(Hours before Clark's arrival in Gotham)
"I accept."
The words left Bruce's mouth effortlessly, but they seemed to weigh tons in the air.
The creature before him, or above him, didn't move. It floated in the center of the hall, wings spread like veils of smoke, red eyes fixed on his face.
The Joker's fallen knife still lay on the floor. The body, motionless. The blood no longer warm.
The bat descended.
Not with the flapping of wings, but as living mist sinking in silence. The tips of its wings brushed the ground, and the creature began to circle Bruce slowly.
He didn't move. Not when he felt the air around him shift. Not when the creature's eyes drew close enough to reflect in his own.
'This isn't natural.'
The smoke composing the bat's body began to unravel into thin filaments, like dense vapor pulled by an internal force.
Those threads of shadow enveloped Bruce's body.
First his feet, then his torso. The sensation was cold and deep, like water seeping into his bones.
The bat circled faster.
Bruce's head tilted back.
He didn't scream. Didn't resist.
His chest began to vibrate. Each heartbeat seemed to echo off the mansion's walls, like muffled drums.
The bat's eyes vanished last, and the darkness pierced his own.
Bruce took a step back.
Then another.
He fell to his knees.
His hands touched the ground, but he seemed unable to feel the contact.
The shadow enveloping his body was now within.
And then…
The roar.
It came from inside him.
Deep. Ancient.
A sound neither human nor animal.
It was Gotham responding.
Cracks in the walls trembled. The ancient clock froze. The fireplace extinguished itself. And the Joker's body shuddered with the displacement of air.
Bruce rose slowly.
His pupils, once brown, were now black with red glints.
His chest rose and fell in a different rhythm. Slower. Heavier.
The symbol on the floor, the old Wayne family crest carved beneath the rug, now exposed, began to glow in a dull red hue.
Silence returned.
But Bruce was no longer the same.
The warmth had vanished from the room.
The air felt heavier, as if every particle were steeped in the scent of wet stone and ancient smoke.
Bruce stood in the middle of the room for long seconds.
His hands, still stained with dried blood, opened slowly. His fingers trembled with a slight delay, as if his body were trying to recognize its own limits.
His breathing remained steady, but there was a new weight in his lungs. Every movement felt calculated, not by choice, but by a strange force now part of him.
He looked at his arms. His veins were darker. The room's shadows seemed to draw closer, tracing his skin as if the darkness itself sought to touch him.
He ran his hands over his shoulders, then his chest. The torn suit remained, but beneath the fabric, he felt something different.
Like a second skin.
Something that wasn't cloth, flesh, or bone. It was presence.
The cracked mirror in the back reflected a subtly distorted silhouette. His features were sharper. His gaze deeper. His pupils, still black, didn't shine with life, but with a kind of absence.
He observed his own steps on the wooden floor. The marks didn't fade quickly. His footprints left dark residues, like condensed shadow in physical form.
The tips of his fingers, when touching the air, left a faint, almost imperceptible trail of opaque energy.
Bruce touched his chest again.
The heartbeat was still there. But it no longer felt solely his.
A low hum coursed through the hall, emanating from the crest. A soft reverberation, its origin unclear.
The curtains rippled despite the absence of wind.
The cracks in the walls seemed to have stopped growing, but now formed disturbingly symmetrical patterns, as if something were tracing invisible symbols from the debris.
He turned his body slowly, facing the ancient portraits hanging on the walls.
Some had fallen during the fight. But others remained. His father's face. His mother's. Memories fixed in golden frames.
But now they seemed to watch him with silent judgment.
Bruce didn't look away.
Nor did he try to justify himself.
His entire body felt heavier, not as a physical burden, but as something in his soul. As if it had been rewritten on a different frequency.
He walked to the cracked mirror.
The reflection showed a man with familiar features, but unfamiliar eyes.
And for the first time in a long time…
There was no hesitation in his body. No pain he felt as human. This place was no longer a home, merely the stage for an unfinished ritual.
The bat was gone, but its presence lingered. Embedded.
Bruce walked to the extinguished fireplace. He pressed a hidden point on the wall's side, revealing a compartment with the remnants of his gear. He took only the essentials: the new suit, lighter, darker, without the symbol on the chest. Its lines were smooth, unadorned. Pure function.
He wouldn't wear a cape this time.
Minutes later, the sharp sound of propulsion echoed in Gotham's night. Batman soared above the buildings, using air currents with precision. The rigid wings folded in turns and extended in descents. No sound but the wind against the visor.
The city stretched below, chaotic, indifferent. Streetlights flickered. Distant sirens blended into the city's background music.
He wasn't seeking justice that night.
He was seeking answers.
The Joker's apartment was in an old, abandoned building in the east zone. Fifth floor, window facing a narrow alley. No surveillance. No officer had dared enter after the latest reports.
Bruce descended silently onto the rusted balcony.
He took two steps, then twisted his fist with force.
The glass shattered with a dry snap.
Shards flew into the dark apartment.
Batman entered without hesitation, his feet crunching firmly on the scattered fragments.
The streetlight barely reached the interior. The room was in ruins: peeling walls, broken furniture, empty bottles, old newspapers littering the floor.
He scanned the space with trained eyes.
The floor creaked under the weight of its own sins left behind. Batman walked through the Joker's devastated room, examining every inch as if it were a corpse still hiding secrets.
The walls were covered in claw marks, disjointed phrases scrawled in red and black ink. Burned photographs. Broken children's toys. A world built around madness and pain.
In the center of the room, amid glass fragments and a toppled television, something pulsed.
Faint. Almost imperceptible.
Bruce approached with controlled steps. The energy vibrated low, like a sound that didn't reach the ears but was felt in the bones. The light reflected from the broken windows revealed a crystalline structure, embedded in the old floorboards, as if fused to the apartment itself.
It was the crystal.
The last remnant of something larger, strange, almost unnatural in this scene of insanity.
Bruce knelt and touched the structure with gloved hands. The vibration intensified. The crystal came loose, as if recognizing the touch. No locks. No traps. Just surrender.
He held it firmly.
The crystal reacted to the contact.
Blue light ran along its edges and seeped into the lines of his suit. But Bruce showed no reaction. His face remained still. His alert eyes absorbed what they could, expressing nothing.
He stored the crystal in the small magnetic pouch attached to his belt.
He stood and looked around the scene once more.
Nothing else there deserved his attention.
He moved to the shattered balcony and leaped.
His wings spread in the cold midnight wind. Gotham receded slowly, swallowed by shadows and smoke.
Bruce flew without an immediate destination. But his mind was already charting a new course.
His time in Gotham was over.
And he knew it with absolute clarity.
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