Location Unknown. Time Irrelevant.
It began with a whisper.
Not words, not sound, but something inside James's skull. A scraping. A hum beneath the thoughts. Like a moth beating against glass, trying to get in.
He was walking down Digbeth High Street. Or thought he was.
Then the street folded in on itself like paper.
And the world shattered.
—
When James opened his eyes, he was standing in a long corridor of mirrors. Endless, flickering. Each one a different version of him.
In one, he wore a Peaky Blinders cap and bled from a bullet wound.
In another, he was a soldier again, dying in the mud with half his face missing.
In another—he was on fire, laughing.
And in the center of the hallway stood Thaddeus Vale.
Cloaked in bone-colored silk. Pale hands folded behind his back. No weapons. Just presence. The kind that makes your stomach turn before you even understand why.
"Welcome to your fracture, James," Vale said calmly. "This is where the two halves of your soul try to kill each other."
James didn't move. The blade—his blade—was nowhere to be found.
"Where is this?" he asked.
"Not here. Not there," Vale replied. "I pulled you into the realm I made. Unlike yours, mine is not governed by the dead. It's governed by truth."
He waved a hand, and the mirrors began to spin. Faster and faster until they became a storm of selves. Hundreds of Jameses—some noble, some monstrous, all possible.
One slammed against the glass, screaming.
"See them?" Vale whispered. "All the versions of you that could have been. All the paths you didn't walk. This is what you're fighting for, isn't it? A better version of yourself?"
James said nothing. His pulse remained steady. His breath—controlled.
"You're trying to walk in both worlds," Vale continued. "You're trying to be a man and a myth. A brother and a ghost. But you'll never be strong enough until you let go of one."
James stepped forward. "Is that what you did? Let go of your humanity?"
Vale's eyes flicked with a hint of pride. "I didn't let it go. I sold it. Piece by piece. In exchange for power beyond reckoning. And soon, I'll collect my final payment—your soul."
The air cracked. A mirror exploded, shards raining down like glass raindrops made of memory.
James blinked and suddenly he was back in the trench.
Gunfire. Mud. Screams.
He looked down—he was twenty again, bleeding from a gut wound, and next to him, a dying soldier whispered, "We're not coming back, James."
He screamed—
—and snapped back into the mirror corridor.
Vale laughed, slow and cruel. "I can make you live every failure. Every regret. Every death."
"You think I'm afraid of that?" James growled.
"I think," Vale said, stepping closer, "you're already broken. I think you've cracked your mind open so wide trying to be a hero, you forgot what it's like to be a man."
James clenched his fists. The blade still wasn't there. The spirit-forged weapon was missing. But he felt something burning inside his palm—the mark.
He looked down.
It was glowing.
He raised his hand and pressed it to the nearest mirror.
The mirror didn't break.
It bent.
Folded inward like soft metal. Then it screamed—a low, wet, human moan.
And from its depths, James pulled out something—
—not the blade.
But a mask.
Charcoal-black. Featureless. The face of the being he became when he wasn't a man. The figure that stalked Birmingham's streets. The one the Blinders whispered about behind closed doors.
The Bat.
He put it on.
And the realm began to change.
—
The mirrors caught fire.
The corridor buckled.
Vale's smile vanished.
"What are you—?" he hissed.
"I'm not a man," James said, voice deeper now, inhuman. "Not anymore. I'm what happens when men like you burn everything worth saving."
He lunged.
This wasn't a battle of fists. It was a battle of will. Of soul. And for the first time, Thaddeus Vale staggered backward, face twisting with something he hadn't felt in a hundred years—
—fear.
James tackled him into the mirror.
The realm screamed.
And then—
Darkness.
—
When James awoke, he was lying on the floor of the boxing hall. Rain beat against the broken windows. His shirt was soaked through with sweat. Blood trickled from his nose.
But in his hand, clenched so tight his knuckles had gone white—
Was the blade.
Real now.
Physical.
Solid.
He'd dragged it out with him.
He stood slowly, the mask still on the floor beside him.
Polly entered seconds later, eyes wide. "You've been gone two days."
James didn't look at her.
"Get Tommy," he said. "And tell him we strike at dawn."