The warehouse at noon was a tomb with a pulse. The usual raucous energy of the Vipers was gone, replaced by a sullen, watchful silence. Men ate their thin stew and hard bread in small, nervous clusters, their conversations hushed, their eyes darting towards the main door with every distant sound from the street. The Church's systematic dismantling of their outer network wasn't just a strategic loss; it was a psychic siege, and the walls were crumbling.
Lutz collected his bowl from the sullen cook and scanned the room. He found Karl sitting alone at a rough-hewn table in a corner, away from the others. His handler was methodically tearing a piece of bread into tiny, precise pieces, but he wasn't eating. The usual predatory stillness about him was frayed at the edges. There was a fresh, shallow cut on his knuckles, and a faint sheen of sweat on his brow that spoke of recent, strenuous exertion. He looked like a man who had just put out a fire, only to see the embers re-igniting behind him.
Lutz sat down opposite him, the wooden bench scraping loudly in the quiet. "Any problems?" he asked, his tone carefully calibrated to convey concerned solidarity.
Karl didn't look up from his dismantled bread. "Problems?" he repeated, the word a low, dangerous ember. "The Church is picking us apart like a clockmaker with a broken toy. They're not just grabbing the small fry anymore. They're going for the mechanics." He finally lifted his gaze, and the banked coals of his eyes were burning with a cold, frustrated fury. "We assigned teams to guard our most important associates—but its been useless. Deacon Reverie Noire herself is making appearances. She doesn't send her men; she walks in alone. And when she walks out, our associates are chained with vines, and my men are... neutralized. Not dead. Just... unable to continue. It's a fucking surgical strike."
Lutz absorbed this, his face a mask of grim understanding. This was beyond his forgeries. This was the Church's own intelligence apparatus kicking into high gear, guided by Noire's ruthless efficiency. He was pouring gasoline, and she was expertly striking the match.
"Did you find the one divulging the intelligence?" Karl's question was a sharp, pointed thing, aimed directly at the heart of Lutz's own deception.
Lutz met his gaze without flinching, the lie already polished and ready. "I managed to spot one of them," he said, leaning forward slightly, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial level. "Early this morning, near the Gallowsmarket. A nondescript man in a grey coat. He handed a paper to a kid and melted into the crowd. I couldn't stop the kid—I had to follow the man. But he was clever. He led me on a chase for two blocks, then ducked into an alley. By the time I got there... he was just gone. Vanished into thin air."
He let the words hang, injecting just the right amount of frustrated bewilderment. "Something very weird is going on, Karl. It's not just a snitch. It feels... orchestrated. But I swear I'll find them tomorrow. I know the area they operate in now. I'll be more direct. I won't let them escape again."
Karl studied him, his sharp features etched with fatigue and suspicion. He wanted to believe. He needed a target, a tangible enemy to crush. Lutz's story provided one, albeit a ghostly one. After a long, tense moment, Karl gave a short, sharp nod. "See that you do. The Baron doesn't pay us to chase shadows. He pays us to extinguish them." He pushed his untouched bowl of stew away and stood, the message clear. The conversation was over.
—
The afternoon sun bled orange and purple through the high windows, casting long, distorted shadows across the warehouse floor. The tension had not eased; it had condensed, settling over the men like a physical weight. Lutz retreated to the relative privacy of his partitioned room. The performance for the Vipers was over. Now, it was time for the truth.
He locked the simple bolt on his flimsy door, a futile gesture but a necessary psychological barrier. From a hidden compartment in his pack, he retrieved Umbra. The ring was cool to the touch, a brooch of polished, darkened silver that seemed to drink the fading light. Pinning it inside his shirt, he felt its effect immediately—a subtle dampening of his presence, a blurring of his edges in his own perception. The screams and whispers one should not hear.
Next, he took out the ruby silver pendulum. The delicate chain felt like a thread of fate in his fingers, the gemstone a drop of captured blood. He needed to know the shape of the night ahead. He cleared a small space on his table, his breathing slowing, his mind entering the state of Cogitation he'd been practicing. He visualized a simple, geometric shape—a cube—holding it steady in his mind's eye to ward off the potion and Umbra's inherent chaos and focus his spiritual perception.
He held the pendulum steady, the ruby tip poised a hair's breadth above the wooden surface.
"Is it dangerous for me to come out tonight?" he whispered, the first of seven repetitions.
The pendulum remained still for the first six queries. On the seventh, it began a slow, lazy circle. Not the frantic, warning swing of immediate mortal peril, but a steady, clockwise orbit. Mild danger. The kind that could be managed with caution, the background radiation of his chosen profession. It was acceptable.
He stilled the pendulum again, his focus sharpening. "Is someone watching me?"
He asked it once, twice, seven times. The pendulum hung, utterly inert. Not a tremor, not a twitch. This was neither a negative nor a positive, the divination had failed, either from lack of information or other reasons. But Lutz instinctively knew, someone was indeed watching him from the shadows right now.
A cold smile touched his lips. This was exactly what he wanted. The Aurora Order's hunter, Sett, was most likely observing him from afar while he finished recovering, analyzing his prey.
It was time to escalate.
From a hidden pocket in his combat harness, he retrieved the bait he had crafted. It was a risk, a deliberate provocation, but a calculated one. He needed to control the narrative, to draw this new threat into his game, on his terms.
The note was simple, written in the same steady hand as the one to Sett, but the tone was different. Cooler. More analytical.
It was arrogant, dismissive, and psychologically targeted. A prideful cult lunatic would be infuriated.
He extinguished his lone lamp and stood in the deepening darkness of his room, listening to the sounds of the warehouse settling into a fitful, fearful night. He was the source of that fear, the author of their doom, and they welcomed him as a brother. The irony was a cold comfort.
With the silence of a shifting shadow, he unbolted his door and slipped out. He didn't head for the main entrance, where sentries now stood a nervous watch. Instead, he moved towards the back of the warehouse, to a section of the wall partially concealed by stacked crates where the wood was rotten and the nails loose—a flaw he had identified and kept to himself. A single, precise kick from his enhanced strength was enough to create a gap just wide enough to squeeze through.
He emerged into the cool, fog-laden air of the alley, the city spread out before him like a complex, wounded beast.
He pulled the hood of his dark jacket up, the influence of Umbra still haunting his thoughts. He had a note to deliver, a trap to set, and a symphony to conduct. The mild danger of the night was not a threat; it was an invitation. He stepped forward, and the city swallowed him whole.
The city at night was a different creature. The fog, a nuisance by day, became a conspirator after dark, muffling sound and swallowing light. Lutz moved through it not as a man, but as a thought, his passage marked only by the occasional displacement of mist. The influence of Umbra wrapped around him like a second skin, a psychic non-presence that made the few night-walkers he passed by get shivers.
His destination was a place of forgotten industry: a derelict yard on the border of the Salt-Weep and Iron-Cast districts, where the skeletons of rusted machinery lay half-submerged in pools of stagnant water, like the bones of ancient leviathans. It was a place of shadows and echoes, perfect for a private audience.
He stood in the center of the yard, the wet, cold air seeping through his clothes. The only sounds were the drip of water from a broken pipe and the distant, mournful cry of a foghorn. This was the place.
He needed to be sure.
Lutz pulled the silver pendulum from its pouch. The ruby tip gleamed dully in the profound gloom. He closed his eyes, pushing aside the ambient sounds, the chill, the steady thrum of his own heart. He built the cube in his mind, a fortress of pure geometry to keep the whispers of his pathway at bay.
"Is someone watching me?" he murmured into the silence.
On the seventh repetition, the clockwise circle was firm, unwavering.
Yes.
The confirmation was a cold electric current down his spine. He wasn't alone. The quality of the swing wasn't the clinical, analytical gaze of the Church. This was something else—heavier, older, laced with a blasphemous pride that seemed to stain the very air.
Lutz didn't look around. He didn't tense. To show awareness would be to break the illusion, to acknowledge the attacker as an equal threat ahead of schedule. Instead, he performed the next act of his play with theatrical calm. He knelt, as if to tie his bootlace, and in that motion, he placed the sealed note for the Attacker on the ground, carefully weighting it with a small, nondescript stone. A message left for one crazy man, under the watching eyes of another.
He stood, brushed a non-existent speck of dirt from his knee, and turned to walk away. His pace was casual, unhurried, the picture of a man who believed himself utterly alone. But every sense was screaming. He could feel the weight of that gaze on his back, a pressure like a thumb pressed against his soul. It was all he could do not to reach for Creed. He was a mouse trailing a string before a cat, trusting the cat's arrogance to keep it playing until the snapper slammed shut.
He left the scrapyard and merged back into the labyrinthine alleys, the feeling of being watched lingering for two blocks before gradually fading. Sett was not following. He was too proud, too certain of his own superiority to give chase like a common thug. He had seen his prey, marked it, and was now content to plan his own dramatic reckoning. Lutz's assessment had been correct. The monster was predictable.
He allowed himself a single, shallow breath of relief, which immediately caught in his throat.
From the cross-street ahead, he heard the unmistakable, synchronized tramp of booted feet. A patrol. Not the lazy, corrupt city watch, but the disciplined, rhythmic step of the Church of Steam. The sound was accompanied by the soft hiss of pressurized gas from their lanterns, casting a sharp, white light that cut through the fog like a blade.
Lutz froze, pressing himself into a deep doorway, the whispers offered by Umbra coagulating around him, he decided to take it off. He counted four figures, clad in the dark beige greatcoats with brass buttons, their faces set in grim masks of duty. They moved with an efficiency that was terrifying, their heads swiveling, missing nothing. This was no random patrol; they were hunting, and they were close.
He had miscalculated. The Church's "constriction" was more aggressive than he'd anticipated. They were no longer just raiding safe houses; they were saturating the district.
The lead guard held up a hand, and the patrol halted not twenty feet from Lutz's hiding place. "Check the side alleys," the leader commanded, his voice echoing in the narrow street. "The intel said the phantom operates in this sector. He leaves no traces, but everyone leaves a trace."
Lutz's heart hammered against his ribs. He was trapped. The doorway was deep, but not deep enough to survive a point-blank inspection. If he moved, the sound would give him away. If he stayed, they would find him. His mind raced, analyzing the flaws in the environment, in their formation. The fog. The uneven cobblestones. The leader's position, slightly ahead of his men.
As two guards broke off to peer into the opposite alley, Lutz acted. It was a desperate, silent gamble. He pried a loose piece of mortar from the doorframe with his Agile Hands. With a flick of his wrist, born of his enhanced coordination, he sent the small chip skittering across the wet cobblestones further down the main street, away from his position.
The sound was tiny, but in the silent, fog-damped night, it was as loud as a gunshot.
The leader's head snapped toward the sound. "Contact! Forward!" he barked, and the entire patrol, including the two who had been about to search his alley, surged forward, their lanterns sweeping away from Lutz's hiding place.
He didn't wait. The moment their backs were turned, he moved in the opposite direction, not running, but flowing from shadow to shadow, his movements a whisper. He didn't look back. He heard the frustrated shouts of the guards as they found nothing at the source of the sound, their confusion a testament to his escape. He had exploited a flaw in their attention, using a minor distraction to create a major opportunity. It had been far too close.
The rest of the journey back to the warehouse was a nerve-wracking exercise in hyper-vigilance. He took a route that was twice as long, over rooftops and through drainage culverts, his senses stretched to their limit. Every distant footstep was a patrol, every shift in the fog a hidden observer.
When he finally slipped back through the rotten board in the warehouse wall, the familiar smells of sawdust, sweat, and fear were almost comforting. The main space was dark, filled with the snores and restless muttering of sleeping men. He was a ghost returning to its haunt.
In the relative safety of his corner, he meticulously cleaned himself. He washed his face and hands in the basin, the cold water scrubbing away not just the grime of the city, but the psychic residue of the attacker's gaze and the adrenal rush of his near-capture. He checked Umbra and Creed for any signs of damage or spiritual residue. There were none. He was clean.
He lay down on his cot, but sleep did not come easily. His mind replayed the night in a relentless loop: the confirming swing of the pendulum, the oppressive weight of the attacker's observation, the chilling efficiency of the Church patrol, the desperate flick of the mortar chip. He had taunted a demon and evaded a saint.
The fourth day was done. He had pushed the pieces further across the board, but the game was growing more dangerous. The Church was no longer a blunt instrument; it was a scanning, searching eye. The Aurora Order was not a single beast, but a hydra. And he, in the center, was running out of room to hide.
But as he finally drifted into a thin, troubled sleep, one thought provided a core of cold, unshakeable certainty: they were all reacting. He was the only one acting. The architect of chaos, and tomorrow, he would build the trapdoor beneath their feet.