When Rex stepped through the door marked Truth lies beyond pain, the world didn't shift instantly.
It shattered.
Like glass cracking under pressure, the space around him dissolved into fragments of color and sound. Screams. Laughter. A heartbeat that wasn't his. The scent of blood and smoke. And then—
Silence.
He stood in the middle of a dimly lit circus tent.
Empty stands towered above him, their benches long abandoned. In the center ring, broken chains and shattered lights lay scattered across sawdust soaked with rain.
The echoes of applause still hung in the air like ghosts.
"No," Rex muttered, his breath catching in his throat. "I know this place…"
A voice rang out behind him—young, bright, and burning with life.
"Ladies and gentlemen, presenting the Flying Graysons!"
Rex turned slowly.
Three trapeze artists soared through the air above him—two adults, one child. All in glittering blue and gold, laughing, flipping, catching each other in midair with effortless grace.
The boy smiled with pure joy, waving toward the crowd.
Then the ropes snapped.
The screams were real this time.
Rex flinched as the two adults plummeted to the ground, vanishing in a puff of crimson dust. The boy landed on his knees, frozen in horror.
Rex couldn't move.
He knew the story.
The night Dick Grayson lost his parents. The night the boy who would become Nightwing was born—not from glory, but from grief.
The voice echoed again, distorted now. "They fell, and you rose. But what did you rise into?"
Rex looked down—and realized he was no longer himself. His hands were gloved. His arms muscular. His reflection, caught in a shard of broken mirror on the ground, wore the classic Nightwing suit.
The Trial wasn't showing him Nightwing's life.
It was making him live it.
---
The tent dissolved again.
Now, he was standing on a rainy rooftop, panting. Lightning flashed across the sky. A younger Batman loomed behind him.
"You weren't fast enough," Bruce growled.
"I tried—"
"She's dead, Dick."
In front of him, a woman's body lay sprawled—one of Nightwing's former partners. Blood soaking her blouse. Her face was peaceful in death.
Rex—still trapped in Nightwing's form—backed away, trembling. "I didn't… I'm not…"
"You never measured up. You always let them down."
Another memory. Another guilt. Another wound.
The Trial forced him to walk through Nightwing's pain, one moment at a time.
The time he quit the Bat-Family after a brutal fight with Bruce.
The time he was shot in the head, losing months of memory.
The time he led a team and watched one of his best friends die in the field—trust broken, mission failed.
The time he walked away from Barbara Gordon because he couldn't be what she needed.
Each memory was real.
Each pain hit Rex like a hammer to the soul.
He fell to his knees in the rain, gasping, gripping his skull as the memories pounded harder.
"You're not him. You'll never be him."
The voice came again—older, colder.
Ra's al Ghul's voice.
"You wear his mask, his skin, his legacy… but you do not understand his burden."
Suddenly, all the Nightwings—the memories, the ghosts—stood around him in a circle. Each wore a different version of the suit. Some smiled. Some glared. One was bloodied. One had no eyes. One had a gunshot through his heart.
"What makes you worthy, detective?"
Rex rose slowly.
Not as Nightwing.
But as himself.
He looked each ghost in the eye, then stepped forward.
"I'm not worthy," he said, voice hoarse. "Not of the suit. Not of the name. I didn't grow up in a circus. I didn't train with Batman since I was a kid. I didn't earn this."
He looked down at his hands. They were bare now.
"I didn't choose to be him. But I can choose who I am now."
The memory Nightwings closed in.
"And what are you?" they asked in unison.
Rex stepped into the center of the ring.
"A man who doesn't quit. A detective who's been broken and still kept searching. I won't pretend to be the hero he was…"
He clenched his fist.
"But I'll carry the pain he left behind. Not to be him. But to honor him."
The ghosts blinked.
And then they bowed.
The circus vanished.
---
Rex stood once again in the trial chamber.
Ra's al Ghul watched from the shadows, expression unreadable.
Talia stood nearby, arms crossed, eyes narrowed—but no longer with disdain.
"You faced the boy's memories," Ra's said quietly. "And found yourself inside them."
"I faced his nightmares," Rex replied. "Now I know what I'm standing in."
Ra's nodded slowly.
"Most men drown in another man's legacy. You chose to learn from it. That is strength."
Rex breathed in deeply.
One trial remained.
And something deep within him was beginning to change—not into someone else, but into something new.
A man reborn not through fantasy, but by walking through another man's fire—and still standing on the other side.
---