The riot smoke still clung to Gotham like a second skin.
The air tasted of soot and old iron, thick enough to sting the throat with every breath. Jonathan stood at the edge of the burned-out district, his boots crunching through the blackened glass that used to be shopfront windows.
Ash drifted down from above, settling on his coat like gray snow. In the ruins, even silence sounded like accusation.
Scrap darted ahead of him, nimble as a stray dog. The boy had a knack for moving through wreckage, weaving in and out of collapsed walls and gutted buildings like he belonged to the rubble itself.
Crane followed slower, still favoring his injured leg from the escape weeks earlier, his revolver heavy at his hip. And Isadora she was no longer trailing behind them.
She walked with purpose, stride steady, eyes fixed forward as if she had already decided what must be done before Jonathan dared give it voice.
They came at last to the collapsed husk of what once had been Gotham's Civic House, a library-turned-archive where the founders kept their records before the city grew beyond them. The front steps sagged under the weight of fire damage, pillars cracked and scorched. Yet beneath the ruin, Jonathan knew secrets would cling like rot.
Inside, the air was cooler, though the smoke stains painted everything in shades of black. Rows of broken shelves leaned like corpses against the wall. And yet, tucked behind the wreckage, Scrap had found it a chamber that fire hadn't quite devoured.
"This way," Scrap whispered, prying open a warped door.
The chamber inside was narrow, its brick walls damp with seeping groundwater.
Charred papers littered the stone floor, curled and blackened into unreadable scraps. But in the corner sat a trunk, its iron clasps rusted, its lid warped but intact. Crane set his lantern beside it, shadows climbing the walls like a thousand reaching hands.
Jonathan knelt, pried it open.
Inside lay a book. Its cover was of leather so old it looked more like bark, blackened at the edges but still intact. Its pages were brittle, the ink faded. The script was archaic, the kind used before Gotham had even called itself a city.
Jonathan touched the first line with gloved fingers and read aloud:
"A debt of fire, a debt of flesh. We buy the city with our firstborn, and bind its soil with their blood."
His chest tightened. He flipped the pages with care, every line worse than the last.
"The flame in the square must be fed yearly, lest the ground turn against us. The Owe will be our covenant. Let it take what is owed, and the city will not fall."
Jonathan's voice faltered. He looked at the faces of his companions in the dim lantern glow. Scrap's wide-eyed horror. Crane's jaw locked, as if the words themselves carried weight enough to crush him. And Isadora her face was pale, but her eyes burned like steel.
"This isn't crime," Jonathan whispered. "It's covenant. Gotham was never free it was bought. Paid for in blood."
Isadora moved closer, her hands steady as she took the book from him and scanned the spidery ink. She turned to the back, where a list of names ran in a column like an executioner's tally.
The handwriting changed across generations, but the signatures remained families Jonathan recognized even now. Langsley. Doolin. Vale. Boone. And at the bottom of one yellowed page, the flourish of a signature that froze Jonathan in place.
"Wayne."
Jonathan's stomach turned. He traced the signature with trembling hands, as though to prove it was real. His ancestors. His blood. The Wayne line had not just lived in Gotham they had fed it, ensured its survival through the same ritual debt he had sworn to destroy.
Scrap shook his head, backing away as though the ink itself might bite. "It was them all along. All of 'em in on it. Not just the Blackthorns. The Waynes too."
Crane swore under his breath, spitting on the stone floor. "So your fight isn't against strangers, Jonathan. It's against your own damned blood."
Jonathan slammed the book shut, his breath ragged. For a moment the weight of the ledger, the riot smoke, the curse itself all of it pressed down on his shoulders like a noose. What right did he have to defy The Owe if his own family had signed its covenant? If the Waynes had helped build the very curse he now claimed to fight?
He stood, fists clenched, staring at the cracked ceiling. The voices of his father, his grandfather, his whole cursed line echoed in his head. A Wayne must pay. A Wayne must pay.
"Jonathan," Isadora said quietly, placing her hand against his arm. "Don't let this break you."
His eyes dropped to hers. There was no fear in them, only fury. "My family built this city's cage. Does that make me its jailer too?"
"No," she said, her voice low but firm. "It makes you the one who can tear the cage apart. They signed away their souls, Jonathan. You don't have to. You're not their shadow you're the flame."
The words struck something deep inside him, as though she had reached into the pit of his chest and steadied the storm there.
Scrap hugged himself, muttering, "Flame won't be enough. You burn somethin', it's gone. But curses stick. Ain't no burning that away."
Isadora turned on him with surprising sharpness. "Curses break the moment someone refuses to bow to them. That's what Jonathan is doing."
Jonathan lifted the book again, his voice steadier now, though anger trembled beneath it. "This ledger… it proves Gotham was bought with the blood of its children. But if it can be written, it can be ended. I'll see it burned."
Crane gave a grim nod. "Then we'll make sure the ashes don't bind another man's oath."
The lantern flickered, throwing their shadows tall and jagged against the stone. For the first time, Jonathan felt the past clawing at his heels not just the crimes of The Owe, but the sins of his own bloodline.
His fight wasn't against strangers in masks. It was against the foundation of Gotham itself.
And still, he swore: he would end it, even if he had to set fire to his family's name forever.