Bruce Wayne POV
Bruce Wayne came home to silence that felt wrong before he even saw the fire.
The air was too warm.
Too sharp.
Smoke curled through the corridors of Wayne Manor like something alive, searching, feeding, remembering. Every instinct in him screamed that something irreversible had already happened before he crossed the threshold.
Then he saw it.
The fire wasn't spreading.
It was focused.
Centered in the main hall.
Bruce pushed forward, coughing through smoke, boots striking burning wood as he forced himself deeper inside. "Mother…? Father…?"
The answer came in heat.
And light.
In the middle of the room, Thomas and Martha Wayne were suspended in flame. Not collapsing, not falling—already gone, already reduced to something unrecognizable beneath an unnatural fire that did not behave like anything Bruce had ever seen.
It didn't consume the house.
It ignored it.
Like it had a single purpose.
And that purpose had already been fulfilled.
Bruce froze.
His mind refused the image for half a second too long.
Then he saw the stairs.
A child was walking down them.
Around his age.
Long brown hair.
Calm steps.
A robe that looked too deliberate, too composed, too wrong for a burning house.
The boy didn't run.
Didn't hesitate.
He simply descended as if the destruction around him was background noise.
Bruce's fists clenched.
"Who are you?" he demanded, voice cracking with something between rage and disbelief. "What have you done with my mother and father?"
The boy didn't even look surprised.
He looked… disappointed.
As if Bruce's reaction was predictable.
"Your parents are fools," the boy said evenly. "They should have just shut their mouths and cooperated. Then they wouldn't have died."
Bruce felt something inside him fracture.
"You—"
The boy walked past him.
Just like that.
As if Bruce wasn't important enough to remain in his path.
Something snapped.
Bruce reached out and grabbed his shoulder.
"Wait. Come back here."
The moment his hand made contact—
Pressure hit him.
Not physical force.
Something deeper.
A presence so heavy it felt like standing beneath collapsing reality itself. Bruce's grip faltered instantly, his body reacting before his mind could even interpret what was wrong.
The boy turned his head slightly.
And looked at him.
That was enough.
Bruce froze.
It wasn't anger in that gaze.
It was certainty.
Finality.
The kind of look something gives when it has already decided the outcome of everything that exists around it.
"You amateur," the boy said quietly.
Bruce tried to hold his ground.
Tried.
The next moment, he was gone from the boy's shoulder.
A single motion.
A push that wasn't just strength—it was precision, control, and something far beyond human biomechanics.
Bruce hit the floor hard, sliding across burning wood.
When he looked up again, the boy was already at the exit.
Walking out of Wayne Manor as flames swallowed the structure behind him.
As if nothing inside mattered anymore.
As if everything inside had already been resolved.
Bruce stood shakily, staring at the burning house, the bodies, the impossible fire that refused to behave like any known chemical or magical phenomenon.
And then, quietly—too quietly for a child standing in the ruins of his life—he spoke to himself.
"…How disappointing."
The voice wasn't Bruce's.
It came from the boy.
Bruce's breath caught.
He was still watching him.
Even now.
"Had so much potential," the boy continued, almost absentmindedly. "I guess I will not be gaining the ally of the Wayne family."
Then he was gone.
Not running.
Not escaping.
Simply leaving, as if the world had already moved on without needing permission.
Bruce Wayne stood alone in the burning remains of his home.
And for the first time in his life—
He understood what helplessness truly meant.