A blast of morning wind swept through Gotham's industrial district, but the usual stench of oil and rot was overpowered by something stranger.
Smoke.
Ash.
Power.
It wasn't visible to the untrained eye. But the neighborhood near Hargrove Alley and 5th was buzzing with whispers. A homeless man said the air had "hummed" in his ears for five minutes straight. A street dog ran off howling and didn't return. A city drone dropped from the sky with fried circuits. And underground?
Something had broken.
Something deep.
The first responders thought it was a gas main.
To be fair, it looked like one: a collapsed sewer entrance, scorched piping, and ruptured walls near the lowest tier of Gotham's ancient tunnel system. The heat signatures were unusual, and the pressure sensors had gone haywire hours earlier.
But what really made them pause was the boy.
A child, maybe five or six years old, was found curled up at the edge of the impact zone. His skin was bruised, his clothes torn and soaked through, and he wore a blindfold wrapped neatly around his eyes.
The EMTs exchanged confused glances.
No burn marks. No cuts.
Just… unconscious. And radiating faint residual heat like he'd run a fever through the night.
They rushed him into the ambulance, muttering about "runaways" and "dumb luck."
They didn't know they were carrying the one responsible.
And that he had won.
Back at the orphanage, nobody had even realized Kai was gone.
The staff had assumed he was still asleep. It wasn't until the social worker turned over his bed in the infirmary that anyone noticed the blanket shaped like a human was just pillows. By then, the TV in the common room was already reporting on the "mysterious explosion" near the sewers.
The story was being spun as infrastructure failure. Old piping. Delayed maintenance. No casualties. Just "spiritual panic" among the city's fringe mystics.
But others knew better.
In a hidden chamber beneath Wayne Tower, Bruce Wayne sat before a bank of surveillance footage and satellite scans, eyes narrowing.
"Replay it."
Alfred, standing nearby, tapped a key. The footage from a nearby thermal drone played again.
It showed:
A spike in temperature.A blackout in three city blocks.Then, for exactly five seconds, a perfect circle of light blooming underground.
Then nothing.
No sound. No digital trace.
Just that eerie silence.
Bruce leaned forward. "There's no bomb signature. No explosive residue. No electromagnetic trail."
"No magic either," came a voice from behind.
Zatanna stepped from a shadow portal, arms folded, expression unreadable.
Bruce didn't even blink. "You felt it too?"
"I didn't just feel it," she replied. "It cracked three of my wards across the river. And when I tried scrying the epicenter…" She paused. "Something broke the spell. Not reflected. Shattered. That shouldn't be possible."
Bruce turned toward her. "Was it you?"
Zatanna shook her head. "If it was me, I wouldn't be standing here asking the same question."
He looked back at the screen. "No magical trace. No metahuman signature. Not tech."
Zatanna's eyes narrowed. "Then what the hell did that?"
Neither of them had an answer.
Kai woke up twelve hours later.
His head ached. His limbs felt like jelly. But he was alive.
He kept still at first, letting the sounds around him clarify.
He heard IV drips. A monitor beeping. A window cracked open to the Gotham air.
Hospital.
He groaned and stirred.
A nurse immediately came in, gasping softly when she saw he was awake.
"Oh thank God. You had us worried sick, sweetheart."
Kai mumbled something incoherent and pulled the blanket tighter. The blindfold was still on. He reached toward it instinctively, but the nurse gently touched his wrist.
"You've had that on since they found you," she said. "We figured maybe your eyes were sensitive? You don't have to take it off until you're ready."
Kai relaxed. Smart woman.
She didn't question it. Good.
They thought he was just a runaway.
Even better.
Later, a social worker came to speak with him — a kind-faced woman in her forties who introduced herself as Miss Greene. She asked gentle questions.
"Do you remember where you were going?"
"Do you know your last name?"
"Are you in pain?"
Kai answered carefully, feigning confusion, letting just enough fear show to keep her at bay.
Eventually, she nodded to herself, scribbled some notes, and left with a warm smile.
He'd be transferred back to the orphanage by the end of the day.
But even now, he could feel it.
They were looking for someone.
Not him, yet.
But soon.
Back at the orphanage, he sat quietly in his bed, watching the news with the other kids. They laughed and teased each other over cartoons, but Kai listened to the anchor:
"…Gotham PD has yet to determine the cause of the disturbance, but eyewitnesses describe a sudden heat wave and what some are calling a 'miracle bubble' of light before everything went dark…"
He turned away before they showed the crater.
He already knew what it looked like.
That night, after lights out, he climbed quietly to the roof. The city lights blinked in the distance. Fog crawled between buildings like fingers.
He sat down, hugged his knees, and breathed in slowly.
His blindfold fluttered gently in the breeze.
The Six Eyes were always on now.
Even through the cloth, he saw everything.
Cursed energy trails.
Residual spirit fragments drifting like ash.
Gotham was quieter now. The nest's destruction had shaken the cursed presence. Many had fled. Others were still hiding, uncertain.
Good.
Let them be uncertain.
He sat there for a long time.
Not thinking.
Just feeling.
Eventually, he spoke aloud, to no one:
"I did it."
His voice cracked.
"I actually did it."
For a moment, he felt like crying. Not out of pain. But out of relief. That it hadn't been a fantasy. That everything—the training, the preparation, the madness—had paid off.
He'd faced death.
Alone.
And lived.
In a dimly lit room far across the city, John Constantine lit a cigarette with shaking hands.
He stared at the paper talisman Zatanna had sent him — a fragment recovered from the tunnel, one that had somehow survived the blast.
He couldn't read it.
It wasn't divine script.
Not demonic.
Not fae.
Not even Enochian.
It wasn't magic at all.
But it was something.
He exhaled smoke and muttered, "Well, shit. What the hell did you pull into our world now, you bloody yankees…"
Back in his bed, Kai finally allowed himself to sleep.
His body needed it. But his soul?
It felt… full.
Not complete.
But grounded.
He was no longer just Kai.
And not just a shadow of Gojo.
He was something new.
A guardian.
A ghost.
A light in the dark.
And in the lowest part of Gotham, where the nest had once pulsed, a single cursed spirit stirred from the rubble. It was small. Weak.
But it had seen what happened.
It didn't roar.
It didn't rise.
It ran.
Because something now lived in this city that made even curses afraid.