The night pressed heavy on Gotham, its fog smothering even the streetlamps like a shroud.
Jonathan and Isadora made their way through the ruins of St. Brigid's vestry, guided by nothing but a single lantern.
The air reeked of mildew, smoke, and blood long dried into the stone. Father Vale's final words still haunted Jonathan's ears: If the ledger burns, Gotham burns with it.
But it wasn't the ledger that Isadora carried beneath her arm. It was a stack of parchment Vale had hidden deep beneath the altar, sealed in oilskin and bound with faded twine.
The bundle felt heavier than its weight, as though knowledge itself had soaked it in lead.
Scrap trailed behind, his silence unnatural. He hadn't spoken much since Kora's execution.
His shoulders carried grief like an anvil, his fists clenched as though one punch could erase his pain. Even Crane, usually quick with a mocking word, held his tongue.
Jonathan finally broke the silence. "Vale said the ledger was the city's spine. If this is what he left behind, then it must be its heart."
Isadora stopped at a cracked pew and laid the bundle down. Her fingers shook, not with fear but with urgency. She untied the twine and spread the papers across the wood.
The lantern's glow revealed meticulous drawings, each one etched with precision: diagrams of buildings, blueprints of tunnels, sigils drawn into corners, and symbols scrawled beside measurements.
Crane leaned closer, squinting. "That's no scripture. That's… architecture."
Isadora's eyes darted across the pages. "Not just architecture. Ritual architecture."
Jonathan frowned. "Explain."
She lifted one page the courthouse, drawn in crisp black ink. But unlike any blueprint he'd ever seen, its measurements were overlaid with circles and marks.
At the heart of the courthouse, beneath the central chamber, was a pattern Jonathan recognized at once: the double circle of The Owe.
"They built it into the foundations," Isadora whispered. "Every column, every arch, every brick aligned to carry sound, light, and even blood. The courthouse isn't just a building. It's an altar."
Scrap muttered, his voice hoarse, "You mean to say every trial, every sentence that's ever been passed there…"
"Sacrament," Isadora said, her tone like iron. "A continuation of the covenant. Justice in Gotham has always been sacrifice, dressed in law's clothing."
Jonathan's stomach twisted. The courthouse had always been a symbol of order, of the city's attempt at civility in the face of chaos. Now it stood revealed as the opposite: a temple of blood masked as stone.
He pressed a hand to the parchment. "Why now? Why are they surfacing all this now?"
Isadora flipped through more sheets. Some bore dates scrawled in Vale's hand years stretching back to Gotham's founding, each marking a "tithe."
Fires at the docks, epidemics in the wards, mass hangings during the riots. Each one lined up with a sacrifice of blood to fuel the city's prosperity.
Then she stopped. The last page was fresher, its ink black and sharp. At its top: The Centennial Rite.
Jonathan read the words beneath, every letter sinking like a stone in his chest.
A tithe of blood shall be paid by fire, so that Gotham endures another hundred years. The court shall convene in the house of law, where the first covenant was sealed.
Blood of the guilty shall be spilled, and the blood of the founders shall crown it.
Jonathan froze. "Blood of the founders…"
Isadora met his gaze. Her lips parted, but she did not soften the truth. "It means Wayne blood, Jonathan. The Owe intends to seal Gotham's next century with you."
The silence was broken only by the drip of water from the ruined ceiling. Scrap let out a ragged breath and slammed his fist into the pew. "No. No more. They can't take anyone else."
His voice cracked, his grief for Kora bleeding through every syllable. "If they want fire, then we'll drown them in it first."
Crane shook his head, pale beneath the lantern glow. "You're talking about striking at the courthouse itself. That's suicide. Dozens of them. Maybe hundreds. Masked, armed, protected by every elite in Gotham."
Jonathan stared down at the parchment, his heart hammering. For years he had thought his war was against corruption, against gangs, against the rot of the streets.
But this was deeper. Older. The city itself had been built to consume lives, and now his was at the center of its hunger.
"Maybe suicide," he said at last. "But if we let them finish this ritual, Gotham won't just be corrupt. It'll be enslaved for another century." He turned to Isadora. "Can you stop it?"
Her eyes burned with the kind of fire that didn't yield. "Not stop it. But we can break it." She tapped the drawings. "The ritual depends on the design the alignment of sound, blood, and fire.
If we can disrupt the architecture, collapse a column, flood a chamber, even a single break might shatter the rite."
Scrap's grief hardened into determination. "Then let's break every damn stone they've built."
Crane muttered darkly, "You're all mad. And yet" He glanced toward Jonathan. "I'll be damned if I let those masked vultures write my death into their ledger."
Jonathan lifted the final sheet of parchment. At its bottom, Vale had written in his careful, fading hand: Every debt has a breaker. But the breaker must bleed twice once for himself, once for the city.
Jonathan's throat tightened. His own blood was the cost. He folded the page carefully and slipped it into his coat.
Then he looked at the others his wife, his allies, the last fragile light against Gotham's darkness.
"Then it's decided," Jonathan said. His voice carried the weight of oath. "If the city was built on our blood, then let mine end the debt. But we'll make them choke on their ritual before they taste it."
The lantern flickered, casting the courthouse's blueprint in shadow and flame. For the first time, Jonathan saw it not as a temple, but as a battlefield.
And Gotham, at last, seemed ready to burn.