet clearing. It was crude, but it was solid. It would last.
Then, he took his fighting knife. The steel that had killed, that was a part of his Marauder's nature. He used the sharp point now not to take, but to give. To inscribe. He carved into the horizontal plank, the letters rough but clear, a permanent record in the heart of the wood:
A HARDWORKING MAN,
AND A GOOD HUSBAND.
He didn't write his name. He didn't write "Viper" or "Victim." He wrote what Henrik had been at his core, before the world had broken him. What he would want to be remembered as.
He placed the marker at the head of the grave, driving the vertical post deep into the soft earth until it stood firm and straight. Then, with a final, monumental effort, he lowered the crate into the ground. It settled at the bottom with a dull, hollow sound.
He stood there for a long time, looking down. The sun was half-gone now, the sky a deep, fiery orange on the horizon. He didn't say a prayer. He had no gods to call upon. He had only a promise.
"I'm sorry," he whispered, the words stolen by the wind. "I will make it right."
"I will make everything right."
Then, he picked up the shovel and began to fill the hole. The earth rained down on the wood, a dark torrent, until the crate was gone, swallowed by the land. He patted the mound flat with the back of the shovel, leaving only the simple, oak marker standing sentinel against the darkening sky.
He should have felt a release, a catharsis. He felt only a deeper, more profound emptiness. The last tie to anything decent had been severed. He was alone.
He collected his tools, shouldered the shovel, and turned his back on the grave. He didn't look back as he walked away, down the hill, towards the twinkling, ugly lights of Indaw Harbor. The warmth of the sunset at his back felt like a farewell. The cold darkness of the city ahead felt like a homecoming.
He walked back into the viper's nest, the scent of fresh-turned earth still on his clothes, the image of the simple, carved marker burned into his mind. The man who had buried Henrik was gone, left there on that windy plain. The one who returned was something else entirely.