The church was colder than Jonathan remembered. Dust sheeted the pews, and candlewax lay melted in forgotten pools along the aisle.
The last time he had stood here, Father Mordecai Vale had bled upon the altar, giving himself to shadows that should have claimed him.
But the city had its own cruel mathematics sometimes debts weren't settled cleanly.
A cough broke the silence.
Jonathan spun, revolver raised.
From the darkness of the chancel steps, a figure staggered forward. Cloaked in tattered black, face gaunt and sunken, Vale leaned on the altar rail as though it alone kept him upright.
His hand shook, scar tissue where once blood had poured freely.
"You… should not… be here," Vale rasped, his voice fraying like burnt cloth.
Crane whispered, stunned. "Impossible. You were"
"Dead?" Vale's laugh was dry as parchment. "So I thought, too. But the Owe does not grant such mercy. It leaves men breathing only long enough to serve."
Jonathan holstered his gun and strode forward. "You knew I'd come back."
"I prayed you wouldn't," Vale said, sinking heavily into a pew. His eyes glowed faintly in the candlelight, fevered, half-mad. "But prayers mean little in this city. Only bargains are heard."
Jonathan sat opposite him. "Then speak. Last time, you gave me fragments. Tonight I need the whole truth."
Vale's breath rattled, but he drew from his robe a bundle of brittle pages bound with twine. He untied them with care, hands trembling.
"This is my confession. Decades of keeping the ledger, watching the blood tallies rise. Recording each name, each debt. I thought if I wrote it, I would be free of it. But writing only deepened the chains."
Crane hovered, uneasy. "And the Owe let you keep all this?"
"They did not know," Vale said, lips curling faintly. "I wrote in shadows. Scraps of memory, stolen hours. My one rebellion. Now, I give them to you."
He shoved the bundle into Jonathan's hands. The paper smelled of mildew and iron. Names scrawled in cramped hand covered every inch, whole families reduced to lines of ink. Wayne. Crane. Wells. Hundreds more.
Jonathan's stomach turned. "This is every tithe?"
"Not every," Vale corrected, his voice almost tender. "Only those I could bear to remember."
Silence stretched. The wind moaned through broken panes of stained glass, making the saints appear to weep.
Jonathan leaned forward. "Then tell me why. Why keep this city chained in blood? Why not burn it all?"
Vale's eyes gleamed with some final spark of conviction. "Because the Owe is not merely men. It is covenant. It is the soil beneath your feet, soaked in sacrifice. Gotham breathes through it. If the ledger burns, Gotham burns with it."
Crane scoffed. "You can't be serious"
"I am," Vale snapped, sudden fire in his voice. He clutched Jonathan's wrist with surprising strength. "Listen well, Wayne. The Owe was not built to enrich thieves. It was built to bind the city's fate. The founders feared chaos. They sealed their bargain in flesh, believing blood would buy permanence. And so it has."
Jonathan's throat tightened. "You're saying Gotham exists only because of… ritual murder?"
"Because of sacrifice," Vale corrected softly. "And your line the Waynes were the hand that signed first. You cannot change that. You can only decide whether to carry it forward… or end it."
Before Jonathan could respond, the sound of a footstep echoed in the nave.
All three men froze.
From the shadows of the transept, a figure stepped forward cloaked, graceful, silent as falling ash. Nina.
Her knife caught the faint light, gleaming like quicksilver.
"Father Vale," she said coolly. "The Court thanks you for your service. But debts unpaid must be collected."
Jonathan surged to his feet, revolver raised. "Stay back."
Nina's smile curved like the blade she carried. "You can't save him, Wayne. His life ended the night he bled on this altar. What walks now is only a delay."
Vale did not flinch. Instead, he exhaled, a sound halfway between relief and surrender. "At last."
He turned to Jonathan, eyes suddenly clear. "Do not waste yourself fighting shadows. The Owe cannot be destroyed by bullets. Only by fire that burns deeper than the foundations."
Jonathan's hand shook. "What fire?"
Vale's lips curved in a faint, knowing smile. "The kind only a Wayne can start."
Then Nina's blade slid beneath his jaw.
Crane shouted, moving forward, but Vale raised a trembling hand not to block, but to bless. His last act.
The knife cut quick and clean. His body sagged against the pew, blood darkening his robes.
Nina wiped the blade on her cloak. "One more record closed." Her eyes flicked to Jonathan. "Yours, though… yours is still open. The Court Below is eager to balance that debt."
Jonathan's rage burned, but Vale's words echoed in his skull: Fire deeper than foundations.
By the time he lowered his revolver, Nina was gone vanished back into shadow.
Jonathan knelt beside Vale's body. The old man's eyes stared glassy at the vaulted ceiling, lips parted as if whispering one final prayer. The bundle of pages weighed heavy in Jonathan's coat.
Crane muttered, "Another ghost to carry."
Jonathan closed Vale's eyes. "Not a ghost. A reckoning."
The bells outside tolled midnight again, each strike like a hammer on the city's bones.
Jonathan rose, the ledger clutched tight. For the first time, he did not feel cursed by his name. He felt the burden of its power.
And the fire it promised.