The dawn came gray and bitter, its light weak against Gotham's soot-stained sky.
In the clinic where she had once stitched wounds and birthed children, Isadora Wayne stood before a crowd of women who had known too much silence.
Widows of riots. Mothers of sons hanged in alleys. Sisters of men who had disappeared into The Owe's tunnels and never returned.
The clinic smelled of boiled herbs and sweat, but the air carried something sharper now: defiance.
Jonathan sat in the far corner, his head bowed over the pages of Vale's blueprints. His hands shook as he traced the symbols, as if the city itself had taken root beneath his skin.
He was present, but his spirit wavered. For once, the oath-bearer of Gotham seemed unsure.
And that was when Isadora knew the weight had passed to her.
She stepped forward, her voice steady though her heart thundered.
"You've all lost something," she began. Her words echoed in the cramped room. "Your sons. Your brothers. Your fathers.
Your homes. And every time, they told you it was fate. Fire, sickness, hunger, riots they told you it was the city's curse, as though Gotham itself demanded your silence."
The women shifted, their eyes hollow but listening.
Isadora held up one of Vale's pages the courthouse, etched with circles of blood and fire. "But it wasn't fate. It was design. They built it this way. The Owe has fed on your families for generations. Every sacrifice, every death, every drop of blood was taken to buy the power of a few. And they are not finished. They want another century sealed."
Gasps rippled through the crowd. Some clutched rosaries. Others pressed fists to their mouths.
Isadora's voice grew harder. "But I will not let my child be born into chains. I will not let my husband's blood be written as the city's final tithe. If Gotham was built on our silence, then let our voices burn louder than their fires."
Her words struck the room like a bell.
A midwife in the front row, her hair streaked with gray, lifted her chin. "What can voices do against knives and masks?"
Isadora answered without hesitation. "Voices carry truth. Truth carries fire. They hide in shadows because they fear the light of witnesses. If every alley knows, if every tavern whispers, if every woman tells the truth of what they have done, then even their masks will not protect them."
Another woman, young and scarred from the riots, clenched her hands. "And if they come for us?"
"Then we meet them with more than silence." Isadora's tone softened, but her eyes burned. "I don't ask you to pick up a blade. I ask you to pick up your courage.
If they burn one tavern, we gather in three more. If they silence one of us, ten more will speak. They have written our suffering into ledgers now we write it into the streets."
Scrap, sitting near the doorway, lifted his head. His grief-hollowed eyes found strength in her words, and for the first time since Kora's death, his lips moved in something like agreement.
Jonathan looked up at last. His eyes met hers, and though pain lined his face, there was a flicker of pride. A recognition: she was not standing beside him anymore. She was standing with Gotham.
The women began to murmur. Not in fear, but in resolve. Some nodded. Some clasped hands. A chant rose low at first, then stronger:
"No more silence. No more silence."
Isadora let it build, let it swell like a tide, and for the first time, Gotham's women sounded louder than the city's grief.
When the chanting stilled, she spoke once more, her voice sharp as steel.
"We will not be sacrifices. We will be the fire that consumes their ritual. And when they demand Wayne blood, they will find it shielded by all of Gotham's daughters."
The room thundered with approval.
Jonathan rose slowly to his feet. He looked upon Isadora his wife, his anchor, and now his equal in the war for Gotham. Her strength steadied his trembling hands. For the first time since learning of the ritual, he believed it could be broken.
And in that moment, the city shifted. Not in stone or in fire, but in spirit. Gotham had found a new voice, and it carried Isadora's name.