The city snapped before dawn.
It began in the factories, where smoke already choked the air The workers, driven to madness by twelve-hour shifts and wages that shrank by the week, found their voices drowned in debts to men who never dirtied their hands.
Whispers of The Owe fanned through the slums like sparks in dry hay, and when the first man threw his hammer against the foreman's window, others followed.
By midmorning, streets that had once been weary but orderly had become battlegrounds fire climbed walls of timbered shops. Glass shattered.
Police lines bent and broke as men and women surged against them, armed with little more than stones, bottles, and fury. The riot had no leader, but it had a rhythm, and that rhythm sounded like chains being broken.
Jonathan, cloaked and hooded, moved through the crowd with Isadora and Scrap pressed close. They saw mothers screaming for bread, boys too young to work hurling bricks at mounted officers, old men setting fire to tax records in the square. It was not rebellion born of hope, but of desperation.
Scrap tugged Jonathan's sleeve, his voice nearly lost in the roar. "This ain't no accident, Johnny! Look around too many fires at once, too many fists risin' at the same time. This was lit on purpose."
Jonathan's eyes swept the chaos. He saw it too figures in masks, blending into the crowds. Not Owe's white ceremonial masks, but simple cloth, dark and concealing.
They whispered, they pointed, and the violence swelled where they walked.
"They've stoked the fire," Jonathan muttered. "The riot's the cover. Tonight's their true ritual."
Isadora's hand gripped his arm. "Then we can't waste time here."
A scream split the air from the east side of the square. Police batons crashed against skulls as officers tried to clear a barricade. Jonathan's instinct drove him toward it, but Isadora pulled him back. "You can't save them all. Not today. We need to find the core."
Jonathan clenched his jaw. She was right. Every cry for help was another wound in his chest, but the larger wound was the one festering beneath the city the Court Below, preparing to drown Gotham in shadow.
They cut through the chaos, ducking alleys where the smoke hung thick. Scrap led with a thief's memory of backstreets, but even he paused at the sight of a carriage overturned and burning in the gutter. A man hung from its wheel, beaten to death with a sign still clutched in his hand: Bread or Blood.
Scrap swallowed hard. "This ain't just about wages anymore. This is about survival."
The courthouse loomed in the distance, its stone façade blackened by smoke. Jonathan knew The Owe had chosen their time well the riot was not merely a diversion, it was a veil. The city above would be too busy tearing itself apart to notice the trial below.
They reached the tanner's yard by dusk. The streets around it burned red with torchlight, rioters clashing with officers who could barely hold their lines. From the shadows of a collapsed shed, Jonathan, Isadora, and Scrap watched.
The grate in the yard yawned open again, but this time, more than a dozen figures entered. Dozens. Hooded, masked, carrying lanterns that flickered like fireflies in the pit of the earth.
Scrap hissed through his teeth. "That's an army. They're all headin' down. How do we fight that, Johnny?"
Jonathan's face was stone. "Not with strength. With truth."
Isadora shook her head. "Truth won't matter in their court. They already decided the sentence."
Jonathan turned to her, eyes blazing with the weight of a man cornered but unbroken. "Then let them sentence me. But when I rise again, they'll see the lie they serve."
Before she could answer, the crowd to the west surged, rioters pouring down the avenue toward the docks. The police followed with drawn rifles, and the air split with gunfire. Bodies fell into the mud. The screams became a chorus that shook the marrow of the city.
Jonathan seized the moment. While eyes turned toward blood above, he, Isadora, and Scrap slid from their hiding place and crept toward the grate. The hooded Owe had already vanished below, their torches swallowed by the dark.
The iron bars groaned under Jonathan's hands as he pushed them aside. The stench of earth and rot rose to greet them, thick and damp.
Scrap hesitated, clutching the edge. "Johnny… once we go down, there ain't no turnin' back."
Jonathan looked down into the black, then back at the riot tearing Gotham apart. "Neither up here. The city's already burning."
They descended.
The tunnel swallowed them whole, the world above replaced by dripping stone and the low murmur of unseen voices.
Their lantern barely kept back the dark, but it was enough to show the carvings on the walls circles within circles, crude faces etched by trembling hands, symbols of oath and debt.
The deeper they went, the louder the voices became. Not chants of faith, but the grim drone of judgment.
They reached a vast chamber, hidden beneath the courthouse itself. A circle of torches lit the stone arena, where masked figures stood shoulder to shoulder. In the center stood a platform, and upon it chains waiting.
Jonathan's blood chilled. This was not rumor or shadowplay. This was the Court Below, alive and undeniable.
At the far end of the circle, a figure raised his hands. Tall, cloaked in crimson, the mask upon his face carved with a cruel smile. Elijah Blackthorn.
His voice cut through the chamber like a blade.
"Brothers, sisters tonight, Gotham burns. Above us, the people cry for justice. But here, beneath the stone, we are justice. Tonight, a traitor stands trial. Tonight, a Wayne pays his debt."
The circle echoed with the pounding of staffs against the floor, a rhythm like a heartbeat.
Jonathan's hand brushed the hilt of his knife. Scrap's eyes darted to him. Isadora's grip tightened on his arm.
And then Elijah's voice again, ringing like a bell.
"Bring him forward."
From the shadows, two masked figures dragged a man into the torchlight. His face was swollen, his lips split with blood but Jonathan knew him instantly.
Crane.
His friend. His ally. Shackled before the Court Below.
Jonathan's heart thundered. He had expected his own name called, his own chains waiting. But The Owe had struck deeper. They had taken Crane to draw him out, to twist the trial before it began.
The circle roared with approval as Crane was thrown to his knees.
Elijah raised his hands again. "The fugitive Jonathan Wayne hides in the smoke above. But his sins cannot hide from judgment. Through his ally, his oathbreaker's guilt shall be revealed."
Jonathan's breath slowed. His grip on the knife steadied. The riot above had become war; now war had found him below.
And there, in the echoing firelight of the Court Below, Jonathan knew he first blood had only just been spilled.