As the 7th and final day dawned on the filth of Indaw Harbor. A low, persistent rumble of voices pulled Lutz from a thin, troubled sleep. It wasn't the usual morning sounds of the warehouse—the groans, the coughs, the quiet clatter of breakfast. This was a agitated buzz, a current of excitement and anxiety that vibrated through the floorboards. He opened his eyes, the electric tension of the previous night instantly returning. He didn't move from his cot, simply listened. The seed had sprouted. The rumor was now a living, breathing thing in the warehouse.
He could pick out fragments, whispers that carried through the thin partitions.
"...tonight, he said..."
"...using that thing from the ship..."
"...we're the bait, but we're the trap too..."
"...finally, a real fight..."
A cold, grim satisfaction settled over him. They believed it. They had the story, and it was giving them a brittle courage. It was the perfect fuel for the fire to come.
Inside the Baron's office, the air was frigid. Gunther Vogler stood by his desk, his back to the room, staring at the wall where the hidden treasury lay behind the paneling. The ledger before him was irrelevant now; it was a record of a kingdom that had already fallen.
The door opened and closed. Karl didn't need to announce himself.
"We have a problem," Karl's voice was flat, stripped of all but the essential facts.
The Baron didn't turn. "Is the Church is at the door?"
"Worse. They're in our heads." Karl moved to stand opposite the desk. "A rumor is spreading through the men. Fast."
Now, the Baron turned. His flint-like eyes were chips of granite. "What rumor?"
"That you're not just hiding in here. That you're performing a ritual. Tonight. Using the article from the Ocean Snake's Bane to ascend your Sequence." Karl delivered the words without inflection, but his gaze was sharp, watching his brother's reaction.
For a moment, the Baron was utterly still. Then, a storm gathered on his features. The air in the room seemed to thicken, the pressure dropping as his Beyonder presence unconsciously asserted itself, seeking the flaws, the weaknesses in this new, absurd variable.
"What?" The word was a low, dangerous whisper.
"It's everywhere," Karl continued. "The men are talking about it like it's a battle plan. They think the 'ritual' is a feint, a brilliant trap to lure the Church in so we can wipe them out. They're excited, Gunther. They think this is our masterstroke."
The Baron's fist slammed onto the desk, the impact jarring the inkwell. "A feint? Who would be stupid enough to start such a story? And why? What possible purpose does it serve except to paint a target on this building the size of the damned harbor!"
"That's the question," Karl said, his voice dropping. "I've been listening. Tracing it back. It didn't come from the top. It came from the bottom. It started with the new ones. The eager ones."
His eyes met his brother's, and a name hung unspoken between them. The Baron's mind, the Lawyer's mind, made the connection instantly. The newest, most eager, most visibly loyal of the recent recruits. The one who had been so helpful, so full of initiative.
"Peter," the Baron said, the name dripping with contempt. "That simpering, eager little fool. I've seen him trailing after Lutz like a lost puppy, so desperate to be one of the 'important' ones."
"He's been trying to prove himself," Karl nodded. "A little too hard. And now, this. A story that makes us look cunning, that gives the men hope, but ultimately ensures the Church will hit us with everything they have, believing we're at our most vulnerable. It's a disaster, Gunther. And that boy is the one who lit the fuse."
The Baron's jaw worked, a muscle twitching violently. The flaw was not some hidden mastermind; it was the predictable, pathetic ambition of a child playing at being a gangster. The simplicity of it was an insult.
"An idiot with a secret," the Baron seethed. "He hears a whisper, thinks he's been let in on a grand plan, and can't help but spread it to make himself feel significant. He doesn't understand he's signing our death warrants for a moment of feeling important."
"Where is he?" the Baron's voice was dangerously quiet.
"In his corner. Seemed to be sleeping when I passed." Karl said, referring to Lutz. "The boy is by the main door, trying to look like a sentry."
A grim, humorless smile touched the Baron's lips. "Let's go and have a word with our little strategist."
He moved from behind the desk, his movements fluid and predatory. Karl fell in step beside him, a silent, deadly shadow. The Baron didn't burst from the office; he opened the door and stepped out with a deliberate, oppressive slowness that was more terrifying than any shout.
The buzz of conversation in the main hall died instantly. Every eye turned to the two brothers as they emerged from the office. The men saw the look on the Baron's face and instinctively took a step back, clearing a path.
Lutz, from his cot, heard the sudden silence and knew. He didn't sit up. He didn't open his eyes. He simply listened, his every sense focused on the scene unfolding beyond his partition.
The Baron's gaze swept the room, missing nothing, and then locked onto his target. Peter was standing near the barricaded main entrance, puffing his chest out slightly in what he thought was a guard's posture. When he saw the Baron looking directly at him, a flicker of pride crossed his face, quickly replaced by confusion, and then by dawning terror as he registered the absolute coldness in the Baron's eyes.
The Baron began to walk towards him, Karl a pace behind. The sound of their footsteps on the sawdust floor was the only sound in the vast, tense space.
"Peter," the Baron said, his voice echoing in the silence. It wasn't a shout. It was a calm, conversational tone that was infinitely more frightening.
The boy flinched. "Y-yes, Baron?"
"I've been hearing a very interesting story," the Baron continued, stopping a few feet from him. He didn't loom; he simply stood there, his presence a crushing weight. "A story about me. About a trap. A very... creative story."
Peter's eyes darted nervously. "Uh? I... Isn't it the plan made by you, Baron?."
"The plan?" The Baron took a half-step closer. "It's a story that seems to have started with you. A story that makes me look like a genius. A story that has given all these men," he gestured around the room, "a reason to hope. Why would you spread such a story, Peter?"
The boy was trembling now. "I... I was just... I thought it was what we were supposed to do! To... to mislead the Church! To give the men heart!"
"Well, you've achieved the exact opposite, and now you're gonna pay for it" The Baron's voice was like silk wrapped around steel.
Peter's mouth opened and closed. He was trapped.
"I... I was told to do it by Lutz! It wasn't my idea! I swear it!" he stammered, his voice breaking. "I thought it was the plan! I was trying to help!"
"You're trying to incriminate the member that recently almost died trying to fight this wave you've created, to save yourself?" The baron said, the words dripping with contempt. "You took it upon yourself to spread a story that will bring the entire Church of Steam down upon our heads tonight.
He didn't wait for an answer. He turned his head slightly towards Karl, his eyes never leaving Peter's pale, terrified face.
"Karl," the Baron said, his voice dropping to a near whisper that carried through the dead silence. "Take him. Find out his motives, find out if he's just a fool, or if he's a fool working for someone else."
It wasn't a request. It was a condemnation.
Karl moved without a word, his hand closing around Peter's upper arm with the finality of a manacle. The boy let out a small, choked cry, his legs giving way.
"No! Please! Baron! I was just trying to help! For my sister! I was just—"
His pleas were cut off as Karl began to drag him, not roughly, but with an inexorable force, towards the same windowless room where the other "interviews" had been conducted. The boy's eyes, wide with sheer, uncomprehending horror, scanned the faces of the other Vipers, finding no sympathy, only fear and a grim acceptance. His gaze swept past Lutz's partition, a final, silent plea to his mentor, who lay perfectly still in the shadows.
The Baron watched them go, his expression unmoved. Then, he turned his gaze, slow and deliberate, across the assembled men, a silent promise of what would happen to any other loose tongues. His scrutiny was general, a sweep for further incompetence, not a targeted search for a co-conspirator.
Then, he turned and walked back into his office, closing the door behind him, leaving the warehouse in a silence more terrified than any that had come before. The brittle hope of the morning was shattered. In its place was the cold, hard reality of the Baron's justice. The war was starting now, and the first casualty had just been dragged from the room.
The silence in the warehouse after the Baron's door closed was a physical presence, thick and suffocating. Lutz lay on his cot for a full minute longer, listening to the unspoken terror in the breathing of the men around him. Then, with a deliberate, controlled motion, he pushed himself up and swung his legs over the side.
He walked to the washbasin, the movements automatic. The cold water he splashed on his face did nothing to cleanse the psychic grime clinging to him. He could picture it: Peter's face, that final, fleeting look of betrayed hope he heard Karl dragb him away. The boy hadn't screamed Lutz's name. He had still trusted him, even then.
He was just trying to help his sister. The thought, in Andrei's voice, was a shard of glass in his mind. He trusted you. He saw you as a hero. And you fed him to the wolves.
Lutz met his own gaze in the sliver of mirror. The face that stared back was hard, pale, the eyes a winter-sea grey. But for a moment, he saw Andrei Hayes looking back, aghast.
'It was necessary,' Lutz thought, the response a cold, practiced mantra. 'The Vipers are a disease. They corrupt everything they touch. To cut it out, you must burn the surrounding tissue. Peter was… surrounding tissue. A calculated loss.'
'A calculated loss?' Andrei's voice, usually a faint echo, was sharp and clear now, fueled by the visceral memory of Peter's terror. 'He's a child! He has a name! He has a sister who depends on him! You didn't calculate a loss; you murdered a boy as surely as if you'd put Creed in his heart yourself. You just let the Baron do the dirty work.'
It was then that the situation struck Lutz. 'What the hell is this? Have my mental problems reached their next stage? I've read about this, a divergence is being produced between my personalities...'
Lutz turned from the mirror, gripping the edges of the basin until his knuckles were white. He tried to force his mind back to the plan, to the sequence of the night ahead. The breach. The traps. The diversion. The heist. But the images wouldn't come. All he could see was Peter's desperate eyes.
'Walk a path that'll leave you without regrets.' Henrik's words, spoken from a place of weary, hard-won wisdom, echoed in the vault of his memory. 'Can you look back on this ten years from now and be proud? Is this the man you wanted to become?'
The questions hung in the air, unanswerable. The grand, vengeful purpose that had sustained him since Silvia's death suddenly felt like a flimsy shield against the simple, ugly truth of what he was doing.
A wave of profound self-loathing washed over him, so potent it nearly buckled his knees. He leaned heavily on the basin, his head bowed.
"It seems," he whispered to the empty room, the words tasting like ash, "that in trying to take out the monsters... I became a monster myself."
The admission was a quiet, devastating thing. It was the truth he had been running from, the flaw in his own moral architecture that he had papered over with logic and strategy.
"I'm a piece of shit."