The voyage was a trial by water and salt. The dinghy, the Sea-Sprite, was a cramped, damp shell of tarred wood and patched sail. Halvar was a man of few words, and those he did utter were typically curses directed at the wind, the waves, or the stubbornness of inanimate objects. He shared his hard biscuit and salt cod without comment, his eyes constantly scanning the horizon, not for pursuit, but for the tell-tale signs of a squall.
Gunther spent the first day fighting a losing battle against nausea, the relentless swaying of the boat a flaw in the universe his logical mind could not correct. He focused instead on Karl, who, to his surprise, seemed to thrive. The boy's enhanced balance kept him sure-footed on the slippery deck, and his senses drank in the new environment—the cry of the gulls, the shift in the wind, the scent of ozone before a rain shower. He watched Halvar's every move, learning the silent language of the sea.
On the second evening, as Halvar adjusted the sail to catch a failing breeze, he grunted at Gunther. "You. boy. Make yourself useful. Read the water."
Gunther, his stomach finally settling, looked out at the shifting, grey-green expanse. "I see water. I see waves."
"You see nothing," Halvar scoffed. "A lawyer who can't read the fine print is a dead lawyer. That darker patch there?" He pointed a gnarled finger. "That's a current, a river in the sea. It'll pull us east, faster. Those ripples over there? Shallow water. A hidden shoal. That's the fine print of the sea, boy. Miss it, and it'll break your contract with life." He spat over the side. "Your father… he understood systems. Said the law was a system of words. The sea is a system of currents and winds. Same thing. Find the rules. Or they sink you."
The lesson was crude, but it struck Gunther with the force of revelation. He had been viewing the world through the narrow lens of legal precedent. Halvar was right. The world was a web of interconnected systems, each with its own logic, its own flaws. His power wasn't just about legal loopholes; it was about finding the inherent weakness in any structure. The sea. A city. A man.
He began to watch the water not as a uniform danger, but as a text to be deciphered. He saw the patterns Halvar pointed out, and soon began to anticipate them. He didn't feel the sea-sickness anymore.
On the morning of the third day, a smudge appeared on the horizon, growing steadily into a jagged line of docks, cranes, and soot-stained buildings. The air, which had been clean and sharp, began to carry a cacophony of new scents: coal smoke, rotting fish, tar, and the dense, living odor of thousands of people packed together.
"Indaw Harbor," Halvar announced, his voice devoid of sentiment. "The Pit. You can smell it from here."
As they drew closer, the scale of the city became overwhelming. It was a chaotic, teeming organism of industry and despair. Ships of every nation crowded the wharves. The clanging of hammers from shipyards fought with the shouts of stevedores and the screech of gulls. It was nothing like the ordered, quiet decay of their estate. This was a vibrant, aggressive rot.
Halvar navigated the Sea-Spite into a cramped space between a stinking fishing trawler and a rust-streaked steamer, his movements precise and economical. He tied off the boat with a series of complex, practiced knots.
"This is it," he said, turning to the brothers. "The debt is cleared. We are square." He looked at them, standing together on the deck—the sharp-eyed teenager and the silent, watchful child. For a moment, something almost like pity flickered in his weathered face. "The rules here are simple. Eat, or be eaten. Trust no one. And boy," he said, his gaze landing squarely on Gunther, "that sharp tongue of yours will get you far. Or get your throat cut. Learn the difference fast."
Without another word, he turned his back on them and began coiling a rope, his dismissal absolute.
Gunther shouldered the satchel and rucksacks. He took Karl's hand. His palm was no longer clammy with fear, but dry and steady. Together, they stepped from the wobbling deck of the Sea-Sprite onto the solid, filthy planks of the wharf. The sound of their home, of their past, was the gentle lap of water against the pilings, quickly swallowed by the industrial roar of their future.
—
The first week was a descent into a new kind of hell. The gold in the satchel was a ticking clock. To spend it too freely would mark them as targets. To spend it too slowly meant starvation. Gunther found a room for them in a lodging house in the Salt-Weep district, a place that smelled of boiled cabbage and despair, its walls so thin they could hear their neighbors coughing through the night. He paid for a week in advance with a single, worn Silver Shield, watching the landlord's eyes for any sign of recognition or avarice. The man, a sullen brute with a beer-stained tunic, merely grunted and pocket the coin.
They needed to become invisible. Gunther used the last of their "good" clothes to barter for rough, common-spun trousers, patched shirts, and thick woolen caps that hid their hair. He used a sliver of soap to scrub the lingering scent of lavender and beeswax from their skin, replacing it with the generic grime of the city.
Gunther's first forays into earning money were exercises in humiliation. He tried to offer his services as a scribe or a letter-writer, setting up a small board near the customs house. But his youth worked against him, and his innate, noble bearing—the straight back, the precise diction—drew sneers and suspicion, not clients. He was chased away by a larger, established scribe who threatened to break his fingers.
He then tried to use his Lawyer's intuition for small-scale swindles. He would identify a flaw in a merchant' hastily written price sign or a dockworker's simple contract, pointing it out and offering to "resolve" the ambiguity for a fee. Sometimes it worked, netting him a few copper Pfenninge. More often, it earned him a cuff around the ear or a promise of a more thorough beating if he showed his face again.
He learned his first true lesson of the streets: a perfectly logical argument was worthless without the power to enforce its conclusion.
Meanwhile, Karl adapted in a different, more frightening way. The Hunter potion had awakened something primal in him. While Gunther was being laughed out of market stalls, Karl would simply… disappear. He would return to their cramped room with a stolen apple, a half-eaten loaf of bread, a handful of coins lifted from a careless drunk. He moved through the crowded docks like a shadow, his small size and preternatural awareness making him a perfect thief.
"They never see me," Karl said one evening, his voice matter-of-fact as he divided a stolen sausage between them. "They're loud. They smell of beer. They have too many things to look at. It's easy."
Gunther looked at his brother. The cheerful child was gone, replaced by this quiet, efficient creature of prey. It should have concerned him, but the Lawyer in him could only see the flawless efficiency of the operation. Karl had found a system—the carelessness of the docks—and was exploiting it. It was a better, more reliable source of income than his own attempts at intellectual leverage.
One night, they were cornered in a narrow alley by two older boys, lanky and mean-eyed, who had noticed Karl's pilfering.
"Give us what you got, little rat," one of them snarled, brandishing a rusted shiv.
Before Gunther could even formulate a verbal defense, a logical rebuttal to the threat of violence, Karl moved.
It wasn't a brawl. It was an execution. He dismantled them. He used the environment—a kicked-over trash bin to create noise and distraction, a slick of rancid water to make one boy lose his footing. He moved under the first boy's clumsy swing, not away from it, and drove his small, hard fist precisely into the boy's kidney. As the first boy crumpled with a choked cry, Karl used his falling body as a shield against the second, tripping him with a sweep of his leg. He didn't pause to gloat or threaten. He simply stood over them, his breathing even, his eyes flat and cold.
The two older boys scrambled backwards, fear in their eyes, before stumbling away into the darkness.
Gunther stared at his brother. He had seen the entire encounter not as a brawl, but as a perfect, physical syllogism. Premise: a threat to their safety. Action: swift, overwhelming, and environmentally-aware neutralization. Conclusion: safety restored. Karl had argued with his fists and feet, and his argument had been unassailable.
In that moment, standing in the stinking alley, something crystallized in Gunther's mind. Halvar's lesson, his own failures, and Karl's success merged into a single, coherent strategy.
He had been trying to play a game of words in a world of force. That was his flaw. But he didn't need to become the force himself. He had Karl for that. His role was to find the larger systems, the bigger flaws. The criminal enterprises, the corrupt officials, the flow of illicit goods. He would be the mind—finding the weaknesses, drafting the plans, negotiating the terms. Karl would be the will—the enforcer, the spark of violence that ensured their conclusions were accepted.
He looked at Karl, who was calmly wiping his hands on his trousers. "We have been approaching this incorrectly," Gunther said, his voice low and intense. "We are not beggars. We are not petty thieves. We are a partnership."
Karl looked up, his Hunter's eyes meeting his brother's Lawyer's gaze. He didn't smile, but he gave a slow, understanding nod.
"We need to find a smaller system," Gunther continued, his mind already racing, analyzing the criminal ecology of the docks. "A gang that is poorly led. One with exploitable flaws in its structure. We will start there."
He was no longer a refugee nobleman's son. He was a predator assessing a new hunting ground. The Vogler name was ash, but from those ashes, a new kind of power was rising—cold, logical, and utterly ruthless. The Baron of Corruption and his Spark were learning to breathe in the toxic air of Indaw Harbor. Their empire would be built not on land, but on the broken backs of every other predator in the pit.
The system Gunther identified was a pathetic, sprawling mess called the Salt-Weep Spiders. They were less a gang and more a loose confederation of desperate men and boys who controlled three dilapidated small houses and extorted protection money from the most vulnerable street vendors. Their leader was a hulking brute named Borz, whose primary qualifications were a high tolerance for violence and a low capacity for thought.
For two weeks, Gunther observed. He stood in shadowed doorways, sipping thin broth from a stall he'd paid a copper to loiter near, his eyes missing nothing. He saw the Spiders' collection routes, their schedules, their enforcers. He saw the flaws, and they were legion.
Their extortion was haphazard, sometimes bleeding a vendor dry in a week, other times forgetting them for a month. They fought amongst themselves over trivial slights and spoils. Borz ruled through fear alone, with no loyalty from his men. The entire operation was a leaking, poorly-sailed ship, and Gunther knew exactly where to drive a wedge.
He started not with Borz, but with the most disgruntled of the lieutenants, a wiry, sharp-faced man named Rikard, who Borz had publicly humiliated for a failed collection. Gunther approached him as he sat alone, nursing a cheap beer and his wounded pride in a dockside tavern called The Leaky Bucket.
"A poor return on investment," Gunther stated, sliding onto the bench opposite him. He spoke in the low, precise tones of a businessman, not a street urchin.
Rikard looked up, his eyes narrowing. "Piss off, kid. I'm not in the mood."
"I am not selling a mood. I am selling an observation. Borz's method of leadership has a critical flaw. He punishes failure but does not incentivize success. He creates resentment, not revenue. The collection from the fishwives on Wharf Street could be thirty percent higher with a consistent schedule and a graduated scale based on their daily catch. Instead, you take a flat fee, which they often cannot pay, so you take their fish, which you sell for a fraction of its value to a fence who cheats you. The system is inefficient."
Rikard stared at him, the beer forgotten. "Who the hell are you?"
"A potential asset. My brother and I can increase your take from your routes by fifty percent within a month. We require no upfront payment. Only a ten percent share of the increased revenue we generate for you, personally. You can keep the rest for yourself, or use it to buy the loyalty of other men who see Borz for the liability he is."
It was a perfect, low-risk offer. Gunther used his Lawyer intuition to frame it in terms of personal gain for Rikard, bypassing any question of loyalty to the gang. He saw the moment the calculation clicked behind Rikard's eyes. Greed outweighed suspicion.
"And how do you plan to do that?" Rikard asked, his voice dropping.
"That is our specialty. Do we have an agreement?"
Rikard grunted, a non-committal sound, but his eyes gleamed. "We'll see."
The next day, Gunther and Karl began their work. Gunther's role was reconnaissance and planning. He would identify the most profitable vendors, learn their patterns, and devise a "protection" schedule that was less burdensome but more consistent, making it seem almost like a legitimate tax. He used his silver tongue to negotiate, not threaten, presenting the new system as a business improvement.
Karl's role was enforcement. But it was a new kind of enforcement. When a vendor who had agreed to the new terms was harassed by a rival, it wasn't Rikard who showed up. It was Karl. The fights were never brawls. They were surgical. A man would find his wrist broken while walking home. Another would wake up to find his stall had been mysteriously dismantled, every joint perfectly unhinged. There were no boasts, no warnings. Just a series of quiet, brutal facts delivered to those who interfered with the new system. The message was clear: compliance with Rikard's crew was the only rational choice.
Within two weeks, Rikard's personal earnings had doubled. He was able to buy rounds of drinks, slip coins to other disgruntled Spiders, and his stature within the gang grew. He began to see Gunther not as a strange boy, but as an oracle.
"Borz is getting suspicious," Rikard muttered to Gunther in their now-regular huddle in a corner of The Leaky Bucket. "He's asking where the extra coin is coming from."
"Then it is time to renegotiate our position," Gunther said calmly. "The current structure is unstable. Borz is the flaw. He must be removed."
Rikard paled. "He's a beast. He'll kill us."
"A beast can be trapped. The question is not his strength, but his predictability." Gunther laid out his plan. It was simple, elegant, and ruthless. It exploited Borz's pride, his temper, and the growing discontent Rikard had sown.
The trap was set at the next gang meeting in a damp, echoing warehouse. Borz, sensing a challenge to his authority, was in a foul mood. He slammed his fist on a crate, demanding to know why collections were changing without his say-so.
Rikard, following Gunther's script, stood up. He didn't challenge Borz directly. Instead, he spoke with a tone of weary reason, another of Gunther's inventions. "The old ways are bleeding us dry, Borz. We're leaving money on the table. I've just been trying to plug the leaks. If you don't like the results, I'll stop."
It was a masterstroke. By offering to cease the profitable new system, Rikard made himself the voice of the gang's financial interests and painted Borz as an obstacle to their prosperity.
Borz, predictably, took the bait. He roared and charged at Rikard, intending to beat him into a pulp in front of everyone.
He never reached him.
As Borz lunged, Karl, who had been standing in the shadows near the door, moved. He didn't attack Borz. He kicked a loose timber that was leaning against a wall. The timber fell, not onto Borz, but onto a stacked pile of empty barrels. The barrels crashed down, creating a noisy, chaotic barrier between Borz and Rikard. In the confusion, a knife—one that had "gone missing" from Borz's own belt earlier that day—was suddenly in the hand of one of Borz's few remaining loyalists, a man named Grigor.
Gunther, from his own shadowed perch, called out in a clear, piercing voice, "Grigor! He's lost his mind! He's arming himself against his own men!"
It was a lie, perfectly timed and perfectly delivered. In the chaotic dim light, with barrels rolling and Borz bellowing in rage, the other Spiders saw Grigor with a knife and their enraged leader charging. The conclusion was inevitable.
They fell on Grigor. And then, in the bloody frenzy that followed, they fell on Borz.
Gunther watched, his expression unchanged. He saw the flaws in Borz's body—the unguarded throat, the slow reaction time. He saw the flaws in the gang's morale—the suppressed resentment that now had a target. He had simply connected them. He had written the syllogism of the murder, and the gang had become his willing executioners.
When it was over, Rikard stood panting, splattered with blood that was not his own. The rest of the Spiders looked to him, leaderless and shocked by their own violence.
It was then that Gunther stepped into the light. He didn't look at the bodies. He looked at the living.
"The Salt-Weep Spiders are dead," he announced, his voice cutting through the panting and the panic. "That name carried the stink of failure. From this moment, we are the Harbor Vipers." He let the name hang in the air, cold and dangerous. "Rikard will be your voice to the outside world. He will manage your operations. You will follow the systems I devise. In return, your earnings will triple within six months. There will be order. There will be discipline. And there will be consequences for any who betray this new compact."
He paused, letting his gaze sweep over them. "My brother, Karl, will be responsible for the consequences."
As if on cue, Karl stepped forward. He didn't speak. He simply looked at each man in turn, his eyes holding the same flat, predatory calm they had seen in the alleyways. He had grown almost to his brother's height in a couple months thanks to taking the hunter potion so young. He was no longer a child. He was a promise of violence.
No one objected. The logic was, once again, unassailable. They had been given a choice between a chaotic, poverty-stricken existence under a brute, and a profitable, orderly future under a cold, calculating mind and his terrifying enforcer. It was no choice at all.
As the new Vipers began to clean up the evidence of their coup, Rikard approached Gunther. "What do we call you?" he asked, his voice a mixture of awe and fear.
Gunther looked around the filthy warehouse, the first piece of his new empire. He thought of his father's study, the portrait of his grandfather, the hawk crest on the fading rug. That was all gone. He was no longer Gunther Vogler, scion of a noble house. He was something else. Something forged in blood and pragmatism.
"You will call me the Baron," he said, the title feeling like a perfect, cold fit. He turned his flint-grey eyes on Rikard. "Now, let us discuss the dockmaster's gambling debts. I have identified a flaw in his accounting that I believe we can exploit."
The two brothers, the mind and the will, stood amidst the birth of their dominion. The world had taken everything from them. Now, they would take everything from the world. One flaw at a time.