The sun was at its zenith, a pale, heatless eye in the winter sky, when Lutz slipped back into the warehouse. The nervous energy of the morning had condensed into a sullen, watchful quiet. The men inside were like coiled springs, and the air tasted of stale beer and sharp anxiety. Lutz moved through it all with a detached focus, the intelligence he'd gathered a cold, hard weight in his mind. The "outdoors" work was done for today. Now, it was time to build.
He retrieved the harness's core from his room—the wide belt and the Y-shaped suspenders that crossed his back—along with the pouch of tools, buckles, and the precious, oil-tanned leather. The workshop was deserted, a haven of relative peace filled with the scents of sawdust, metal, and linseed oil. Sunlight, thick with dust motes, streamed through a high, grimy window, illuminating his workbench like a stage.
He laid out the core assembly. It was a skeleton, strong but incomplete. The first task was to finish the structure, reinforcing the points of stress. Using the heavier awl and mallet, he punched holes at the shoulder junctions and along the belt where the greatest strain would be. He worked with a quiet intensity, the thump-thump-thump of the mallet a steady, meditative rhythm. Each strike was a commitment. This wasn't a hobby; it was the forging of a vital tool for survival. He looped thick, waxed thread through the holes, pulling it tight with a leatherworker's pull, creating a saddle stitch that wouldn't unravel under duress. The harness began to lose its raw, skeletal look, gaining the defined musculature of a finished piece.
With the structure solid, he turned to the sheaths. This was where Henrik's journals transformed his work from functional to masterful. He selected a softer, pliable leather for the lining. The journal's marginal note echoed in his mind: "A sheath is not a prison for a blade. It is its first home."
For Creed, the stiletto, he didn't just make a tube. He crafted a form-fitting holster that would hold the blade along the small of his back, its hilt angled for a cross-draw. He wet-molded the leather around the dagger itself, letting it dry into a perfect, silent embrace. Then, he stitched in a tiny, ingenious spring mechanism made from a flattened piece of tempered steel, scavenged from a broken clock. It was a risk, incorporating something so complex, but the journal had diagrams. The spring would hold Creed secure through any acrobatic movement, but the slightest twist of the wrist upon drawing would release it with no friction, no sound. It was the difference between a whisper and a shout in a dark room.
For the broader, utilitarian parrying knife, he crafted a more robust sheath for his left hip. This one was about speed and security. He used a heavier leather and designed a simple but effective thumb-break strap. A quick, upward push of his thumb would release it, allowing the blade to fall perfectly into his grip. He burnished the edges of both sheaths with gum tragacanth until they were smooth and hard as stone, sealing them against the damp harbor air.
Next came the pouches. These weren't simple bags. They were specialized organs for his new body. He made three. The first was large, with a divided interior, designed to hold the shotgun shells on one side and the revolver cartridges on the other. The second was smaller, with multiple internal pockets for his lockpicks, vials for venom or healing beverages, and the few mystical ingredients he may carry. The third was a flat, wide pouch that would sit against the small of his back, right above Creed's sheath, perfect for documents, maps, or a folded disguise. And the forth, a small, tube-shaped pouch in wich he could stick his finger to directly put on Umbra.
He didn't just stitch them on. He positioned them with a strategist's eye for balance and access. The ammunition pouch sat on his right hip, counterbalancing the parrying knife on his left. The utility pouch was positioned on the front of the harness, just below his ribcage, where his hands would naturally fall. Alongside it was Umbra's compartment. Every placement was tested, his hands darting to imaginary spots, ensuring no reach was strained, no movement was obstructed.
As the afternoon light began to fade, painting the workshop in long, golden shadows, he held the harness up. It was no longer a collection of parts. It was an integrated system. The belt and suspenders formed the chassis. The sheaths were integrated weapons mounts. The pouches were its storage modules. He could see the ghost of its final form—a masterpiece of practical design, a testament to stolen knowledge and a desperate will to live.
He had yet to tackle the bandolier for the throwing knives or the custom holsters for the revolver and the sawed-off shotgun, but the core was complete. He ran his hands over the smooth, tough leather, feeling the solidity of the stitches, the perfect tension of the spring in Creed's sheath.
He slipped it on. The weight was there, but it was distributed, borne by his shoulders and hips, not dragging at his waist. He moved, twisting, bending, dropping into a crouch. The harness moved with him, silent and obedient. He practiced the draw for Creed, a fluid motion from the small of his back. The stiletto slid free without a sound, the spring releasing it like a thought. He drew the parrying knife, the thumb-break snapping open with a satisfying, muted click.
A slow, cold smile touched his lips, a stark contrast to the grim satisfaction of the newspaper article. That had been intellectual. This was physical, tangible. He had taken the chaos of his situation—the threats, the enemies, the stolen artifacts—and imposed order upon it, stitch by careful stitch. In a world that was trying to crush him, he had built a frame to bear the weight.
He took the harness off and laid it carefully on the bench. The workshop was dark now, the single shaft of sunlight gone. But Lutz didn't need light. The blueprint for his survival was now etched into his mind and made manifest in leather and brass. He had built himself a new spine. Soon, it would be time to use it.
The air in Deacon Reverie Noire's office was as still and cold as a tomb. It was a spacious room, yet felt claustrophobic, its high ceilings seeming to press down. There were no personal effects, no decorative flourishes. A single, massive desk of dark, polished wood stood like an altar, and behind it, the Deacon herself was a statue of focused authority. The only light came from a single, hooded gas lamp on the desk, casting her sharp features into dramatic relief and deepening the obsidian purple of her eyes.
A firm knock echoed in the silence.
"Come in."
Matthias Brenner stepped inside, closing the door with a soft, precise click. He held a leather-bound folio under his arm, his posture rigid with a mixture of exhaustion and resolve. He stood before the desk, waiting.
Noire finished reading a line from a report, her pen making a final, sharp notation before she set it down. She did not look up immediately, letting the silence stretch, a subtle test of his composure. Finally, her gaze lifted, and it felt like being physically pinned to the spot.
"Inspector Brenner. Your report."
Brenner opened his folio, his voice carefully measured. "Deacon Noire. Over the past forty-eight hours, we have been the recipients of a significant, and unsolicited, flow of intelligence regarding the Harbor Vipers gang."
He laid out the evidence with the methodical precision of a prosecutor.
"First, an anonymous letter, delivered by a child to me personally, claiming the Baron possesses a 'toy' that 'glows in the dark' and is kept 'in his wall.'"
"Second, a corroborating rumor from a reliable informant, speaking of 'sparkly bits' and a 'moonlight' being unloaded by the Vipers from the Ocean Snake's Bane before our forces arrived."
"Third, a clumsily altered customs manifest, linking a crate of 'religious artifacts' directly to a Viper front company."
"And today," he continued, his tone growing graver, "a coordinated campaign. Anonymous intelligence drops at multiple collection points and via street urchins, detailing the Vipers' peripheral assets: dockworkers on their payroll, compromised clerks, informants within the city watch."
He paused, letting the pattern solidify. "The attack on the Ocean Snake's Bane was indeed their work. The intelligence confirms it. And their primary objective was the acquisition of a specific, high-value mystical artifact. They have it."
Noire had not moved, her hands steepled before her. "Your assessment of the source?"
Brenner took a breath. "It does not present as an internal snitch. The information is... selective. It targets their support structure, their logistics. It's the kind of intelligence a rival organization would gather through surveillance and bribery—sloppy in its execution, as seen in the manifest forgery, but resourceful in its breadth. They are not giving us the Baron's head on a platter. They are handing us the rope to hang his entire operation, slowly."
"And their motive?" Noire's voice was a low chill.
"To use us, Deacon. To wage a war without risking their own members. They see the Church as the perfect cudgel. They dismantle the Vipers' network, we take the blame and the casualties, and they move in to claim the territory and whatever remains of their operations."
Noire was silent for a long moment, her amethyst eyes seeming to look through Brenner, through the walls, at the scheming heart of the city itself. The only sound was the faint hiss of the gas lamp.
"They are clever," she said finally, the words dropping into the silence like stones. "But they have made a critical error. They believe they are manipulating a blunt instrument. They do not understand that a scalpel can be guided by an unseen hand to cut the one who wields it."
She leaned forward slightly, the movement as fluid and unnerving as a snake uncoiling. "We will proceed on two fronts."
"First," she said, tapping a single, perfect fingernail on the desk. "You will act on this intelligence. Use the lists. Pick up the dockworkers. Interrogate the clerks. Arrest the watchmen. Make it public. We will systematically sever every minor limb from the Viper's body. Let them bleed from a thousand cuts. In their panic, they may make a mistake. They may lead us to larger prey, or they may reveal this 'artifact.'"
"Understood, Deacon," Brenner said, already mentally prioritizing targets.
"Second," Noire's eyes narrowed, "you will find them. This 'rival.' They are not a mere gang. A simple gang would be launching raids, not a sophisticated psychological and intelligence operation. They are a shadow. And a shadow that can orchestrate this is every bit as dangerous as the Vipers themselves, perhaps more so. They have shown resourcefulness and audacity. I want to know who they are, what they represent, and what their ultimate goal is. Use the accomplices you apprehend. Press them not only for information on the Vipers, but for any whispers, any rumors, any suspicion about who else is moving in the shadows."
She stood, her presence instantly dominating the room. "Do not be a mere tool in their game, Inspector. Turn their own strategy against them. They have given us a map of the Vipers' weaknesses. Use it. But also, find the cartographer."
Brenner gave a sharp nod, the Deacon's cold logic cutting through the chaos of the past two days. The path was clear, and far more dangerous than he had initially thought. They weren't just cleaning up a gang war; they were hunting a phantom.
"Yes, Deacon. Immediately."
As he turned and left, Reverie Noire stood by the window, looking out over the spires of her district. A thin, cold smile touched her lips. The game had just become infinitely more interesting. Someone out there was playing a deep, clever game. And she dearly loved to win.