The dawn that broke over Indaw Harbor did not bring clarity or peace. For Lutz, waking in his small, locked room, it was merely a change in the quality of the shadows. The silence was different now. It wasn't the quiet of solitude, but the silence of an empty chair, of the absence of a familiar, raspy voice offering a gruff, unwelcome truth. The memory of fresh-turned earth was the first thing that surfaced in his mind, a cold anchor in the sea of his grief.
He moved through the morning with a robotic determination. The grief and rage were still there, but they had been compressed, crystallized into a core of pure, actionable intent. He could not afford to be a vortex of emotion. Henrik's final advice echoed in his mind—choose your path—and the path of a blundering, grief-stricken fool led only to an early grave. His path required precision.
His first act was to impose order on the small things he could control. He left the warehouse and bought a simple, second-hand wardrobe from a flea market. It was a plain, unvarnished thing, but it was his. He carried it back himself, making light work of it. Placing it in the corner of his room, he then gathered the blood-stained clothes from the previous day—the final artifacts of the catastrophe—and took them to a washhouse. He paid a stoic woman with forearms like dock ropes to scrub them clean. He watched as the water in the tub turned pink, then brown, the evidence of Rudel's corruption and Henrik's blood swirling down a drain. It felt like a minor exorcism.
Afterward, his stomach a hollow pit, he didn't go to the usual stew stall. The memory of his last meal there, the moment he'd realized the need for the "Acting Principles," was too sharp. Instead, he found a small, clean-looking stall near the library that sold fried fish. He bought a piece, the white flesh flaky and golden-brown, wrapped in old newsprint. It was a simple, almost wholesome meal. The normalcy of it was jarring. He ate it standing, watching the city go about its business, feeling like a ghost observing the living.
His feet, as they so often did, carried him to the library. It was his sanctuary, his source of intelligence, and now, a barometer for the consequences of his actions. The familiar scent of dust and old paper was a comfort. He found a recent newspaper, its ink still smelling faintly of the press, and settled at his usual secluded table.
The headline struck him with the force of a physical blow.
INDAW HARBOR BUTCHER STRIKES AGAIN: A PATTERN OF SAVAGERY EMERGES
"...the body of a retired shipwright, Alvar Hemlock, was discovered in his ransacked workshop. The cause of death was determined to be massive blood loss, but the signature brutality was reserved for the face, which authorities described as 'pulverized,' with both eyes violently gouged..."
Hemlock. The shipwright. One of the men he'd robbed on his 3-night mission, the one that he had heard killed his daughter when she was little because of being drunk.
"...this grisly discovery follows the previously reported attack in a dockside alley, where two known men, presumably thugs or delinquents, were found dead. One victim was incapacitated with broken ribs, while the other, like Mr. Hemlock, was found with his eyes destroyed in a similar, horrific fashion. The sole witness, a woman who escaped the alleyway assault, described her savior as a 'shadow with a polite voice,' but could provide no further identification..."
Lutz slowly lowered the paper. The "Indaw Harbor Butcher." They had a name for him now. A name born from his own hands, from the reflexive, trauma-induced pattern he'd used to kill Jhin and then, later, the second assailant in the alley. The stabbing of the eyes wasn't a conscious choice; it was a ghost in his muscle memory, a bloody fingerprint he was leaving on all his work. He had created a monster in the public imagination, and he was its only living witness.
He sat there as the afternoon light began to fade, staining the library's tall windows with the deep gold of approaching evening. The words of the article swirled in his head alongside the memories they invoked: the shipwright's cry of anguish over his broken models, the terrified eyes of the woman in the alley, the wet, final sound of his knives finding their mark.
But as the sky darkened outside, these thoughts, too, were compressed and filed away. They were part of the cost, part of the path. Regret was a luxury. Guilt was a weight he could not afford to carry.
There was only one thing that mattered now, a single, burning point of focus that pushed everything else into the background.
The artifacts.
The ring and the stiletto. The physical manifestations of the characteristics he had taken, the very objects whose acquisition had set the chain of events in motion that led to Henrik's death. They had cost him a fortune, they had cost him his only friend, and they had cost him a piece of his soul.
Tonight, he would finally hold them in his hands.
He stood from the table, leaving the newspaper behind. The Butcher could wait. The guilt could wait. The world of mundane concerns and bloody headlines could wait.
He walked out of the library as night finally fell, the gas lamps hissing to life along the streets. The fog was beginning to creep in from the sea, a thick, grey blanket that promised concealment and mystery. He didn't return to the warehouse. He moved with a predator's purpose through the growing gloom, his path set towards the scrapyard, towards the wreck of the Sea-Sorrow.
His mind was not on the fight with Rudel, nor on Henrik's grave, nor on the newspaper's sensationalist prose. It was utterly, completely focused on the convergence, on the Whispering Market, and on the two instruments of power that were waiting for him.
The fog was his chariot, a thick, grey tide that swallowed the sounds of the city and muffled the light of the moon. Lutz moved through it like a phantom, his passage marked only by the faint disturbance of the swirling mists. The scrapyard at the edge of the docks was a landscape of skeletal silhouettes: the ribcages of dead ships, the broken spines of cranes, all looming like the graves of industry in the profound silence. His destination was the same as before: the wreck of the Sea-Sorrow, its hull a gash of deeper darkness in the night.
He found the submerged doorway, the same psychic pressure washing over him as he passed through the invisible threshold. The atmosphere of the Whispering Market was a physical shock after the quiet of the city. The low hum vibrated in his teeth, the smell of ozone and strange spices filled his lungs, and the air itself seemed thick with traded secrets and bottled potential. Hooded figures glided between stalls lit by impossible lights, their conversations a susurrus of half-heard deals and forbidden knowledge.
His Marauder instincts, heightened and raw, immediately began assessing, cataloging, his Thief's nose passively tugging his attention towards a vial of shimmering mercury here, a locked grimoire there. But he ignored it all. He had a single, fixed purpose.
His eyes scanned the crowded hold until they found her.
Lorelei.
She was at her stall, a space of organized chaos amidst the market's general disorder. She was as he remembered, yet the memory did not do her justice. There was a practical beauty to her, an efficiency in her posture and the keen intelligence in her storm-gray eyes that was more captivating than any mere prettiness. She wasn't adorned like some of the other vendors; she wore a simple, dark, oil-stained tunic and leather apron, her hair tied back in a functional braid.
Her intelligent gray eyes found him the moment he stepped into the periphery of her stall's light. A faint, knowing smile touched her lips.
"You're here," she said. Her voice was calm, clear, cutting through the market's background drone without effort.
"I am." Lutz simply nodded, his own face a mask of grim expectation. The social niceties felt like a foreign language. "Are they ready?"
"Of course." She turned, reaching for a long, narrow box of polished dark wood resting on a shelf behind her. She laid it on the counter between them and opened the lid.
The artifacts lay nestled on a bed of black velvet, transformed from the raw, pulsating characteristics he had given her. They were no longer mere biological curiosities; they were things of deadly beauty, imbued with a silent, waiting power.
The ring was no longer simple silver. The metal had taken on a deep, scarlet hue, as if tempered in blood. Set within the band were several small, perfectly round gems the color of fresh blood, looking for all the world like droplets that had been frozen in time as they dripped from a wound. It was elegant and unsettling in equal measure.
The stiletto was even more striking. The pale steel of Jhin's blade had taken on a subtle, rose-ish tint, as if reflecting a perpetual sunset. The lines of the weapon seemed sharper, more delicate, almost like the thorny stem of a flower. The crystallized rose characteristic was now inlaid perfectly into the pommel, no longer a separate object but the heart of the weapon itself, pulsing with a faint, warm light.
Lutz felt a pull towards them, a deep, visceral need to touch them, to claim them. It was the Marauder's hunger, the instinct to acquire. He clenched his fists at his sides, forcing himself to wait.
Lorelei watched his reaction, her smile lingering. "As agreed. Now, the specifics. Pay attention. Misusing these is a faster path to becoming Lost than any potion."
She pointed first to the scarlet ring. "This one, born from the Listener. It has a suite of passive abilities. It will increase your spiritual perception, allowing you to sense the presence of certain spiritual creatures—ghosts, echoes, that sort of thing. It can also provide a vague, intuitive warning of imminent danger, though it's not consistent. Don't rely on it to dodge a bullet, but it might twinge before an ambush." She paused, her gaze intensifying. "It also allows for basic divination—pendulum, maybe some card reading—if your own Beyonder powers don't cover that. And it can be used as a focus to carry out certain rituals, amplifying their stability."
She then leaned forward slightly, her voice dropping. "The negative effect is the core of its nature. While worn, it makes you a... receiver. You will hear voices. Whispers from unknown entities. At a base level, it's disruptive, like trying to think in a crowded room. These effects magnify at night, under a full moon, or in places of bloodshed." Her eyes locked with his, deadly serious. "If you were to wear it while already in a disrupted mental state—grieving, enraged, terrified—the voices could become persuasive, coherent. They could guide you, tempt you, or simply scream until you break. It is a direct conduit, and you are the filter. A weak filter is a dangerous thing."
Lutz stared at the ring, the blood-red gems seeming to drink the stall's faint light. A tool for perception, at the cost of his sanity. It was a price he understood all too well.
Her finger then moved to the rose-tinted stiletto. "This one, from the Instigator, while held, it grants a slight but noticeable boost to your physical attributes: strength, agility, even sharpens your senses. It also has a faint effect on your speech, lending your words a subtle, persuasive eloquence. Useful for talking your way in or out of a situation."
She picked up the blade, holding it with a practitioner's respect. "But its main ability is a single, focused release. You can channel all your strength, all your intent, into one blow. It condenses your entire being into a single point of impact. Perfect for assassination, for breaking a lock, or for a final, desperate strike. It turns a pinprick into a crater."
She set it down gently. "The costs are more mundane, but insidious. While holding it, it will magnify your 'passionate desires' if you know what i mean, this effect might be able to be countered with another artifact that magnifies an emotion such as anger or calm. Aside from that, after five minutes of continuous use, it will also accelerate the growth of your hair and fingernails quite drastically. Annoying, but manageable. It needs a minute or two to 'cool down' that timer, and lastly, it will make you metabolize energy faster. You'll get hungry. Very hungry."
She closed the box and slid it across the counter to him. "They are yours."
Lutz's hands were steady as he accepted it. He didn't put them on. Not here. From within his coat, he produced the medium-sized, lead-lined box he had purchased along with Roselle's diary pages. It was the only thing he had that might contain their spiritual resonance and hide them from prying senses like Captain Krieg's. He carefully transferred the ring and the stiletto into the lead box, the solid click of the latch closing feeling like the most significant sound in the world.
He looked up to find Lorelei watching him, her head tilted. "I have no reason to tell you this," she said, her tone shifting to one of pure, pragmatic business. "But I will. A show of good faith. I'd like to keep a talented client alive, and you seem to have a talent for finding trouble."
'Oh, believe me, i do' Lutz though self-deprecatingly
She gestured to the now-empty wooden box. "The ring's characteristic was from a Sequence 8 Listener, of the Secret Suppliant pathway. That pathway belongs to the Aurora Order." She then pointed to where the stiletto had been. "The blade's characteristic was from a Sequence 8 Instigator, of the Assassin pathway. That one belongs to the Demoness Sect."
She let the names hang in the air, their weight implied. "I don't know how you managed to kill them, and I don't want to know. But these are not independent operators. They are soldiers of ancient, powerful, and notoriously unforgiving organizations. It is… highly probable… that they will send more members to hunt down whoever eliminated their operatives. I suppose you already knew this, but consider this your official warning. Be careful."
Inside, Lutz's mind delivered a punchline. Oh, I didn't know. Wonderful. Just wonderful. Outwardly, he merely gave a slow, grim nod. "Noted."
He turned to leave, the lead box a heavy secret in his hand, the weight of two powerful enemies now officially on his shoulders.
He had taken only a few steps into the crowd when her voice, laced with a teasing amusement that cut through the market's gloom, called out to his back.
"See you, Pretty Boy."
It was the same nickname, delivered with the same casual precision. And just like before, it worked. He felt a flush of heat rise to his neck and ears, a completely involuntary and infuriating reaction. He didn't turn around. He didn't reply. He simply stiffened his spine and stormed forward, pushing through the throng of hooded figures, desperate to escape the marketplace and the unsettling woman who occupied it.
But as he fled into the concealing fog, his mind was already racing, pushing past the embarrassment, past the warnings, past the grief. The artifacts were in his possession. The Listener's ring and the Instigator's stiletto. Tools of perception and tools of murder. Bought with blood and paid for with a soul.
As a tool of assassination, he named the stiletto 'Creed'.
And the ring would be Umbra.