Back in the treasury, Lutz worked with the frantic, focused efficiency of a man looting a sinking ship. Which, in a very real sense, he was. The two heavy leather bags gaped open as he shoveled stacks of Gold Hammers into them. The clinking of coin was a sweet, frantic music against the roaring symphony of the warehouse's destruction. He filled them to the very brim, the leather straining at the seams. He tied them shut, his Agile Hands making quick work of the knots despite their trembling exhaustion.
He straightened up, his back protesting under the weight he already carried. His gaze fell upon the vault. A small fortune left in it, perhaps a hundred Hammers, still gleamed within, untouched. 'A fortune. Just sitting there.' The Marauder in him screamed in protest. He couldn't leave it. It was an affront to his very nature.
His eyes scanned the room, his Superior Observation cutting through the smoke. There. A large, luxurious satchel made of fine, supple leather, likely used by the Baron to carry important ledgers. It lay discarded near the desk. In a single, fluid motion, he swept it up, unceremoniously dumping its contents—precious ledgers filled with blackmail, smuggling routes, and political secrets—onto the floor. 'Information is power, but gold is freedom. And right now, I need to run.'
He returned to the vault and began shoveling the remaining coins into the satchel. The gold filled it about halfway. 'Good. Room for more.'
His attention then turned to the two small, unadorned lead boxes. The first one was heavy for its size. He flipped the latch and opened it. Nestled inside on a bed of velvet was a small, aqueous blue crystal. It seemed to pulse with a faint, dormant rage. Lutz's memory flashed back to the raid on The Shrieking Eel, to the moment Boris, the Gray Sharks' leader, had fallen and Karl had collected this very crystal from the dissipating corpse. 'A Beyonder characteristic. It was a raw piece of power, incredibly valuable to the right people. He snapped the box shut and dropped it into the satchel with a satisfying thud.
Then, he reached for the second box. This one was lighter. As he opened it, his Thief's nose screamed. It was a physical sensation, a magnetic pull that made the hairs on his arms stand on end. There it was. The source of all the disinformation, the central piece of his grand design. The Dream-eating Rat's Heart.
It was smaller than he'd remembered, not much larger than a human eye. It had a hazy, dreamlike texture, as if it wasn't entirely solid, shifting subtly between shades of white and grey. Cryptic, barely perceptible patterns seemed to swirl on its surface, hinting at impossible geometries and forgotten dreams. He felt a connection to it, deep and instinctual, as if the artifact recognized a kindred spirit of theft and appropriation. 'You're the reason for all of this,' he thought, a strange mix of reverence and possessiveness washing over him. 'And now you're mine.'
He didn't have time to admire it. With a final, almost reverent look, he placed the heart back in its box, closed the lid, and nestled it carefully among the gold coins in the satchel. He cinched the satchel closed.
He was now laden to an almost comical degree. The two bulging leather bags were slung over his shoulders, the heavy satchel crosswise over his chest, and his own harness, laden with empty pouches and the few remaining tools, weighed him down further. He estimated the total weight at well over a 120 kilograms. His muscles screamed in protest, his wounded calf a white-hot brand of agony. 'But I'm not some pampered merchant. I can do this.'
He had to move. The fire was no longer just nearby; it was the warehouse itself. The ceiling above him groaned ominously, and flaming splinters rained down like hellish confetti. The air was so thick with smoke he could barely see a few feet in front of him. He had one last acid vial. His original plan had been to escape back the way he came, but the second floor was likely a death trap now.
He moved to the exterior wall of the room, the one that should, according to his mental blueprint of the building, lead directly to a narrow, forgotten alley on the warehouse's blind side. It was his best, his only, shot. He pulled the final vial of Dissolving Acid from his harness. 'The last one. Make it count.'
He poured it carefully, tracing a wide, man-sized circle on the stone and brick. The acid hissed and sizzled, eating through the mortar with terrifying speed, the stone itself beginning to bubble and soften.
As he watched the exit being carved, a tremendous BOOM shook the very foundations of the warehouse. It wasn't the sound of collapsing wood. This was different—deeper, more contained, a concussive blast of pure force. It came from the direction of the Baron's office. Lutz froze, his hand still on the vial.
'What in the hell was that? Is someone breaching in?'
It didn't matter. The message was clear: the final act was playing out. The curtain was falling. And he needed to be off the stage before it crushed him. He turned back to the wall. The acid had done its work. A rough, smoldering hole now led to the foggy, blood-moonlit night beyond. Freedom was a circle of murky darkness. Without a second glance back at the burning empire of the man he had destroyed, Lutz Fischer, now impossibly wealthy and carrying artifacts of terrible power, squeezed his burdened body through the opening and vanished into the night.
The door to the treasury exploded inward, splintering off its hinges as Karl Vogler stumbled through. He was a specter of his former self—his clothes were tattered and blood-soaked, his face a mask of soot and agony, one ear a ruined stump, and a deep gunshot wound in his thigh weeping crimson. He leaned heavily against the doorframe, his breath a ragged, desperate gasp. He had to get the money. For his future.
His eyes, accustomed to the inferno of the main hall, took a moment to adjust to the relative gloom of the office. And then he saw it. The vault.
The massive, iron door was not just open; it was destroyed, its lock mechanism a melted, twisted ruin. Inside, where a king's ransom in gold Hammers should have been gleaming, there were only a few scattered coins lying forlornly on the bare metal shelves. Emptied. Picked clean.
A cold knot of disbelief tightened in his gut, quickly superseded by a hot, burgeoning rage. What? Who…?
His gaze darted around the room, and landed on the far wall. A large, perfectly round hole, its edges still sizzling faintly, offered a view of the fog-choked alley outside. And framed in that hole, for a single, frozen heartbeat, was a figure. A man, burdened like a pack mule, struggling under the weight of two enormous, bulging leather bags and a heavy satchel. The man glanced back, his face obscured by shadow and distance, but his eyes—those sharp, calculating gray-blue eyes—caught the flickering firelight.
Those eyes in wich he had seen infinite potential the first time he saw them.
In that instant, a dam broke in Karl's mind. A torrent of disconnected facts, suspicions, and memories flooded together, forming a picture of such breathtaking, horrific clarity that it stole the air from his lungs.
The consistent, pinpoint-accurate intelligence leaks to the Church.
The sudden, perfectly-timed rumor of an ascension ritual.
The strange, almost prescient way Lutz always seemed to be in the right place, or more importantly, not in the wrong one.
The faked ambush, the blood, the perfect performance that had earned his trust even as the noose tightened.
The fight he'd 'heard' from the back—a lie, a cover for looting the treasury while they were distracted.
The fire. This all-consuming fire that felt too strategic, too convenient.
It wasn't the Church that had been the mastermind. It wasn't bad luck or a rival gang.
It was the quiet one. The clever one. The one with the linguist's mind and the thief's hands. The one he had seen potential in. The one his brother had called a 'Loyal man' just minutes ago.
Lutz.
The name was a poison in his mind. The betrayal was so absolute, so coldly calculated, that it felt like a physical blow. This wasn't just about money. This was a systematic, patient dismantling of everything they had built. Lutz hadn't just stolen their gold; he had stolen their empire, their legacy, and now, he had stolen Gunther's life. He had used them, played them, and was now walking away into the night with the spoils while their world burned to ash around them.
A roar of pure, undiluted fury built in Karl's chest. He took a lurching step forward, his body screaming in protest, his single-minded intent focused on that hole in the wall, on dragging the traitor back into this hell and making him burn with them.
It was that single-minded rage that was his undoing.
His senses, usually so sharp, screamed a warning a fraction of a second too late. His eyes, fixed on the escaping Lutz, flicked down. There, on the floor directly before him, was a sinister circle drawn in charcoal, filled with jagged, esoteric symbols. And in its center, a piece of crimson metal glowed with a malevolent, hungry light.
The Degeneration Trap.
'That shithead booby-trapped his own escape route.' The thought was a final, cynical twist of the knife.
Karl threw himself sideways with every ounce of strength he had left. It was a desperate, graceless dive. He mostly made it. But his trailing right foot, the one attached to his already-wounded leg, passed through the edge of the circle's radius.
There was no explosion. Only a silent, swift wave of decay. A sickening gray pallor spread from the sole of his boot up his ankle, the leather and flesh beneath turning brittle and rotten in an instant. A terrible, cold numbness followed, and then an agony unlike any gunshot wound—a deep, fundamental unmaking.
He hit the ground hard, his body a constellation of pain. He looked down. His foot and ankle were a blackened, withered ruin. The rot was still climbing, slowly, inexorably, up his leg.
He didn't scream. There was no time. There was only the cold, brutal calculus of survival that had kept him and Gunther alive for decades. His hand, moving with a will of its own, found the hilt of the short sword at his belt. In one fluid, terrible motion, he swung.
The blade, sharp and true, bit deep. There was a wet, crunching sound, and then a clean separation. He severed his own foot at the mid-calf.
A guttural, choked grunt was forced from his lips. He clamped his hand over the spurting stump, his vision swimming. His first, primal instinct was to cauterize it with his fire.
Gritting his teeth against the fresh, overwhelming wave of pain, he dragged his gaze back to the hole in the wall.
It was empty. The alley beyond was just fog and the distant, mocking light of the blood moon. Lutz was gone.
And then, as if the warehouse itself was delivering the final, crushing verdict, the ceiling above the treasury gave way with a final, groaning roar. Massive, burning beams, chunks of plaster, and shattered furniture crashed down in a cascading avalanche, completely burying the hole in the wall, sealing the exit, and filling the room with a storm of fire and debris.
Karl lay amidst the destruction, half-crushed by the falling world, clutching the bleeding stump of his leg. The physical pain was a distant thing, a mere echo. The true agony was in his soul. He had lost everything. His brother. His home. His future. His body. All of it, stolen by a pair of gray-blue eyes that had held nothing but cold calculation.
His own eyes, which had always held the warm, banked coals of a controlled fire, now erupted. The coals were doused in gasoline, the control shattered. What remained was a hateful, furious, all-consuming inferno. It was a fire of vengeance, a promise etched into the very core of his being. It was a fire that would not be extinguished by rain, or time, or reason. It would burn until he found Lutz Fischer, and until one of them was ash.
The silence that followed the Baron's end was more profound than any explosion. One moment he had been there, a defiant, broken figure propped against the rubble, his flint-like eyes holding hers with a final, corrosive contempt. Taking out a luxurious revolver from inside her coat, Deacon Reverie Noire pointed it towards the between of his brows, both looked at each other, without saying anything, with a single shot, a man's legacy was broken down into dust.
Deacon Reverie did not pause to reflect. The primary target was eliminated. The secondary target, the Pyromaniac right hand, had fled deeper into the inferno. Her mandate was clear: purge the corruption. That included every root and branch.
She moved through the collapsing warehouse, a figure of serene purpose amidst the chaos. The fire was now a living entity, consuming wood, stone, and flesh with equal appetite. She navigated the treacherous, burning hallways with an unerring sense of direction, her amethyst eyes scanning for any sign of the fleeing brother. He was wounded, desperate. He couldn't have gone far.
But as she turned a corner into a side corridor, her objective shifted. There, slumped against a smoldering wall, was a familiar figure in a beige greatcoat. Captain Signeil Krieg. He was a pitiable sight, trapped in a prison of his own making. The purple Follyglue marbles still clung to him like grotesque barnacles, their adhesive grip locking his joints. His skin was pale, waxy, and a terrifying numbness had spread from the points of contact. His green eyes, usually so sharp and perceptive, were glazed with pain and spiritual exhaustion.
"Deacon..." he rasped, the word a weak exhalation. He had clearly tried and failed to work himself free, the struggle only deepening his exhaustion.
A flicker of something—not compassion, but a cold, pragmatic assessment—crossed Reverie's face. The Captain was a valuable asset, one of her most effective investigators. His deduction that "Henrik Moss" was their phantom had been correct. Losing him to a trap set by that same phantom would be an unacceptable waste of resources.
The chase for Karl Vogler was instantly deprioritized. The Butcher was the greater long-term threat, but a high-ranking officer's life took precedence in the immediate term.
She didn't speak. She simply moved to him, her strength belying her slender frame. She hauled him upright, his body a dead weight against hers. The now dried Follyglue made it like carrying a statue. Ignoring the heat and the falling embers, she half-carried, half-dragged him back the way he had come, toward the shattered side entrance.
They stumbled out into the cold, foggy air of the night. The transition was jarring—from the roaring, orange hell of the warehouse to the quiet, crimson-lit stillness of the harbor. Reverie laid him down gently on the cobblestones, a safe distance from the radiating heat of the burning building.
From an inner pocket of her coat, she produced another of the precious, yellowed scrolls. This one was different from the Restoration scroll; its symbols pulsed with a gentle, cleansing light. She unrolled it, placed a hand on Krieg's chest, and her voice, though weary, was firm.
"Purification."
A soft, white radiance emanated from the scroll and enveloped Krieg's body. It did not heal his wounds or mend his broken spirit, but it targeted the foreign, malevolent energy of the Follyglue. The purple marbles lost their cohesion, dissolving from a sticky solid into a harmless, evaporating mist. The physical bonds were broken.
Krieg gasped as feeling returned to his limbs in a painful, prickling flood. The numbness receded, but the damage it had caused remained; his muscles were weak, unresponsive. He was free, but he was far from operational. He would not die, but he would require extensive rest and care once again.
As the light from the scroll faded, the parchment itself crumbled to dust in Reverie's hand. The cost of the night was tallying up.
And then, the cost hit her.
The domineering aura that had surrounded her throughout the battle, the unshakable calm, it finally fractured. The relentless spellcasting had drained her. She had operated at the very peak of her Sequence 5 abilities for an extended, brutal engagement. A wave of profound spiritual fatigue washed over her, so intense it was a physical sensation. Her knees buckled, and she sat down hard on the cobblestones next to Krieg, her back against a cold stone wall.
For a long moment, neither spoke. They simply watched the Harbor Vipers' warehouse burn. It was a pyre for a criminal empire, a beacon of the Church's cleansing power for all of Indaw Harbor to see. Flames clawed at the blood-red sky, and the structure groaned its death throes.
But the victory felt hollow.
Krieg, his voice still weak but clearer, broke the silence. "The Butcher..."
Reverie nodded slowly, her amethyst eyes reflecting the dancing flames. "Gone."
It was the only word that mattered. The Baron was dead. Karl was likely dead or crippled inside. The gang was annihilated. But the architect of it all, the phantom who had manipulated them all into this position, had not only survived, he had thrived. He had used the Church as his cudgel, orchestrated the entire confrontation, and in the chaos, he had vanished. With what? Intel? Money? Something more?
The "Butcher" was no longer just a clever gangster or a troublesome Marauder. He was a strategic threat. He had proven he could operate on their level, think steps ahead, and turn their own strength against them. And now he was in the wind, armed with whatever he had stolen from the ashes, his real face and name still a mystery to them.
As the warehouse roof collapsed in a final, spectacular shower of sparks, one thought was seared into both their minds, a shared and chilling certainty: This was not an end. It was a beginning. And the next time they encountered the one called the Butcher, the game would be entirely different.