Gotham never slept.It trembled, it growled, it waited.
Beneath the flicker of a dying streetlamp, puddles rippled as cold wind curled between crumbling skyscrapers. The city's heart throbbed with a thousand secrets—every alley, every rooftop whispered fear. But tonight… tonight, something was different.
He stood atop Wayne Tower. The last place he'd ever expected to return.
Draven Kane wasn't a name Gotham remembered. He had left as a scared boy. He returned as something else entirely—a shadow with a heartbeat, forged in exile, scarred by truth. The symbol stitched across his chest wasn't a bat—it was an omen. A promise.
The Bat was gone. Gotham knew it. The gangs laughed in the dark. Politicians feasted while the city bled. And from the heart of chaos rose one voice, louder than the rest.
Laughter. Twisted, echoing laughter.
"Tell me, Draven," a voice crackled from the old radio clutched in his glove, distorted and venom-laced. "Do ghosts believe in resurrection? Because you're wearing a dead man's skin."
Joker.
He was back too.
Draven tightened his fists. His gloves creaked with the weight of a decision long overdue. This wasn't vengeance. This was something colder. Calculated. Gotham had been rotting from the inside long before the Joker's return. But now the disease had a face again.
And Draven? He was the cure.
He adjusted the mask—the matte black helm that wasn't quite Batman, yet not a stranger to fear. A new symbol, forged not from legend, but from scars. The city didn't need a hero.
It needed a weapon.
Below, sirens screamed. Smoke rose from the Narrows. Joker had lit the first match—and as always, he was watching from the shadows, waiting for the game to begin.
Draven leapt from the rooftop, cape slicing through the rain-soaked sky.
Tonight wasn't about saving Gotham.It was about burning down everything that made it bleed.
Because this time, the last light of Gotham…was also its darkest.