Bruce's sobs had quieted to something slower. Shakier. The kind of crying that came after the storm, when the body was too tired to keep going. Aaron stayed on the floor across from him, back against the cold wood of the bed frame, saying nothing. There was nothing to say. Not yet.
And then he saw it.
At first it was nothing. A blur at the edge of his vision, like heat rising off a summer road. Aaron blinked, expecting it to clear. It didn't. The blur sharpened. Took shape. Two shapes. Faint. Translucent. Standing directly behind Bruce.
Aaron's breath caught.
He could hear something. Not voices. Not at first. A buzz. A frequency. Like a radio dial stuck between stations, crackling with static and half-formed words. The serpent inside him stirred, uncoiling slowly, and the buzz resolved into syllables. Fragments. Then words.
"—can't hear us. He can't—"
"—my boy. My little boy—"
Aaron's eyes focused. The shapes became people.
Thomas Wayne stood with his hand on Bruce's shoulder, a hand that passed through without touch, without weight, without any sign that Bruce felt it at all. His face was the same as Aaron remembered from the car ride months ago. Kind. Strong. But now it was twisted with something else. Grief. Desperation. The helplessness of a father who could see his son falling apart and could do nothing to catch him.
Beside him stood Martha Wayne. She was smaller than Aaron had imagined. Her eyes were fixed on Bruce with an intensity that hurt to look at. Her lips were moving, but the words came to Aaron's mind directly, bypassing his ears entirely.
"Please. Someone please tell him. It's not his fault. He thinks it's his fault."
Aaron scrambled backward. His shoulder hit the bed frame. The sound made Bruce look up.
"What happened?" Bruce's voice was raw. Stripped.
Aaron stared at the ghosts of Thomas and Martha Wayne. They stared back.
He had seen many things in two lives. Soul spirits. Vampires. Kryptonian technology. Meteor mutants. But he had never seen a ghost. Never. The dead in his old world passed on or were consumed. They did not linger. They did not hover behind their grieving sons with hands that could not touch.
"I..." Aaron started. Stopped. How did you explain this?
Thomas Wayne turned his head. For the first time, he looked directly at Aaron, and his eyes widened. "You can see us."
The words arrived in Aaron's mind clear as glass. No static now. No interference.
"Yes," Aaron said. Out loud. Before he could stop himself.
Bruce frowned. "Yes what?"
Martha stepped forward. Her translucent form flickered like a candle in a draft. "Can you tell him? Please. He can't hear us. We've been trying. All night. He can't hear us."
Aaron's mouth was dry. "What do you want me to tell him?"
Bruce's frown deepened. "Aaron. Who are you talking to?"
"Tell him it's not his fault," Thomas said. His voice in Aaron's mind was steady but cracked at the edges. "The man had a gun. There was nothing anyone could have done. He keeps replaying it. Over and over. He thinks if he'd been faster. Stronger. Something. Tell him we don't blame him. Tell him we love him."
Aaron turned to Bruce. But didn't say anything,
The silence in the room was absolute.
Aaron told thomas, he can't tell him, and he will think i am making fun of him..
Thomas looked back with the exhausted patience of a man who had been trying to reach his son for hours and had failed every time.
Bruce's hands began to shake.
Thomas turned his attention back to Aaron, and for the first time, his eyes drifted upward. To the space above Aaron's shoulders. Where the serpent floated, half-visible, its pale gold form coiling lazily in the dim light.
Thomas's expression shifted. Recognition. Not of the serpent itself, but of what it meant.
"So," Thomas said slowly. "You were special. When you said you practiced martial arts, when you talked about the snake clan, I thought it was just a child boasting. I didn't know you were speaking truth."
"Sir. Uncle. I..." Aaron didn't know how to address a dead man.
"You can see us. You can hear us. And that thing behind you..." Thomas shook his head. A ghost of a smile crossed his face. "My son has interesting friends."
Aaron didn't heard that, but his mind thought about The Arctic. The Kryptonian ship. The medical bay. The zoo. The technology that had kept alien animals alive for five hundred years. The Fortress of Solitude, sitting under Antarctic ice with all the knowledge of a dead civilization inside it.
And then the thought appeared.
"Uncle," Aaron said. "Do you want to revive ?"
The room went still.
Thomas stared at him. Martha's hand flew to her mouth. "What?"
"There's a ship. Not from Earth. It has technology I don't fully understand. Medical equipment. Regeneration pods. I don't know if it can bring back the dead. But we can try."
Thomas looked at his wife. Martha looked at her son. Bruce was still sitting on the floor, his face a mask of confusion and fear, hearing only half a conversation.
"You're serious," Thomas said.
"I don't make promises I can't keep. But yes. I'm serious."
Martha's voice trembled. "Even if it doesn't work. Even if we just... fade. The fact that someone can hear us. "
Suddenly bruce ran from room very fast, and Aaron nodded at uncle thomas and aunt Martha.
He turned back to Bruce, who was running from room.
Outside the room, footsteps pounded up the stairs. The door burst open. Aryan and Ashley stood in the doorway, their faces tight with worry. Behind them, Alfred, his composure cracking for the first time.
"Master Bruce said Aaron was talking to himself," Alfred said. "Is everything—"
....
On other side, Egyptian ruins
In a dusty ruin halfway across the world, where the Egyptian sun beat down on stones that had not felt light in three thousand years, Eric Savage stepped over a fallen column and into a chamber that had been sealed since before the pyramids were young.
Jasmine stood behind him, her eyes adjusting to the darkness faster than any torch could manage.
"It's here," Eric said, while reading the map.
"Buried under the altar. Just as the old texts said."
They had been searching for weeks. Following fragments of lore that even their own ancestors had forgotten. The book. The wizard book. The same book that had started all of this, the one Razor Adg had used to demand Ashley's hand.
Eric knelt. Brushed aside centuries of dust. His fingers closed around something cold. Metal. Not stone.
He pulled it free.
An axe. Its blade dark and shining with golden texture, it was like little rust as if it was blood.
Beside there was some old heavy book in embedded in stone near axe.
"We found it," Jasmine breathed.
Eric held the axe up to the thin shaft of sunlight piercing the chamber roof. The blade caught the light and held it.
"This material is special," he said. "This was made for something specific, this metal may be connected to this ruins"
Eric nodded. He tucked the book under his arm and gripped the axe.
"Let's go home. Our grandson may need these."