The moment stretched, a frozen tableau of mutual destruction. Lutz's arm, poised for the final, downward stab, was a hair's breadth from ending it. But in that suspended second, Yevgeny's body underwent a terrifying change.
It started as a heat haze, a shimmer in the air around him. Then, the veins on his neck and the hands gripping the kitchen knife began to pulse with a malevolent, flaming orange glow, as if molten rock were coursing just beneath his skin. The air itself sizzled, and the sickly black smoke seemed to recoil from the sudden, intense thermal energy.
Lutz's mind, processing at the speed of adrenaline, registered two things simultaneously: the killing blow was his, and he was about to be immolated. The searing pain in his left forearm, still locked against Yevgeny's wrist, intensified from a dull ache to a sharp, branding agony as the skin began to blister from the radiant heat. Yevgeny, his eyes wide with a mix of pain and fury, used his own impalement as an anchor, trying to pull Lutz closer into a fiery embrace.
'Shit, I can hit the killing blow right now, but i won't be able to pull him off of me in time, I'll receive serious burns.'
The concentrated burst of power from Kill shot was already in place, still coiled within Creed like a frustrated serpent. He made a split-second decision. He wouldn't use it to stab.
Releasing his mental grip on the stiletto's lethal intent, he instead channeled the entire, concentrated reservoir of physical force into his right leg. It felt like overcharging a muscle. He lifted his leg, planted his foot against Yevgeny's torso, and shoved.
Yevgeny was ripped from his stance as if hit by a cannonball. He flew backward across the kitchen, a human projectile wreathed in flickering orange embers and trailing black smoke. He crashed into the far wall with a sickening crunch of plaster and bone, the impact so violent it shook the entire ground floor. For a moment, he hung there, stunned, before slumping to the floor. The searing heat of his veins left smoldering, blackened marks on the wallpaper in the shape of his back.
The moment the connection broke, Lutz stumbled back, gasping. The augmentation from Creed vanished completely, leaving him feeling hollowed out. He retreated to a corner of the kitchen the encroaching black smoke hadn't yet reached, his lungs screaming. He finally sucked in a ragged, desperate breath of clean air, the action sending a fresh wave of pain through his burned forearm.
He assessed the new, grim reality. This guy has some wicked abilities. A toxic smoke screen, he's able to lit his blood on fire, maybe more. Now that I've used Kill Shot, Creed's augmentation is gone. We're on equal footing physically, maybe he even has the edge. He glanced at his blistered arm. Fortunately, I've already managed to injure him quite a bit. The liver kick, the chest stab, and now that push against the wall, it should have fractured some of his back ribs, he should be limited.
Across the room, Yevgeny was already moving. With a groan that was half-pain, half-primal rage, he pushed himself up from the floor. The orange glow in his veins pulsed brighter, a visible heartbeat of fury. The black smoke began to pour from him again, thicker now, mingling with the plaster dust in the air.
"You're out of tricks now, you little shit," Yevgeny spat, his voice a gravelly rasp. As he spoke, a new horror manifested. Small, sickly-looking azure blue flames began to erupt sporadically from his shoulders, his arms, licking at the air. They didn't radiate healthy heat; they looked toxic, diseased, their color the same as a poisoned sky.
Lutz didn't wait for the charge. While Yevgeny was still finding his footing, Lutz became a whirlwind of improvisation. He yanked open kitchen drawers, his mind a frantic catalog of potential weapons. He grabbed two more dining knives, the big, heavy cutting knife used for joints of meat, a solid steel bottle opener, and the half-full paper bag of flour from the counter.
He started throwing, not to kill, but to harass, to injure, to buy time. The first knife flew straight. Yevgeny, despite his injuries, swayed aside with a predator's instinct. But the movement jarred the deep wound in his chest, and he staggered, a hiss of pain escaping his lips. The second knife, thrown a half-second later, found its mark, sinking into the top of Yevgeny's left foot with a wet thunk.
Yevgeny roared, more in frustration than pain. He swiped a hand through the air, and a softball-sized orb of the sickly azure flames detached itself and shot towards Lutz. But it was slow, ponderous, like a glob of burning phlegm. Lutz, his agility his last remaining advantage, sidestepped it easily. The fireball hit the wall behind him and stuck there, sizzling and eating into the plaster with a corrosive hiss.
Seeing an opportunity, Lutz leaped back, creating more distance. He hefted the paper bag of flour. It was a desperate, almost comedic gambit, but he had seen what happened when flame met airborne particulates. With a grunt, he swiped the bag through the air in a wide arc, sending a cloud of white powder billowing directly into Yevgeny's face.
The effect was instantaneous and dramatic. The flour blinded him, coating his face and entering his mouth and nose. And then, as it contacted the azure flames flickering on his body and the heated air around him, it ignited.
WHUMPF.
A brief, brilliant fireball erupted around Yevgeny's head and shoulders, accompanied by a sound like a heavy blanket being snapped. He screamed, a raw, shocked sound, clawing at his face. In that moment of perfect distraction and pain, Lutz pulled his arm back and, with every ounce of strength left in his drained body, threw the heavy steel bottle opener. It wasn't a precise throw; it was a missile. It spun through the air and hit Yevgeny square in the shoulder with a sickening, unmistakable CRACK of fracturing bone.
Yevgeny screamed again, this time a high-pitched shriek of agony. His right arm, the one holding the kitchen knife, went limp. But he wouldn't fall. He wouldn't stop. He was a thing of pure, stubborn hatred now, lurching forward through the dissipating flour-fire, his face a blistered mask, one arm useless, one foot impaled, his chest weeping blood.
Lutz had one projectile left: the big cutting knife. He gripped it, his mind clear and cold. This was it. He pulled his arm back and made the throw. A strong, overhand, vertical throw, meant to pierce Yevgeny's skull and end it.
Yevgeny, through his pain, saw it coming. A ragged, bloody laugh escaped his cracked lips. "Predictable!" he gargled. Every knife Lutz had thrown up until now had been a vertical spin, a professional's throw meant for maximum penetration. Yevgeny, expecting it, didn't even bother with a full dodge. He simply jerked his head sharply to the left, a minimal, efficient movement.
The heavy knife whistled past his ear, missing by inches and thudding into the wall behind him.
Yevgeny was now almost upon him, a searing, smoldering, bleeding nightmare. Lutz stood his ground, empty-handed save for Creed, which felt pathetically small and inert now. His eyes, however, were not on Yevgeny's advancing form, but on the space around him, the trajectory, the physics of the moment. He had been setting a pattern, conditioning his enemy.
His eyes flickered, assessing one last, desperate variable. And he gambled everything.
In a fluid motion, he pulled Creed back, not for a stab, but for a throw. But this was different. He didn't throw it like a dagger. He held it by the very tip of the blade, between his thumb and forefinger. He put a fierce, spinning motion into it, like throwing a boomerang or a playing card.
Creed left his hand not point-first, but spinning horizontally, a dark silver disc cutting through the smoky, heated air.
Yevgeny, committed to his head-jerk dodge, saw it coming. It was unorthodox, foolish. It wouldn't have the penetrating power. A smirk of triumphant contempt started to form on his burned face. He began to adjust, to move his head back to center, believing the threat had passed.
He was wrong.
The spin and the unique throwing technique gave Creed a graceful, arcing flight path. It didn't fly in a straight line; it curved slightly, a beautiful, lethal parabola. It flew right in front of Yevgeny's neck, the horizontally spinning blade perfectly aligned with his throat.
There was a wet, slicing sound, horrifyingly clean.
Creed completed its arc, embedding itself with a final thwack into the wall beside the heavy cutting knife, its blade now stained a deep, glistening crimson.
For a heartbeat, there was silence. Yevgeny stopped. His contemptuous smirk was frozen in place. His brain hadn't yet registered what had happened. Then, he felt the warm, wet rush down his chest. His hands, one limp, one still clutching the kitchen knife, flew to his neck, trying to staunch the flow, to somehow sear the wound closed with his dying flames.
But Lutz was already moving. He had gambled his last weapon, his last ounce of strength, on that single, perfect throw. There was no hesitation. As Yevgeny clutched his slashed throat, Lutz lunged forward one last time. He ignored the searing pain in his burned hand, balled it into a fist, and drove it with all his might into Yevgeny's face.
The impact was solid. Yevgeny snapped back. He stumbled, his balance finally gone, and crashed onto his back on the flour-and-blood-strewn floor.
The supernatural phenomena winking out around him like failed machinery. The black smoke ceased its emission. The orange glow in his veins faded, leaving behind livid, bruised-looking tracks. The sickly azure flames guttered and died.
"You were wrong about one thing" Lutz muttered with effort in the dark of the room, his voice ragged. "I'm never out of tricks".
Yevgeny tried to draw a breath, to curse, to do anything, but all that emerged was a wet, choking gargle. He started drowning in his own blood, the vital air cut off. His body convulsed, his heels drumming a frantic, dying rhythm on the wooden floor. His hands, growing weaker, scrabbled feebly at the fatal wound.
Lutz stood over him, chest heaving, his body a tapestry of pain. He watched, his expression not of triumph, but of grim necessity, as the life fled from Yevgeny Andariel's eyes, the last of the choking sounds fading into a final, silent exhalation. The kitchen was a wreck, filled with the stench of blood, smoke, burned flour, and death.
The silence that descended upon the kitchen was heavier and more profound than any that had come before. It was not peaceful; it was the silence of a vacuum left in the wake of violent chaos. The only sounds were the ragged, painful pulls of Lutz's own breath and the faint, settling crackle of the smoldering wallpaper. The adrenaline that had been a raging fire in his veins was now receding, leaving behind the scorched earth of exhaustion and pain.
His mind, struggling to shift from survival to aftermath, began its cold, pragmatic calculations. 'He managed to discover it was me, then he came looking for the seal, and possibly revenge...' The 'how' was a problem for later. The 'now' was a corpse in his dining room.
'Fuck, I hope we weren't too loud, the walls here are thick, there wasn't much screaming either...'
He mentally replayed the fight—the thuds, the crashes, the choked cries. It had felt deafening to him, but to the outside world, perhaps it was just the sound of a late-night domestic dispute in a respectable neighborhood.
'As long as I manage to mend the damages in time, there shouldn't be many problems.'
But the most immediate problem wasn't the body or the broken wall. It was Eliza. The thought of her, alone and vulnerable in her room, possibly harmed by the strange black smoke, sent a jolt of something that felt dangerously close to panic through him. It wasn't just about his cover being blown; the idea of that innocent, earnest girl being hurt because of his actions was a weight he hadn't anticipated.
He turned, his body protesting every movement, intending to rush upstairs. And that was when he saw her.
She was standing on the staircase, halfway between the first and second floor, one hand gripping the banister as if it were the only solid thing in a tilting world. She was still in her nightdress, her face pale as parchment in the gloom. Her eyes, wide and unblinking, were fixed not on him, but on the dark, still shape of Yevgeny Andariel sprawled on her master's floor. Tears traced silent, glistening paths down her cheeks, but she made no sound. She looked utterly horrified, frozen in a state of shock so deep it had stolen her very breath. She looked like a statue of grief and terror, moments away from shattering into a scream that would surely bring the entire street to their door.
There was no time for thought, for explanation, for gentle words. Instinct, the same one that had guided his knife throws and his desperate kicks, took over. His hand dove into his pocket and emerged with Night's Melody. Ignoring the fresh wave of lethargy that washed over him, he brought the whistle to his lips, his finger finding the first hole. He blew.
The sound that emerged was the Second Melody: Melody of Pacifying. It was not the weary drone of slumber nor the thick syrup of slowness. This was a soft, gentle, almost maternal melody, a lullaby for frayed nerves and shattered peace. It wove through the charged, bloody air of the foyer, a balm against the psychic scars of violence.
Lutz watched as the spell took hold. The rigid terror in Eliza's posture softened. The wide, unseeing horror in her eyes dissolved, replaced by a wave of profound confusion and then a deep, shuddering sadness. The tension that had held her on the precipice of a scream released its grip. Her knees buckled, and she collapsed onto the step where she stood, a quiet, broken sob finally escaping her as she buried her face in her hands. The dam had broken, but quietly, pacified by the arcane music.
Lutz was at her side in an instant, the whistle tucked away. He didn't hesitate. He wrapped his arms around her, ignoring the sharp, complaining pain from the burns on his left forearm and the bruised knuckles of his right hand.
She flinched at the initial contact, then seemed to melt into the gesture, her sobs muffled against his shoulder.
"It's okay now," he murmured, his voice low and steady, layering it with every ounce of genuine reassurance and Swindler's charm he could muster. He could feel her small frame trembling against him.
"It's over. You did a good job alerting me, Eliza. I know you have a lot of questions..." He pulled back slightly, just enough to look into her tear-filled eyes. The need for secrecy warred with a surprising pang of guilt. "...but I really need your help here. Could you stay silent about this...?"
Eliza wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand, her gaze drifting past him, back to the grim centerpiece of the dining room. The reality of it was inescapable now. "S-Sir..." her voice was a fragile whisper. "Did you... did you kill that man?"
There was no point in lying. The truth was a bloody, undeniable fact on the floor. "Yes," Lutz said, his tone grave but firm. He met her gaze, willing her to believe him. "I had to. He was a bad man who wanted to harm us. He would have killed both of us over nothing." It was a simplification, but it was true in its essence. Yevgeny's vengeance would have been absolute.
He saw the conflict in her eyes—the ingrained fear of violence, the moral shock of murder, warring with the trust she had in the man who paid her wages and had, until tonight, been nothing but kind, if eccentric. He needed to steer her away from the abyss of that thought.
"Let's go to your room," he said, his voice softening as he tried to gently lift her to her feet. "You're unharmed, right? Go back to sleep. I can help you fall asleep." It was a dismissal, an attempt to compartmentalize, to shove the horror of the night into a box she wouldn't have to open.
But Eliza resisted his pull. Her eyes, now clear of tears, were fixed on Yevgeny's corpse with a strange, solemn intensity. She then turned that gaze back to Lutz, and he saw something shift within her. The fear was still there, a pale undertone, but it was now overlaid with a saddened, yet fiercely determined, resolve.
"Sir..." she began, her voice gaining a sliver of strength. "Let me help you." She swallowed hard, clearly fighting against every instinct that told her to run and hide. "You've been very kind to me. I don't know the details... but I don't think you're a bad person..." The words were a struggle, each one pulled from a deep well of conflict between what she had just witnessed and the man she had come to know. "I'll help you... clean..." The very notion of calling "cleaning" to the covering of a crime scene was slightly nauseating.
Lutz was stunned into silence. He had expected fear, hysteria, demands for explanation, or a frantic desire to flee. He had prepared a dozen lies, a hundred ways to use his abilities to pacify and manipulate her into silence. He had not prepared for this. For a simple, courageous offer of help from a scared young woman who had just seen the monster beneath the mask of James Morgan.
His mind raced. In one hand, he didn't want to involve her in this. Pulling her into this darkness felt like a profound violation of her morals and innocence. On the other, if he didn't quickly take care of this, the entire cover of James Morgan could be blown. It would all have been for nothing. He would have to escape somewhere else. He would be a fugitive again, with even fewer resources than before.
He looked at her, at the terrified determination in her eyes, and made a choice. He would accept her help, not as a master commanding a servant, but as a co-conspirator bound by a terrible secret.
He let out a long, slow breath, the weight of the night settling fully on his shoulders. "...Alright," he said, his voice quiet and stripped of all pretense. For a moment, it was just Lutz speaking, not James Morgan. The seriousness of his usually frivolous and happily eccentric tone surprised Eliza.
Lutz calmly gave the directives. "I'll take care of him. See what you can do about the rooms and the mess."