Jason forced his breathing into a steady rhythm, clinging to control with everything he had, but his body refused to follow through. His heart pounded violently against his ribs, each beat heavy and uneven, betraying the calm he was trying so hard to maintain.
The fear wasn't only in his mind, it felt like it was woven into the very air around him, seeping into his lungs with every breath he took. It settled deep in his chest with a cold and suffocating feel, spreading outward until it coiled tightly around his nerves.
No matter how much he tried to suppress it, to lock it down and push it aside, it lingered—seeming thick, invasive, and impossible to ignore.
He didn't hesitate again.
Jason turned sharply on his heel and bolted, every muscle in his body firing as he pushed himself forward with everything he had. He didn't know where he was going, didn't have a direction or a plan—just one instinct driving him forward: away.
Away from that thing. Away from the presence that pressed down on him, that seemed to dull his instincts, suppressing his ability to even think about fighting back. What he felt was clearly beyond fear, it was something deeper, something heavier. The aura the demon carried felt dense, suffocatingly malicious, like it existed solely to strip him of any sense of resistance.
And Jason knew.
Knew in a way that settled cold and certain in the back of his mind, that he didn't stand a chance against it. Not like this.
Still, he ran.
The ground beneath him stretched endlessly, a vast, desolate plane where pitch-black flames crawled and twisted across the surface like living shadows. They didn't burn like fire should—there was no heat, no crackling sound—but they moved, shifting and licking at the space around him as if they were aware of his presence.
His boots struck against the uneven terrain, his breath coming sharper and more urgent, as he tried to focus past the dread tightening around him.
"Wake up." He said to himself in a desperate and familiar manner.
He had done it before. Forced himself out. Torn himself free from the nightmare's grip through sheer will. He reached for that same resolve now, trying to anchor himself, to pull against whatever held him here. He pushed, mentally, straining against the invisible weight pressing down on him, searching for that fracture—that weak point he could exploit.
Then—
Something grabbed him.
An arm burst from the ground without warning, blackened and unnatural, its grip snapping tight around his leg. The force yanked him off balance instantly, his body slamming down hard against the surface. His arms came up on instinct, catching his fall just before his face could meet the jagged ground. The impact rattled through him, hard and jarring, knocking the breath from his lungs for a split second.
He twisted quickly, eyes snapping back toward where the arm had been.
It was gone.
Nothing but the shifting black flames remained, crawling lazily across the ground as if nothing had happened at all.
Jason pushed himself up with tensed muscles as adrenaline surged within him—but the moment he tried to move, something stopped him.
He froze.
His gaze dropped.
The flames seem to had found him.
They coiled around his legs, creeping upward in slow, haunting motions, wrapping around his lower body like restraints tightening with each passing second. They didn't burn, didn't sear his skin—but he could feel them. Not as heat, but as exerted pressure. As something locking him in place, anchoring him to the ground as effectively as chains.
He tried to move—forced his legs, strained against the hold—but nothing responded. He was completely immobilized.
"What do you want from me?!"
The words tore from him, edged with frustration as it broke through the oppressive silence of the void. His voice echoed faintly, swallowed quickly by the vast emptiness around him. He didn't stop struggling, didn't let the question weaken him.
Even now—even like this—he refused to just stand there and submit. Hopeless or not, that wasn't who he was.
The answer came anyway.
"Nothing too… extravagant."
The voice slithered through the space, low and distorted, each word dragging unnaturally as though it was sound forced into words. It didn't seem to come from a distance, nor did it approach.
It was suddenly there, right where he was.
The demon manifested directly in front of him, without any sort of transition or warning.
One moment empty space—next, it stood there, towering just enough to dominate his line of sight. The bandages wrapped tight around its form shifted subtly with its presence, and that same horrific smile stretched across its burned lips, revealing rows of gleaming, unnatural teeth.
"Jussssttt…" it continued, the word stretching into a hiss that sounded thick with anticipation. "…your soul."
The way it said it, slow and savoring, almost indulgent—felt less like a demand and more like a certainty. Like it wasn't asking.
Like it was already claiming.
Jason's jaw tightened, his eyes narrowing despite the pressure bearing down on him. "What are you?" he demanded, his voice steadier than he felt. There was tension in his posture, in the way his hands flexed slightly at his sides, testing the limits of what little movement he had left.
The demon didn't answer immediately.
Instead, it began to move.
Slowly.
Deliberately.
It circled him, its steps were uneven, its body twisting subtly with each shift in direction. The way it moved was still wrong—like something wearing a body it didn't fully understand, adjusting as it went. Its head tilted, then straightened, then tilted again at a sharper angle, as if studying him from multiple perspectives at once.
Jason couldn't turn fully to follow it.
His lower body remained locked in place, rooted by those crawling black flames, leaving him only able to track it partially—catching glimpses of it as it moved in and out of his direct line of sight.
And all the while, he could feel it.
That close and heavy presence.
Like it was closing in—not just around him, but on him.
"Between you and the other… the one who takes the wheel every now and then…" the demon's voice dragged on, each word stretched thin and uneven, like it was savoring the shape of them.
It continued its slow, circling path around Jason, its movements still carrying that same unsettling lack of coordination. "I thought you would've put two and two together by now." As it spoke, one of its hands rose to the back of its head, fingers slipping beneath the layers of bandage. With deliberate slowness, it began to unwrap them, each motion was careful, seeming almost ritualistic, the fabric loosening inch by inch as it circled.
Jason's gaze followed despite himself, his jaw tightening, every instinct in him screaming that whatever was underneath should not be seen for it might confirm his biggest fear of the face beneath those bandages.
"Or maybe…" the demon continued, its voice dipping into a more quiet and knowing tone, "…you already have your answer." The bandages unraveled further, strips falling away in soft, lifeless folds.
"You just can't seem to bring yourself to accept it." Its pacing slowed until it came to a stop directly in front of him. The final layers were coming undone now, the tension in the air thickening as each strip peeled away. "But even then…" it added, voice curling faintly with amusement, "…you can't deny the possibility of it."
The last wrap slipped free.
It let the linen fall.
For a brief moment, the figure stood there with its head bowed, its face still obscured by shadow as the discarded bandages settled at its feet. The black flames around them flickered faintly, their shifting glow casting warped patterns across its form. There was a pause just long enough to let the silence settle, to let the anticipation build into an heavy and suffocating feel.
"Your memories might be in fragments…" it said softly, almost conversational now. "Broken pieces. Entire gaps where things should be."
Then it began to move.
Slowly—deliberately—it raised its head.
And the face revealed beneath the wrappings was none other than his.
Not a copy. Not an imitation.
Jason.
The same structure, the same features—but wrong in ways that went beyond the physical. Scars traced across the skin, more pronounced, more jagged than they should have been, like they had been carved deeper.
The expression it wore twisted those familiar features into something unrecognizable, the corners of its mouth curling upward into a smile that didn't belong on his face—wide, and filled with that same unnatural glint of silver teeth.
Jason's breath caught, his body going rigid despite the restraint already locking him in place. For a moment, everything else faded—the void, the flames, the pressure—leaving only that reflection staring back at him.
"That's where I come in."
The voice, now coming from a face that mirrored his own, felt even more wrong, and invasive. It stepped closer, just enough to close the already suffocating distance between them, its presence pressing in on him from all sides.
"Why don't you just sit back…" it said, tilting its head slightly, that twisted smile never faltering, "…and let me handle the wheel from here on out?"
The words lingered, heavy with implication, before it leaned in just slightly, its gaze locking onto his with something that resembled excitement—frankly, anticipation.
"I'll be starting the new year… with a bang."
The words reached Jason as though dragged through water, distant and distorted, their edges blurring as his consciousness began to slip. Sound dulled as every sensation faded, and the world around him seemed to sink into a heavy, suffocating haze. His thoughts slowed, unraveling piece by piece, until even the effort to stay aware felt like something beyond his grasp.
His vision faltered, dark creeping in from the edges, swallowing everything in slow, inevitable waves. Yet even as it all began to fade, one image remained—clearer than anything else.
His own face.
Staring back at him.
Wearing a smile twisted into something deeply wrong and sinister. Filled with a quiet, terrifying certainty.
And then—
Nothing but darkness.
- - -
[Bruce Wayne's POV]
The news broke that evening, its glow flickering across the Batcave screens like a slow-burning warning, and Bruce stood there with the others as the report unfolded in grim detail. None of them spoke at first.
They didn't need to. The silence between them carried the weight of everything they had failed to prevent the night before—New Year's Eve, the chase, the near-capture that slipped through their fingers like smoke.
They had all felt it then, deep down, the quiet certainty that they were already too late, that whatever fate awaited Black Mask had been sealed the moment Jason disappeared into the night with him.
But knowing it in theory did nothing to soften the reality now laid bare before them, nothing to dull the visceral punch of seeing just how far Jason had gone.
Dick was the first to break the ice, his arms folding tightly across his chest as if trying to hold himself together, his jaw flexing while his eyes lingered on the screen a second too long before he forced them away. "I never would've thought Jason would go to such extremes," he said, his voice quieter than usual, stripped of its usual ease.
The words hung in the air, not really directed at anyone, more a question thrown into the void than a statement. His brow creased as he exhaled slowly, shaking his head just once. "All that… just to prove what?" The question didn't come as rhetorical, not entirely. It carried the faint, stubborn hope that there was still some logic to Jason's actions—some line of reasoning that hadn't completely fractured.
Bruce didn't answer immediately. His gaze remained fixed on the screen, but it had gone distant, as if he were looking through the footage rather than at it, already mapping out the inevitable confrontation that loomed ahead.
His expression hardened, the lines on his face sharpening as his brows drew together, the weight of the cowl somehow present even without it. When he finally spoke, his voice was low, controlled, but edged with a colder sense beneath the surface. "How he killed Black Mask was nothing short of inhumane."
In Bruce's mind, the line had not just been crossed—it had been obliterated. And with that came the quiet, unspoken conclusion: Jason needed to be stopped. Not reasoned with. Not chased. Stopped—before whatever was left of him slipped further into something Bruce wasn't sure he could bring back.
Dick's eyes shifted, almost instinctively, sliding toward Damian at the edge of the platform. The look he gave him was subtle, but not without meaning—half curiosity, edged with concern.
"Quite the role model you've got there," he remarked, the dryness in his tone doing little to mask the underlying tension. It wasn't a jab meant to provoke so much as it was an observation that refused to stay unspoken, a reflection of the uncomfortable reality now sitting between all of them.
Damian didn't dignify Dick's comment with a verbal response, but the look he shot him was sharp enough to pierce, a brief flicker of irritation passing through his otherwise composed expression.
It lingered for only a second before he turned his attention back to Bruce. His gaze was steady, thoughtful in a way that betrayed just how seriously he was weighing the situation. "In as much as I agree with how Jason's been running clean-up on this dump of a city," he began, his tone even but laced with a reluctant acknowledgment, "I can't say I agree with his current method."
There was no hesitation in his words, no uncertainty—just a cold, measured judgment. His eyes narrowed slightly as he continued, briefly tilting his head in Dick's direction without fully looking at him. "Like bird boy said, his methods are becoming too grotesque and extreme."
The admission seemed to cost him something, subtle though it was, as if aligning himself, even partially, with Dick's opinion was a concession he didn't particularly enjoy making.
Still, he pressed on, his voice firming with some conviction. "One doesn't have to go that far to make a point or get word across to the other scum of this city." As he finished, his gaze settled fully on Bruce, searching for direction, for the next step in what was quickly becoming an unavoidable confrontation.
Bruce didn't move immediately, but there was a shift in him, something settling into place behind his eyes as he came to a decision that had likely been forming long before this moment.
The dim light of the cave carved deeper shadows into his features, emphasizing the hard line of his jaw and the quiet resolve that defined him. When he finally spoke, his voice was low, controlled, and absolute in a way that left no room for misinterpretation.
"There's only one thing we can do," he said, his gaze sweeping briefly across his sons, lingering just long enough on each of them to make sure they understood the weight of what came next. "We take him down." The words landed heavily, but they didn't spark surprise—not here, not among them.
Dick didn't flinch, though his expression tightened almost imperceptibly, while Damian remained still, his face unreadable but his eyes sharp with focus. Even without speaking, it was clear they had all seen this coming. This had never been a matter of if—it had always been a matter of when.