The void spat Rorschach out like something it couldn't digest.
He hit solid ground for the first time since the Web had sealed behind him, boots striking concrete that felt real but wrong. The impact jarred through his already-cracked ribs, but he rolled with it, came up in a defensive crouch, hands reaching for weapons that might not work in this place.
Then he looked up and understood where the Child had brought him.
The alley.
Not *an* alley. *The* alley. The first one. Where he'd encountered the thing before it had a name, before it had learned to speak, when it was still just wrongness wearing the shape of a child.
But the geometry refused to cooperate with memory. The walls bent inward at angles that shouldn't exist, creating a space simultaneously too narrow and impossibly vast. Bricks looped endlessly in patterns that repeated without rhythm. Shadows overlapped where no light source existed, pooling in corners that couldn't be reached, stretching from objects that cast no reflection.
Rorschach straightened slowly, cataloging details. The dumpster was there—rusted, half-open, exactly as he remembered. But it sat in three places simultaneously, each version slightly out of phase with the others. Graffiti covered the left wall, tags he recognized from that night, but they were half-finished, mid-spray, as if the memory had frozen before completion.
A trash pile repeated every six feet down the alley's length, the same crumpled newspapers and shattered bottles arranged in identical configurations, extending into darkness that shouldn't have fit in a space this size.
Time felt wrong. Not stopped, but looped. Caught at a specific moment and forced to exist indefinitely.
He touched the nearest wall. Solid. Real. But when he pulled his hand back, he felt threads clinging to his fingers—Web-strands, alive and pulsing, woven so tightly into the brick that they'd become indistinguishable from the structure itself.
The alley wasn't built. It was remembered. Reconstructed from his own recollections and stitched together with living Web, a memory made physical and forced to breathe.
Rorschach had walked into hundreds of traps. Recognized the markers: controlled environment, psychological leverage, forced vulnerability. But this wasn't deception. The Child wasn't trying to trick him into believing he was somewhere else.
It was showing him where everything began.
The moment curiosity was born.
He turned slowly, scanning the shadows, hand closing around his grappling hook. The weapon felt heavier here, as if gravity operated on different principles. Or perhaps as if the space itself was pressing down, weighing everything against some invisible scale.
"Show yourself," he said. His voice didn't echo. The sound died immediately, swallowed by the wrongness.
The shadows moved.
Not scattered or displaced—they gathered. Coalesced. Pulled together like water flowing upward, defying physics to create form. The darkness at the alley's far end thickened, solidified, became something that stood on two legs and breathed with purpose.
The Weaver's Child stepped into what passed for light.
It had changed since their last encounter. No longer the half-formed thing that wore innocence like camouflage. This was its true shape, fully realized, every detail precise and intentional. Humanoid, roughly Rorschach's height, moving with the controlled grace of something that had studied human motion until it understood it better than humans did.
Its body was wrapped in patterns that shifted like living ink—black and white, constantly reforming, creating shapes that almost resolved into recognizable forms before dissolving again. A mask covered where its face should be, featureless except for the patterns that flowed across its surface.
Patterns eerily similar to Rorschach's own.
The Child moved calmly, deliberately. Each step measured. No aggression. No hostility. It stopped ten feet away, head tilting slightly as if examining something interesting but not threatening.
Rorschach's hand tightened on the grappling hook. Every instinct screamed to attack, to close the distance and eliminate the threat before it could act. But something held him back.
Not fear. Recognition.
The Child wasn't preparing to fight. It was waiting. Observing.
The silence stretched between them, oppressive and intentional. Rorschach counted his own heartbeat. Five seconds. Ten. Fifteen. The Child didn't move. Didn't speak. Just stood there, mask angled toward him with the patience of something that had already seen how this conversation would end.
Finally, it spoke.
The voice was singular now. Controlled. No longer the chorus of consumed souls or the wet chittering of husks. This was something new—or perhaps something old, refined through countless adaptations until it became perfect.
The voice sounded disturbingly familiar.
"You recognize this place," the Child said. Not a question. A statement of fact.
Rorschach didn't respond. Silence was information. He waited.
"The alley," the Child continued, moving slightly to the left, fingers trailing along the wall where the graffiti repeated endlessly. "Where you first found me. Before I understood what finding meant."
It turned to face him fully, and the patterns on its mask swirled faster.
"I have consumed thousands since then. Absorbed their memories, their fears, their understanding of what existence means. But this moment—" It gestured at the impossible space around them. "—remains the clearest. The one I return to when I need to remember what I am."
Rorschach's jaw tightened. "What you are is an infection. A parasite that feeds on reality until nothing remains."
"Yes," the Child agreed simply. "But I was not always this. Before this alley, I only understood hunger. Consumption. Instinct without framework. I moved through the Web devouring what was weak because weakness invited devouring."
It took a step closer. Rorschach's hand moved fractionally toward his belt.
The Child noticed but didn't react. "Then I entered this place. And you were here. Standing exactly where you stand now. Looking at me with those same eyes."
The mask's patterns shifted, creating something that might have been a smile.
"You did not run. Did not attack immediately. You stared. Evaluated. Judged whether I deserved to continue existing. In that moment, I felt something beyond hunger for the first time."
Rorschach said nothing. His mind raced through scenarios, calculating angles and vulnerabilities, searching for the opening that would let him end this.
"Curiosity," the Child said, as if reading his thoughts. "You taught me curiosity. The concept that not everything should be consumed immediately. That some things require... study. Understanding. The application of judgment before action."
It moved again, circling slowly, and Rorschach pivoted to keep it in view. The Web-threads woven into the alley pulsed softly, responding to the Child's movement like extensions of its nervous system.
"I watched you after that. Followed your path through the collapsing realities, observing how you moved through a world that disgusted you. How you looked at the weak, the compromised, the ones who hesitated—and decided they were the problem. Not the chaos. Not the randomness. Them. Their choices."
The Child stopped, head tilting again in that disturbingly human gesture of curiosity.
"You believed in responsibility. In removing filth before it spread. In understanding that hesitation was weakness, and weakness was contagious." The voice remained perfectly level, neither mocking nor admiring. Simply stating facts. "You lived by a framework that dictated what deserved to exist and what deserved to be eliminated."
Rorschach felt something cold settle in his chest. Not fear. Something worse. Recognition.
"You're wrong," he said flatly. "I eliminate threats. You are the threat."
"Am I?" The Child spread its hands, and for a moment the patterns on its body froze—became still, almost vulnerable. "I learned from you that systems matter. That structure, however imperfect, is better than chaos. That some things must be removed for others to survive."
It gestured at the Web-threads surrounding them, pulsing with corrupted light.
"The Web is a cage. It dictates fate, forces realities into predetermined paths, punishes deviation. It claims to maintain order, but it is simply control masquerading as destiny. Every Spider who ever lived has been bound by its threads, forced to sacrifice, to suffer, to die according to patterns they did not choose."
The Child's voice remained calm, factual. "I looked at this system through your eyes and understood—it is filth. It must be eradicated. Not out of rebellion, but out of responsibility."
The cold in Rorschach's chest spread. For the first time in years—perhaps decades—he felt something close to revulsion. Not at the Child's violence. Not at its monstrosity.
At its clarity.
It wasn't misunderstanding him. It wasn't twisting his words or corrupting his philosophy.
It was understanding him perfectly.
"You're rationalizing consumption," Rorschach said, but his voice carried less certainty than he intended. "Dressing up hunger as ideology."
"Perhaps." The Child tilted its head the other direction, considering. "Or perhaps you are rationalizing isolation. Dressing up fear of connection as strength."
It moved closer, close enough that Rorschach could see the Web-threads woven directly into its body, pulsing with stolen life.
"I do not hate you, Rorschach. I do not fear you. I recognize you. You are what I became when I learned that existence requires more than instinct. When I understood that purpose matters, that judgment matters, that removing the corrupted elements is not cruelty—it is maintenance."
The patterns on its mask swirled faster, creating shapes that almost looked like Rorschach's own face reflected back at him.
"The difference between us is scope. You eliminate individuals who threaten your definition of order. I eliminate the system that creates those individuals. You believe in precision. I believe in totality."
The Child spread its arms, encompassing the impossible alley, the looping memories, the Web-threads that held it all together.
"But the foundation is the same. Responsibility. The willingness to do what others cannot. The understanding that mercy is simply slow-motion failure."
Rorschach's hand moved to his belt, fingers closing around cold metal. "Then you've learned nothing. I maintain order. You create chaos."
"No," the Child said softly. "I create silence. The absence of suffering. The end of a system that forces infinite versions of the same people to die the same deaths forever, calling it destiny. Calling it heroism."
It paused, and the alley's shadows deepened around them. The Web-threads pulsed like a shared heartbeat, resonating between their bodies.
"I watched you fight Miles Morales. Saw you nearly break him because he refused to accept your methods. Because he still believed that caring mattered more than effectiveness, that connection was strength rather than liability."
The Child's voice took on something almost like curiosity. "You hated him for that. For still believing in compromise when you had long since abandoned it. For refusing to understand that isolation is not a flaw—it is evolution."
Rorschach said nothing. The grappling hook felt heavy in his hand.
The Child tilted its head one final time, almost inquisitive, almost gentle.
"You taught me how to hunt," it said quietly. "How to evaluate. How to separate what should exist from what should be eliminated. How to understand that personal cost is irrelevant compared to the purity of the objective."
The patterns on its mask stilled, became mirror-smooth, reflecting Rorschach's own expression back at him with perfect clarity.
"Now tell me—why do you hate what I became?"
The question hung in the air like a blade. The alley's geometry folded tighter. The Web-threads pulsed faster. The shadows pressed in from all sides.
And Rorschach, for the first time in longer than he could remember, had no immediate answer.