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The first time Jason hears the dead clearly, he’s standing in the burned-out shell of an apartment complex two blocks from Crime Alley, hands shoved in his pockets to keep from clenching them into fists. Gotham winter gnaws cold and wet at his bones. It’s supposed to be a routine patrol.
Then— You shouldn’t be here.
Jason goes still. The voice isn’t behind him. It’s inside the room, inside the soot, inside the bones of the place. A man’s voice, frayed with grief.
He draws his gun slowly. Not for the ghost. For whatever might be using the ghost.
She’s going to take you.
Jason swallows hard. “What are you talking about?”
The air crackles like static. The voice frays into something raw and desperate.
Help us before He—
—before He finds—
Then silence.
The smell of burning insulation and blood hits him all at once. He staggers back against the wall, trying to breathe.
This keeps happening. Voices that start in warning and end in panic. Names he doesn’t know. Places he’s never been.
He lasted two weeks before calling Constantine.
CONSTANTINE ARRIVES LIKE A STORM THAT SMOKES
John leans on the motel doorframe, one hand stuffed deep in his coat pocket, the other holding a cigarette like it’s the only thing tethering him to the earth.
He looks Jason up and down once—hair damp from the shower, trembling hands hidden by the sleeves of a worn t-shirt.
“So,” John exhales smoke, “you’re hearing the dead.”
Jason doesn’t answer.
John closes the door behind him. “Bloody hell. That bad, is it?”
Jason wants to say no. Instead he laughs once—humorless and sharp.
“They’re not just talking to me. They’re pulling.”
Constantine’s smirk dies immediately. “Pulling toward what?”
Jason hesitates too long.
John’s voice drops to something grim. “Kid. If something dead’s trying to take you somewhere, you tell me right now.”
Jason runs a hand through his hair, pacing, trying to find the words. “I see the same place when I sleep. A town. Church steeple. Spanish moss everywhere. It’s hot—and quiet—too quiet. I can smell swampwater. I can hear screaming. And I wake up with mud on my clothes.”
Constantine swears under his breath—not dramatic, not British flair—just real fear. “You didn’t go to that town in your mind, It came to you.”
They drive for three days. Jason doesn’t sleep—doesn’t risk it—but he still sees flashes:
a lantern swinging, a woman’s shadow behind a church window, a man digging a grave already filled
John spreads maps across the dashboard, muttering spells that Jason pretends not to understand. But every attempt to pinpoint the place ends the same way—ink runs, GPS glitches, cell service dies.
Jason knows where to turn only because something under his ribs aches if he tries another direction.
Finally the trees thicken. The air grows hotter. The asphalt cracks like bone.
The sign rises from the fog.
WELCOME TO GRAYSON HOLLOW.
Where sinners rest.
Jason’s breath catches. He’s been here— in every nightmare.
Constantine whispers, “I know your face, mate. I know what you look like when you’re scared. And I don’t blame you.”
Jason doesn’t answer. Because he is scared. Because something in this place has been waiting for him. It feels like a hand on his spine.
Gray, warped houses. Porches sinking under their own weight. No kids. No stray dogs. No televisions behind windows. Just silence layered thick over everything—clotted and stale. They check into the motel because that’s what the locals expect them to do. Because it’s the only place to go, and because they’re being watched.
The clerk’s voice is monotone. “Visitors don’t walk alone after dark. Stay in your room if you hear the bell.”
John pockets the room key. Jason watches the clerk’s hands—nails blackened around the edges like he’s been digging.
As they head to their room, Jason asks quietly, “Can the dead drag someone somewhere like this? Physically?”
“Not unless something bigger is helping them.” Constantine doesn’t sugarcoat it.
Jason nods once, jaw locked. “So that’s what we kill.”
John stops walking. His voice is low. Scared.
“Jason. Things like this aren’t meant to be killed.”
Jason stares at him. “Yeah? Neither was I.”
They reach the door. The key scrapes into the lock. Before they step inside, Jason hears it— not a whisper this time. A chorus, layered, desperate:
He’s coming.
He’s coming.
He’s coming.
Jason whips around, guns drawn— but there’s no one in the parking lot. Only lanterns flickering across the town, one by one. Lighting up like signal fires.
Constantine’s face drains of color. “They’re not trying to scare us, mate. They’re warning us.”
Somewhere far off, a single bell tolls. Once. Twice. Three times.
Jason Todd has never been good at running from danger. But this time— he’s not sure there’s anywhere to run to.
They agree to split up because it feels like the wrong choice — and in places like this, the wrong choice is usually the honest one. Jason heads toward the church.
Constantine heads into town. Neither says be careful because they both know it won’t help.
THE LOCALS SPEAK IN WARNINGS THAT SOUND LIKE HOSPITALITY. Constantine walks into the only bar in Grayson Hollow — a dim room lit with lanterns though it’s barely noon. Every head lifts. Every conversation stops.
He smiles like he’s never bled. “Afternoon. Hopin’ to learn a thing or two about your fine town.”
A woman in a floral dress sets down her drink without looking at him. “Learning ain’t the same as understanding, sugar.”
A man in work boots adds, “And understanding ain’t the same as surviving.”
Constantine chuckles. “I do love a warm welcome.”
But no one laughs. A man with a preacher’s son's face and hands that look like they’ve buried too many things leans forward. “You got the smell of the crossroads on you. That’s fine. But your friend? That boy’s marked.”
John’s eyes narrow. “And what exactly has marked him?”
The man takes a slow sip. “Something that don’t forgive. Don’t forget. He don’t want sinners to die clean.”
The woman taps her manicured nail against her glass — a tiny, sharp rhythm. “Best you let Him take the boy. Better one soul fed than a hundred.”
John’s voice drops, low and venom thick. “Not happening.”
The whole bar answers in unison — not loud, not aggressive, just final “It already is.”
The church sits like a carcass — white paint blistering, steeple twisted as if lightning had tried to tear it off and failed. The heavy metal chains that wrapped the front doors earlier are gone. Not removed — gone.
Jason tries the handle. The door swings open, silently. Inside smells like dust and river water. Pews are lined in perfect rows, but every Bible has been torn open — pages missing, bindings frayed, spines broken.
The altar is clean.Too clean.
Jason moves forward, boots muffled on the old boards. The quiet rings like tinnitus. In the very center aisle, a single lantern burns low.
He sees shapes sit in the pews — not bodies, but the suggestion of them. Weight in the cushions, silhouettes where light bends wrong. For a second Jason’s breath catches—
Then the lantern flickers, and the pews are empty. He should leave. He walks deeper.
At the pulpit sits a book — torn cover, leather dry and blackened at the edges. Jason reaches for it. The moment his fingers brush the spine, the world shifts.
The church is full. People sit in every pew. Dresses starched, hats held tight, hands folded with the desperate devotion of sinners bargaining.
Jason can’t move.
A preacher stands at the altar — broad shoulders, face hidden in shadow, voice too smooth. “He is risen in wrath, and we bow to be spared.”
The congregation repeats the words in unison, like a hymn made of surrender.
Jason tries to take a step — nothing. The preacher’s head turns without his body moving.
His attention fixes on Jason. “Welcome home.”
The illusion snaps. The church is empty again.
Jason’s pulse thrashes at his throat. He breathes in — slow, controlled — and arches his hand toward the book again. Picking it up now feels like touching a landmine.
He opens it anyway.
The handwriting inside is frantic — black marker tearing through paper.
THE DEAD ARE NOT TRAPPED. WE ARE.
HE DOESN’T LET US DIE UNTIL WE SERVE.
THE BOY WITH TWO DEATHS WILL BREAK THE CHAIN.
IF HE DOESN’T JOIN IT FIRST.
Jason’s stomach turns. Boy with two deaths.
He doesn’t need to ask who that means.
He flips the page — and the next line isn’t in the same handwriting. It’s cleaner. Neater. Familiar. Like someone was waiting.
JASON TODD — YOU WERE ALWAYS MINE TO CLAIM.
Something creaks behind him. He draws both guns and spins — but it isn’t a demon or a monster.
It’s a child. A little boy in church clothes, barefoot, eyes wide and terrified.
Jason lowers his guns immediately. “Hey—hey. It’s okay. I’m not gonna hurt you.”
The boy backs away, shaking his head violently. “You can’t save us.”
Jason’s voice softens — that careful, fragile way he never learned from Bruce but figured out on his own. “Why not?”
The child sobs — silent tears, no sound. “Because He loves you.”
And then the boy vanishes — snuffed out like breath against glass. Jason stands alone again, hands shaking despite himself.
Somewhere deep in the church, something large moves — deliberate and heavy, like it has all the time in the world.
But the footsteps don’t get closer. They get lower. Down. Underneath.
There’s a basement.
And something in it has been waiting for Jason Todd for a very, very long time.
Meanwhile — the bar doors slam open, Constantine storms out into the street, coat flaring, cigarette shaking in his teeth. The locals just watch him go — silent, smiling with sympathy that feels like mockery.
Behind him someone calls out, voice syrup-slow and cruelly gentle: “Hope you said goodbye to your friend proper, darlin’. The church don’t give back.”
Jason and Constantine both realize something at the same time — miles apart: This isn’t a haunting.
It’s a harvest.
Jason doesn’t go to the basement. He forces himself not to. He’s standing at the top of the stairwell — door cracked open, humidity rolling up from the darkness like the breath of something enormous — when every survival instinct in his body begins to scream.
He takes one step back. It’s the first smart thing he’s done since entering the church. That’s when the whole building shifts — like it’s breathing around him. The lanterns gutter. The floorboards groan. The shadows get longer. And then something rushes up the stairs.
Jason raises both guns and fires without hesitation — the muzzle flashes illuminate sharp teeth, a hand far too big, a face that isn’t a face at all —
Except none of it hits. The bullets slow midair like they’re swimming through water and then twist, turning point-first… back toward him. Jason’s eyes go wide — not enough time to move — And then the world shatters.
A body slams into him, knocking him sideways to the floor as the bullets carve through the altar instead of his chest. Someone is on top of him — holding him down, shielding him.
Someone very dead.
She looks human, but she’s not breathing — a woman in a torn church dress, muddy bare feet, hair tangled with leaves and river muck. Hands tight on his shoulders. Her face is inches from his. Her eyes are terrified. Not of Jason. Of what’s coming.
“You weren’t supposed to come back.”
Jason’s breath leaves him. His voice cracks into a whisper. “Who— who are you?”
She presses a shaking hand to his cheek — warm where she touches him, freezing everywhere else. “Someone who remembers you. Someone who didn’t want you to live.”
He can’t process that. Not now. Not with the heavy steps coming up from the basement again — slower this time, savoring.
The ghost shoves him. Not away. Behind her. Like a shield. She’s shaking so hard she looks like she’ll fragment.
“Run when I tell you to.”
Jason can hear his pulse pounding, can hear the things on the stairs dragging bone and metal and hunger with them. He reaches for her arm — not to pull her in front of him, but to pull her out. “I’m not leaving you—”
She turns, voice exploding like thunder.
RUN.
And Jason Todd — stubborn, reckless, impossible to scare — runs. The church doors slam shut behind him. Something hits the other side so hard dust falls from the beams. Jason grabs the handles — they don’t budge.
Inside, he hears her scream.
Not in fear. In pain. Nothing in this world hurts ghosts except something older than death. Jason hits the doors again, rage swallowing terror. “OPEN IT! OPEN THE GODDAMN DOORS!”
But they don’t. They won’t. And behind them the screaming stops. Not because she’s free. Because she’s gone. Jason stands there shaking — breath broken, hands curled white-knuckled around the handles.
She died protecting him. Ghosts don’t bleed. But Jason feels like he watched someone die in front of him.
Meanwhile, Constantine tries to reach the church. He’s back in the street, sprinting toward the steeple when a pickup truck jerks sideways, blocking the road. Five men climb out — quiet smiles, empty eyes.
“Preacher’s with your friend now,” one says.
“Ain’t polite to interrupt.”
Constantine raises a hand — sigils already glowing at his fingertips — when a woman steps onto her porch, holding a crying newborn.
“Please don’t fight, mister. If you fight, He takes the children first.”
John freezes. That’s the point of the trap — he realizes it a split second too late. He flees left — and immediately hears a gun cock behind him. He cuts through a backyard — only to find an open pit full of recently turned earth. He scales a fence — and comes face-to-face with three men holding chains. Every route is blocked. Not to stop him. To slow him.
One man says, voice slow and pitying “Grayson Hollow don’t hate you, son. We just got orders.”
John spits at the dirt. “If you think I’m lettin’ him die—”
The man interrupts, soft — too soft: “No. You’re lettin’ him be reborn.”
And then — a bell tolls. Once. Twice. Three times.
Constantine’s eyes go wild. “No no no no— not yet—!”
He runs harder, shoulder-checking a man aside, taking a punch that rattles his skull, kicking down a makeshift barricade, and sprinting barefoot over broken bottles as he loses a shoe.
He reaches the church hill just in time to see Jason standing alone outside the locked doors, fists bleeding from pounding on them.
Smoke creeps out between the cracks. Lanterns across the town brighten like eyes opening. John reaches him and grabs his shoulder. Jason— LOOK AT ME.”
Jason turns, face twisted with something raw and fury-sick. “Something killed her— something took her — and I’m going to—”
Constantine grips him tighter. You’re already doing what He wants.”
Jason goes still. The bell tolls a fourth time. The doors begin to open — by themselves. And from the darkness below the altar, something begins climbing the stairs. Not fast. Not eager. Patient. Certain. Claiming what it believes it already owns. Constantine whispers like a man standing on railroad tracks with the train already coming:
“We’re out of time.”
The church doors finish opening. Not with violence. With welcome. Jason’s guns are drawn. Constantine’s hands are glowing with sigils that burn like coals. Neither of them moves. Because what steps out from the shadows isn’t a monster. It’s Bruce’s voice.
Deep. Calm. Unyielding. The voice Jason grew up with. The voice he used to trust more than God. “Jason.”
Jason flinches like he’s been hit.
Constantine grabs his arm. “Don’t listen. That isn’t him.”
But the voice keeps coming, rich and steady — echoing through the dark like the church walls remember it. “Son, come home.”
Jason shakes his head hard — the movement jerky, panicked. “That’s not him. That’s not him.”
But the thing inside the church knows exactly where to press. “You’re tired. I know you are. You don’t have to fight anymore.”
Jason’s breath comes too fast. He steps forward without realizing it.
Constantine yanks him back. “Jason — look at me — if you go in there, you’re done.”
But the voice doesn’t stop. “You don’t have to pretend to be angry. You don’t have to carry it alone.”
Jason’s fingers loosen around his guns. His shoulders drop. He looks young — too young — all over again.
His voice breaks open. “Bruce never said that.”
Deep in the shadows, the creature laughs — not with joy, but with victory. “That is why you needed to hear it.”
Jason’s knees nearly buckle. Constantine curses under his breath — not at Jason, not at the creature — at the realization of the trap.
This thing didn’t pick Bruce’s voice to torment Jason. It picked it because it’s what Jason always wanted to hear.
John forces his body in front of Jason, eyes locked on the darkness. “You’re not taking him.”
The voice shifts — still Bruce, but colder. “He’s already mine.”
Jason jerks like a puppet pulled by strings.
The creature continues, low and steady, weaponizing memory: “You died angry. I can give you peace. You live angry. I can give you purpose.”
Jason whispers, strangled: “Stop.”
The creature steps closer — still hidden, still massive. The boards groan under its weight. “You were meant for me. You bleed rage. You breathe vengeance. I am not here to cage you. I am here to use you.”
Jason drops to his knees like his body gives out under the weight of shame he thought he buried years ago.
Constantine crouches, grips his face hard — forcing him to look at him, not the church. “Jason Todd, listen to me. You’re not broken because you’re angry. You’re angry because you lived.”
Jason can barely speak. “He sounds like Bruce—”
“Because that’s the knife you never learned to pull out,” John fires back. “Doesn’t mean you let him cut you with it.”
Thunder cracks inside the church without sound or light — just pressure, thick and suffocating. Jason screams suddenly — not in fear. In pain. Something is pulling him — not by the body, but by the soul. John reacts instantly — digging in his coat, ripping through pages of a grimoire, fingers flying. He knows any wrong spell will get them both killed, but any wasted second means the creature wins.
He flips through options under his breath — frantic: “Banishing’s too weak — containment needs blood — consecration needs a willing spirit — spirit-path inversion needs a tether — fk, fk—”
Jason’s nails scrape the dirt as he’s dragged forward inch by inch. He gasps “John— please—!”
The creature speaks in Bruce’s voice again — soft as a hand on the back of the neck. “Let go. I’ll take care of you.”
Jason begins to believe it.
Constantine sees it — and makes a choice he hates. He draws a knife, slices his palm, slams his bleeding hand down on Jason’s chest, and snarls a spell that scorches the air: “I VIIXE THE SPIRIT FROM HIS FLESH — BIND NOT THE BODY BUT THE WILL — ALL CLAIMS ARE BROKEN.”
Light erupts from the sigil carved into John’s skin — not holy, not demonic, just defiant. Jason’s body jerks — the pull stops — he collapses against John’s shoulder, shaking. But the spell has a price. Constantine staggers, choking as blood spills from his nose, eyes, mouth. His knees hit the dirt. He barely stays conscious.
The church goes silent.
Then the creature speaks again — still in Bruce’s voice, but now seething with anger beneath the calm. “He has chosen pain.”
Constantine wipes the blood from his mouth and smiles — savage and triumphant. “Better that than you.”
The church bells toll again. Not four times. Five.
Jason’s head snaps up — cold understanding crawling through him. “The ritual. It’s cycles. Bells. We’re not stopping it — we’re in it.”
Constantine looks toward the town — the lanterns burning brighter, the streets filling, people walking barefoot toward the church. “We’re running out of time.”
Jason stands — eyes wet, hands trembling, jaw set like iron. “We’re ending this.”
He says it like a promise. And like a man who knows he might not survive.
The church doors open wider. Not to welcome both men. Just Jason.
A wind rolls out of the darkness — wet, swamp-cold — and hits John like a wall. The sigils on his arms flare in warning. Jason doesn’t even feel it.
The creature speaks again, still wearing Bruce’s voice like it was tailored for Jason’s wounds. “You’ve always stood alone. Come finish what you were made for.”
Jason’s jaw clenches. “Drop the Bruce impression.”
The voice softens — sympathetic, cruel. “You only hate the voice because you needed it.”
Constantine tries to step forward — and is thrown back five meters, hitting the dirt so hard it cracks the air out of his lungs. He claws upright and staggers forward again — this time slower, more cautious — as if pushing against hurricane-force wind. “Jason — don’t be stupid. I’m coming with you.”
Jason turns — calm in a way that hurts to look at. “You can’t.”
And John sees why.
The barrier isn’t reacting to Jason at all. Whatever is in the church wants him — him alone — and it’s holding the door open only for him. Anything else — anyone else — is treated as an intruder.
Constantine spits blood, eyes blazing with panic and fury. “You really think I’m letting a bloody abomination drag you in there by yourself?”
Jason doesn’t raise a gun. Doesn’t shout. Doesn’t make a speech.
He just steps forward — quiet as a confession. “John… this thing won’t fight you.”
Constantine freezes.
“It only wants me.”
John’s voice tears raw at the edges. “Doesn’t matter. Maybe I can’t fight it. But I can sure as hell fight with you.”
Jason smiles — small, broken, apologetic. “That’s why you’re not coming.”
And before Constantine can even curse, the church’s magic responds to Jason’s choice — the old, hunting kind of magic that predates good and evil.
The barrier slams into existence — Jason and John on opposite sides. John pounds against it with his fists, with sigils, with spells half-finished and dangerous. None of them make a dent.
His voice cracks. “Jason — don’t do this — don’t let it isolate you — that’s the trap — THAT’S THE BLOODY TRAP—!”
Jason looks at him through the barrier — pale, steady, eyes full of fear he won’t use as an excuse. “Everything about my life has been a trap. But this is one I’m walking into on my terms.”
The creature steps closer — its shape still hidden, its voice still stolen, but its presence enormous. “Come, son.”
Jason answers without a tremor. “Stop calling me that.”
And he walks inside. The doors slam shut with a finality that feels like earth closing over a coffin.
Constantine hurls himself forward — the barrier rejects him, throwing him back a second time. He hits the ground, choking on dust and rage. “JA–SON!”
No reply. No footsteps. No sound. Just the ringing of a bell — slow, deliberate, ceremonial. Six times. John’s face twists — not with fear.
With certainty. “It’s hunting him from the inside.”
He lifts a shaking hand to the barrier, palm flat against cold air. “Hold on, mate. You’ve held through worse.”
Then he pulls himself up, blood on his teeth, and starts chanting again. Not in desperation now. In preparation. Because if Jason Todd is walking into hell alone, John Constantine intends to kick the fucking door down behind him.
Inside the church Jason faces the darkness. The doors are gone. The pews are gone. Time is gone. The church is now a place that wasn’t built — it was born. The voice comes again — no longer imitating Bruce. Now it’s itself. Vast. Ancient. Hungry.
“You are anger given flesh. Come stand beside me.”
Jason raises his guns — knowing they’ll do nothing. “That’s the problem, isn’t it?”
He steps forward into the darkness. “I don’t want to stand beside you.”
The creature laughs — and the floor splits open beneath him.
Jason falls. And the bells begin to toll again — Seven. Eight.
Something has started. And now Constantine has very little time to break into a place that does not exist on any map — to drag back a man that nothing in the universe was ever meant to return.
The barrier around the church thrummed like a heartbeat — slow and confident, as though utterly certain John Constantine would never get through in time.
It had every right to feel smug. John was bleeding out his nose, he tasted copper and dirt, and the sigils on his arms were fading like cheap tattoos.
But he still wasn’t done.
“Fine,” he rasped, wiping blood from his mouth. “If Heaven won’t lend a hand and the locals are a bunch of walking metaphors with pitchfork grins…”
He exhaled, long and bitter. “…then I’ll call someone who’ll enjoy this.”
It took only a flick of his lighter and a smear of blood across the dead grass to sketch the first line of the sigil. His magic pulsed like a migraine. The air thickened with sulfur and old grudges.
He’d drawn this symbol too many times. Too many nights spent pushing buttons no one sane would touch. John forced the final curve into the dirt. The temperature dropped — a vacuum cold — and the earth split as casually as a grin.
A voice crawled out of the crack before anything else did. “John Constantine. You finally remembered who loves you.”
Smoke spilled upward. It stank of burned churches and addictions people swear were choices. Nergal emerged — not with fire and dramatic wings — but in a crisp suit, haircut expensive, smile sharp enough to skin gods.
John hated him more like this. Looking civilized. Human. “You look terrible,” Nergal purred. “Something trying to eat your little Bat-pet?”
John gritted his teeth. “He’s not my anything.”
“Oh,” Nergal cooed, stepping closer, voice painted with delight. “Then why does your soul taste like fear for him?”
John refused to give the bastard the pleasure of an answer. He flicked his lighter closed, final. “I need access into that church. Old magic blocking me out — likes Jason, hates me. You’re the bastard who understands why.”
Nergal circled him, not touching, but close enough for John to feel every hungry intention.“You’re asking for a miracle. I’m flattered.”
“Not a miracle,” John spat. “Just a crack.”
“Ah.” Nergal’s eyes gleamed. “Just enough room for you to slip inside… before the creature finishes what it started.”
John didn’t flinch outwardly — but the clench of his fists betrayed thought of Jason. The way Jason looked at him before going in.
A kid who’d already been through hell once. And hell had recognized him. Nergal’s grin widened, sensing the wound.
“What will you give me?”
John already knew. He’d known before he finished drawing the sigil.
He reached into his coat and pulled out a small piece of parchment — old as a forgotten promise — wrapped in a protective ward that cracked under the night air. A soul marker.
Jason’s name. Written in black fire. Not activated — only potential.
John’s jaw locked.“You’re not getting his soul.”
“Oh, but I don’t want all of him.” Nergal leaned in, eyes bright as polished knives. “Just a sliver. A guarantee. A… whereabouts of sorts. Should he get lost again.”
John’s stomach turned. Jason always got lost.
“You help me get him out,” he said, voice low, “and you never claim it. You’ll never come knocking.”
Nergal tisked like a disappointed parent. “Then what would be the fun in helping you?”
John’s heartbeat punched the inside of his ribs. He could feel the seconds running toward Jason like a predator. So he did what he always did when the stakes were too high to bargain smart.
He bargained stupid. “Fine. You get the sliver — but if he comes out alive, I take it back. No strings. No loopholes.”
Nergal’s eyebrows shot up. “Now that’s interesting.”
He extended a hand like he expected John to kiss it.
John spit on the ground instead and slapped the soul marker into Nergal’s palm.
Magic recoiled like a struck animal. The sigil glowed — red then black — and the slam of the deal echoed like iron shutting around someone’s throat. John swallowed against the weight settling on his shoulders.
He’d just gambled Jason’s future — again. “Pleasure doing business,” Nergal sang. “Try not to die before the screaming starts?”
He snapped his fingers. The air twisted. The barrier around the church flickered — not open, but injured. A bruise John could punch through. He didn’t thank the demon. He just ran. Boots pounding mud. Breath burning. Heart in freefall.
“Hold on, kid,” he muttered to the dark. “I’m coming.”
The church loomed ahead, its doorway a mouth that had already bitten down. John didn’t stop. Didn’t think. He dove into the tear in the barrier — and the world swallowed him whole.
Jason didn’t remember when his knees hit the church floor. The world shifted so gradually that he wasn’t sure there had been a line between reality and whatever this was. The stone beneath him wasn’t cold anymore. It felt warm. Familiar.
He pushed himself upright and froze. Crime Alley was gone. Gotham was gone.
He stood in the middle of a sunlit street lined with small houses. Windows open. Children laughing somewhere distant. Warm air. Barbecue smoke. No sirens. No gunshots. No ghosts on his back. A door swung open to his right.
A boy barreled out, maybe six years old, red hoodie too big for him. He kicked a soccer ball across a quiet street. A woman stepped out of the house after him, smiling, calling for him to watch the traffic even though there wasn’t any. The world felt… soft. Jason stared.
This wasn’t a memory. It wasn’t a dream. It was a clean slate. A town that could have raised him right. A life untouched by gunfire, alleyways, Lazarus Pits, or the man who had found him first.
He heard the voice behind him. “Do you like it?”
He didn’t turn. The voice wasn’t Bruce. It was using Bruce. Every vowel was wrong and perfect at the same time.
“You could live here,” it continued. “A place where no one hurts you. A place without fear. Without missions. Without death.”
Jason clenched his jaw. “Not buying it.”
A soft laugh. Footsteps. Slow, unthreatening.
“You think this is a lie because it’s kind,” the creature said. “You’ve only ever been offered futures that demand blood.”
Jason looked down. His hands were clean. No scars. No tremor. No Lazarus rage. He didn’t remember the last time they’d been steady like that.
The creature stepped beside him. Its shape didn’t quite settle — sometimes enormous, sometimes human, sometimes Bruce’s silhouette.
“You are so tired,” it said. Not accusing. Not triumphant. Just… observant. “You think endurance is your virtue. You confuse suffering for strength.”
“Shut up.”
“You aren’t angry because I’m wrong,” it said gently. “You’re angry because I’m right.”
Jason swallowed hard. He took a step back, but the town stayed beautiful.
“You’d never have to fight again. Never have to bury another friend. No one would expect everything from you. No father standing above you, deciding when you are worth loving.”
Jason’s pulse kicked sharp.
The creature gave him space. It wasn’t pressing. It was waiting. “Tell me, Jason,” it said quietly. “Has Gotham ever loved you back?”
Jason shut his eyes. The ache behind them wasn’t rage. It was exhaustion. “It’s home.”
“It’s a wound.”
Jason opened his eyes again. The boy in the red hoodie laughed, chasing his soccer ball. The mother scooped him up, kissed his hair. Safe. Mundane. A life untouched by legacy.
The creature’s voice softened. “You could have been happy.”
Jason forced a breath out through his teeth. “I could have been weak.”
“No,” the creature corrected. “You could have been whole.”
Silence.
A breeze lifted through the street. Warm, easy. Like a world where things got better on their own.
Jason asked the question before he meant to. “What would I have to give up?”
“Nothing,” the creature answered. “You simply have to stay.”
Jason stared at the sunlit world until his eyes hurt. A place without missions. Without graves. Without Bruce. Without the weight of a city no one asked him to save, but he bled for anyway.
A tear he didn’t remember choosing hit the ground.
“Why me?” he whispered.
The creature’s voice was almost tender.
“Because out of all the broken boys in masks, you are the one who might choose to stop hurting.”
Jason’s throat closed. He didn’t say yes. He didn’t say no.
He just stood there, caught between a world that never loved him and a world he never got to love.
In the real world, somewhere distant, something cracked — stone, or magic, or a human voice calling his name.
But here, the sun stayed warm. And the creature waited for his answer.
The moment Constantine crossed the threshold, the world folded in on itself.
He didn’t fall. He didn’t move. The church simply changed around him, quietly, like a stage set switching mid-scene. One second it was rotting wood and mildew. The next, he stood in a vaulted stone corridor lit by flickering golden lamps.
The air tasted like incense and iron.
John wiped his face with the back of his hand. The blood from the deal with Nergal had mostly dried, but the sigils on his skin still burned. The church seemed to notice. It hummed under his boots, measuring him.
“Not interested in judgement,” John muttered. “Just want the kid.”
The corridor answered by shifting. The floor rippled like sand. The walls rearranged in silence. John swore and picked a direction before the place could decide for him.
Maze.
He’d seen something like this before. Old magic. Half heaven, half hell. It didn’t want sinners or saints. It wanted believers. It wanted people who couldn’t stop trying. John hated religious constructs. They always wanted something bleeding. He kept walking.
Each turn had carvings on the walls: angels with swords, demons with crowns, eyes on every surface. Everything watched him. Everything expected a reaction. He didn’t give them one.
“Jason,” he called once, just enough to test the acoustics.
His own voice echoed back, but warped. By the time it returned, the shape of his sentence wasn’t a call anymore. “You should have stayed away.”
John shut his mouth. The place wanted doubt. He walked faster.
At the next bend, pews appeared on either side of the corridor. Empty at first, then suddenly full. Silent figures sat in every row. No faces. No mouths. Just smooth, featureless heads angled toward him in prayer.
The maze wanted him to feel watched. He already was.
“Try harder,” John said, pushing past. “I’ve seen scarier cults on a Wednesday.”
The faceless congregation twitched at that, as if offended. A doorway appeared ahead. John sprinted for it before the walls could recalculate again.
The moment he crossed the threshold, the floor dropped away. He slammed onto stone, shoulder first, breath knocked out of him. The air here burned colder. The lamps above went dark one by one. When they relit, the world had shifted again.
The corridor was the same shape. But now the carvings were different. Joy stripped away. No angels. No mercy. Every inch of wall was a mural of punishment. Limbs torn apart. Eyes gouged. Tongues removed.
Hell’s version of “consequences.” Brutal. Neat. Educational. John swallowed bile.
“You’re wasting my time,” he said. “You want my guilt? Get in line.”
The church didn’t like that answer.
A voice filled the corridor. It sounded like dozens at once. Choirs layered over screams. “You lost him once. You brought him back wrong.”
John froze.
He had expected rage. Violence. Jump scares. This was worse.
The lamps burned brighter, revealing a long row of doors on both sides of the hall. Every one identical. Every one waiting.
Behind them, soft noises started. Sobs. Pleading. Voices John recognized. Tim. Zee. Chas. All of them. All whispering for help.
None of them real. This church knew exactly which lies to use. He pushed forward, ignoring every door. Ignoring every voice calling his name.
The corridor stretched on. Farther than physics allowed. The doors multiplied. Then one voice cut through the static.
Jason’s.
Not screaming. Not crying. Laughing.
Not a happy laugh. The kind that belonged to a boy who had finally stopped fighting.
John’s breath stuttered. The maze didn’t need to lure him. It just had to tempt him to give up. He ran.
The voices behind every door rose in volume, but rising over them came Jason’s laugh, clear and warm and content. Like he had found something that didn’t hurt. John hated the sound more than any scream.
He reached the end of the corridor. A tall, arched door glowed with light beneath it. Not heavenly. Not hellish. Something older.
The maze shifted again, walls closing in. It wanted him to doubt. To hesitate. To decide Jason was safer without him.
John shoved the door open. The light swallowed him, and the maze howled like something losing its grip. Jason was close now. So close he could feel him in his teeth. He didn’t know what he was running into. He didn’t care. He was not losing that kid again.
Jason followed the creature down the quiet street. The sun didn’t dim. Nothing felt threatened or threatening. The worst sound was a dog barking somewhere across town.
The creature didn’t force him anywhere. It walked beside him like a guide through a life he had never reached.
They stopped before a bookstore on the corner. Hand-painted windows. Potted plants at the door. The sign above read: TODD & SON.
Jason stared at his own name until his throat tightened.
Inside, a young man shelving books turned toward the sound of the bell. Jason’s exact face. Same eyes. Same crooked smile. No white streak in his hair. No scars. Shoulders relaxed. He looked… unburdened.
The creature’s voice was soft.
“He takes over for his father. The man who found him first. Not in an alley. Not holding a gun. Just a small business with just enough money. They argue sometimes, but not about curfews, not about patrol.”
Jason watched the other-him laugh with a coworker. Laugh like nothing in the world had ever threatened to take that away.
“He has a little apartment above the shop,” the creature continued. “A kitchen painted blue by someone he loves. Weekends at the park. He reads in bed before sleep instead of waiting for sirens.”
Jason’s hands curled into fists. He didn’t know when he’d started shaking.
“What’s the catch,” he asked, voice rough.
“The catch,” the creature echoed. “Is that this is the life you were denied.”
Jason forced his gaze away. “People die in Gotham. Every day. I help stop that.”
“You fill graves. You don’t prevent them.” Its tone remained careful. “You trade your life for a world that never paid you back. It gave you a brutal childhood, a violent death, and a resurrection that only deepened the pain.”
The bookstore door opened. Alternate-Jason stepped outside. He looked content in a way Jason didn’t know if he ever had been. He locked up. Slung a backpack over one shoulder. Got into an old, beloved motorcycle that didn’t look like it had ever been driven into a fire.
“He gets married,” the creature said. “Not to a weapon or a fellow soldier. To a teacher. Kind. Funny. Someone who never lies about loving him. They build a life. It is small. And it is complete.”
Jason’s chest cracked open. “And Bruce?” he asked.
“He never meets you,” the creature replied. “He never saves you. He never fails you. He never resurrects you into something you were not built to be.”
Jason looked back at the life he wasn’t meant to see. It felt real. Too real. Warmth crawled up his throat like grief.
“I know you feel it,” the creature murmured. “The ache for what should have been. For a home that doesn’t demand blood. For a life where you don’t have to be strong to be worthy.”
Jason’s eyes burned. “Why show me this?”
“Because you deserve it,” the creature said. “And because I can give it to you.”
Jason’s breath hitched.
“You would wake here. Tomorrow. In a bed that’s yours. No Lazarus rage. No ghosts. No Crime Alley. No Joker. No Batman. No mask. No scars.” It stepped closer. Not menacing. Just present.
“All you must do is choose it. Stay with me. Let me keep you from the pain that shaped you.”
Jason wiped his eyes with the heel of his hand, furious that there were tears to wipe at all.
“What do you get,” he whispered.
The creature didn’t lie. It didn’t pretend.
“Your soul. Nothing more.”
Jason laughed. It cracked down the middle. “That’s all, huh.”
“All,” the creature confirmed. “A small thing. Compared to what I’m offering.”
Jason looked at the boy inside the bookstore.
The boy who never died.
The boy who never had to learn how to crawl out of a coffin.
“I can’t have both. Can I.”
“No,” the creature said. “Heroes don’t get happy endings. But you could stop being one.”
His future self disappeared into the back room. The lights turned off.
Peace. Safety. A life unlived.
Jason closed his eyes and felt the weight of a choice he never thought he’d get to make.
He didn’t answer. Not yet. The creature waited beside him. Patient. Hopeful. Like it already knew he wanted to say yes.
The light faded and spat Constantine out into another corridor. He barely had time to catch his footing before something launched at him from the dark. Instinct took over—he snapped a sigil to life with a spark of his lighter and slammed it into the creature’s chest. It shrieked and dissolved, body collapsing into ash and teeth.
John kicked through it and kept going. No time to think. No time to breathe.
The maze pulsed around him, tighter now. He could feel Jason somewhere ahead, not physically, but through magic—like a pressure in the air pointed toward the beating heart of the church. He ran.
The next chamber opened without warning. A cavern made of black marble, floor slick with oil. Four massive figures clawed their way from the ground. Horns. Bone. Hollow eyes. They moved slowly, but the weight of their presence hit him like a fist.
Wrath.
John flicked his lighter, whispered a curse in Enochian, and detonated a ring of fire beneath the group. The flames stuck to them, raging white-hot. They screamed silently, bodies melting without smoke. The marble swallowed the ashes. John’s lungs burned, and he kept moving.
The corridor ahead stretched into a banquet hall dripping with gold and honey. Tables sagged under roasted meats and jeweled goblets. Figures with wolf-like smiles beckoned him closer.
Gluttony.
He had seen cult centers like this. Honeyed temptation. A lure made from comfort.
“It won’t work on me,” he snapped.
The figures hissed and warped, bodies twisting into something serpentine. John drew a circle in the air with two fingers and murmured a sigil. Their bodies froze where they stood—then cracked like glass under a hammer. John didn’t stop to watch them fall apart.
Every step deeper felt like pressure on his skull. Like the church wanted to compress him into something it understood. The next circle hit without warning.
A swarm of skeletal forms burst from the walls—thin, sharp, fast. They wrapped around him, clawing for his pockets, his coat, everything he carried. A mob with shaking hands and starved eyes.
Greed.
“Not for you,” he snarled, ripping a string of paper talismans from his coat. He set them aflame and threw them. The smoke didn’t choke—it starved. It devoured everything in the swarm, leaving only sobbing echoes in the air.
He should have felt victorious. Instead he only felt sick. He knew what this maze was trying to do. It was designed for someone like him. Someone who already knew every sin inside himself. He pushed on.
The fourth chamber was small and silent. A single shape stood in the center. A man draped in fine robes, head bowed, surrounded by kneeling shadow-figures.
Pride.
John spat blood onto the floor. “Don’t preach to me. I already know I’m a bastard.”
The robed man raised his head, and where a face should have been there was only a mirror. John saw himself reflected: desperate, shaking, bleeding, filthy with compromise. A man who would trade away anyone—anyone—for a chance to win.
John crushed the mirror with his fist before it could speak. It shattered into black sand. The shadows vanished. He didn’t stop to bandage his bleeding knuckles.
Next came smoke, thick and sweet. The fifth circle.
Lust.
Not erotic—emotional. Attachment. Need. Desire disguised as salvation. The smoke shaped itself into people he loved. Friends. Lovers. People he had buried. People he had failed. Zee stepped from the fog, wearing the smile she had once reserved only for him. She reached for him. John walked through her without pausing. She dissolved like steam. He didn’t look back.
The sixth hit like a wall. A locked gate barred his path, and behind its bars lay the image of a quiet home. A warm kitchen table. Photographs of smiling faces. A child hugging his neck. The fantasy of belonging.
Envy.
He pressed his forehead against the cold iron. His breath shook. “That’s not for me,” he whispered.
He stepped back and burned the gate until it melted. One circle left. He didn’t want to face it. The walls pressed in anyway.
The chamber swallowed him.
It was a throne room of stone, filled with sobbing bodies on their knees. They tore at their own clothes, pleading for release. Their tears soaked the cracked floor.
Sloth.
Not laziness. Surrender. Relief. The seductive idea of giving up. Of staying broken because trying hurts more. The entire room whispered the same thing in a thousand voices.
You have already lost.
John’s body trembled. Jason’s laughter still echoed somewhere in the distance. Not manic. Happy. Content. A life without pain. A life without Constantine.
He felt the pull. A terrible ache to believe the maze. To stop fighting. To stop dragging Jason into every version of hell life had to offer. A hand touched his chin. One of the kneeling figures had reached up, face lined with sympathy. Not monstrous. Not malevolent.
“Tired?” the figure asked. “Rest. You’ve done enough.” John closed his eyes.
Then he heard it—soft, faint, but real beneath it all, Jason crying.
Not from pain. Not from rage. From wanting something he never got to have. That sound lit something violent in John’s ribcage.
He snarled, and the sloth phantoms recoiled as he tore free of their pull. He ripped open the exit with magic so raw it burned holes in his veins.
He stumbled into the final corridor.
He could feel Jason now—close enough that his heartbeat seemed to sync with the boy’s. Not physically. But magically. Emotionally. Like maybe this damned place didn’t just want Jason. It wanted him too.
John pushed forward anyway. Jason was at the end. And John Constantine would rather burn than arrive too late.
Jason didn’t sit still. He paced, hands fisted in his hair, jaw clenched so tight his teeth felt ready to crack. The creature waited near the altar like a priest, the cathedral around them shifting and reforming in quiet breaths of stone and shadow. The phantom image of the peaceful domestic life still shimmered behind Jason like a mirage refusing to fade.
He spun and pointed at it.
“Why even show me that?” His voice cracked with fury. “Why dangle a perfect life in front of me when you could’ve given it to me from the start? If you wanted me this badly, you could’ve stopped Crime Alley. You could’ve stopped the Joker. You could’ve kept me from ever ending up in that fucking box.”
The creature did not flinch. Jason could feel its eyes, even though its face never shifted from that calm, robed mask.
“You presume that you died because I was absent.”
Its voice echoed through the cathedral, soft and cold.
“You died because I was watching.”
Jason lunged. Not to hit it—he wasn’t sure he could—but because he needed something to break. His voice rose to something raw. “So that was the plan? I was supposed to get beaten to death? Buried? Kids are supposed to die for your big cosmic plan?”
“You were born ordinary,” the creature replied. “Your anger, grief, love and loyalty were all too human. Too fragile. You needed rupture. You needed to shed the weight of a small life to become the man who stands before me now.”
Jason laughed—a horrible, broken sound.
“So you made me suffer. You let me get slaughtered like a dog in a warehouse so that I could grow into what you wanted. Congratulations. It worked. I’m a weapon. Is that what you want to hear?”
“You are not a weapon,” it corrected. “You are potential.”
Jason threw one of the candles at its feet, wax and fire splattering across the marble. The creature didn’t move.
“You’re sick,” Jason whispered. “You’re actually sick.”
“You misunderstand because you still mourn the boy you were,” the creature answered. “But the boy could not have survived this world. He could not have reshaped it. The man can. The man must.”
Jason shook his head. He felt like he was choking on the air.
“You don’t get to decide that for me.”
“I do not decide,” the creature said. “I offer. Every soul chooses its own path. You are offered a new Ascension. Free of Gotham, free of failure, free of pain. You may walk into the life you earned. You need only give me your soul in return.”
Jason stared at the domestic vision again—Jason in a sunlit kitchen, smiling, alive, loved. A life with no blood, no graves, no endless war. A life where he wasn’t always someone’s disappointment, someone’s mistake.
His throat tightened.
“And if I say no?”
The creature smiled without lips, without teeth, without human shape. Something old and patient.
“You will return to the world that broke you. You will fight. You will grieve. And you will die again. No resurrection. No redemption. Only decay. Only the slow, inevitable collapse of your spirit.”
It stepped closer, just enough to feel as though the air thickened.
“You deserve peace, Jason Todd. You deserve a life that loved you back. I am the only one offering it.”
Jason closed his eyes. He could almost feel the warmth of that kitchen. Almost hear someone calling his name with love instead of fear. Almost believe he wasn’t destined to break and break and break until nothing was left.
He opened his eyes again, and there was nothing soft in them.
“So tell me something,” he said, voice shaking with rage. “If you wanted me so fucking bad, why didn’t you save me?”
The creature answered without hesitation. “Because you were meant to die before you could be reborn.”
Jason’s jaw trembled. His eyes burned. “Then maybe,” he whispered, “you shouldn’t have let me come back.”
The candles erupted. The cracks in the marble widened. Something ancient and furious inside Jason answered the creature’s words with a snarl.
The bargaining had begun. And neither of them planned to back down. The air between them felt electrically charged, like a storm building pressure inside the cathedral’s rib-cage walls. Jason steadied himself, fists clenched at his sides, voice low and ragged.
“What are you?” he demanded. “What kind of thing gets off on this? On tearing people open just to watch what spills out?”
For the first time, the creature laughed. Not a human laugh. The sound rolled through the church like distant thunder layered with a choir, as if a thousand voices found amusement all at once.
“What am I?” it echoed. “I am the first fear a child remembers and the last comfort a dying man seeks. I am the promise of purpose in suffering and the hunger in every prayer. I am everything that is asked for in desperation. Everything that is begged for when one has nowhere else to turn.”
Jason swallowed, stomach twisting. “Yeah? Sounds like a parasite.”
“No,” the creature answered, voice laced with pride. “I am fulfillment. I am meaning. I am what all mortals call for when their lives fail them.”
It stepped down from the altar, and with every step the cathedral seemed to shift around them—pews bending like shadows, stone rippling like water.
“You think you are alone in your tragedy, Jason Todd. But look outside these walls. This town is full of souls who once stood exactly where you stand.”
Jason’s attention sharpened. “What are you talking about?”
“Every inhabitant here once pleaded for deliverance. For a life rewritten. For pain removed. I simply answered.”
The memory of the hollow-eyed, uncanny locals flashed in Jason’s mind—faces too polite, too calm, too empty. “So they all made a deal with you.”
“Yes. They were granted lives without anguish. They wake with peace. They sleep with peace. They love and are loved. They never fail, never lose, never hurt.”
“You stripped their souls,” Jason said.
The creature tilted its head, curious amusement flickering like candle flame. “What good did their souls ever do for them? A soul is merely weight. Burden. It roots mortals to suffering. I remove that weight so they may be free.”
Jason barked out a bitter laugh. “That isn’t freedom. That’s lobotomy.”
The creature’s expression didn’t change, but the temperature in the room seemed to drop. “You speak as though souls grant autonomy. They do not. They bind mortals to guilt, regret, longing, grief. They trap them in cycles of loss. I do not erase self. I erase torment.”
“Bullshit.”
“If you truly believed that, you would not have wept when I showed you your life as it might have been.”
Jason froze. The truth of that sentence hit harder than a crowbar. The creature stepped closer, voice gentle in a way that felt cruel.
“You want release more than anyone I have ever called. You want to lay down your sword. You crave a world where you are not a war in human form. Where you do not exist only through the lens of pain.” Its voice lowered, almost soothing. “Every person in this town once reached that point. They begged to stop hurting. They begged to stop waking each morning carrying the weight of memory. I simply gave them what the world refused to.”
Jason’s voice was small, but steady. “And what did you take?”
The creature smiled. “Only the part of them that never healed.”
Jason stared at it, and something inside him cracked further. Not from weakness. From fury.
“So that’s what you want from me,” he said. “You want the part that still hurts. The part that’s angry. The part that remembers everything and won’t fucking let go.”
“You call it trauma,” the creature replied. “I call it power. Potential. The raw material of transformation.”
Jason felt sick. “So all these people… they weren’t saved. They were harvested.”
“Saved and harvested,” the creature corrected. “Both can be true.”
Silence stretched until Jason broke it. “If I refuse,” he said quietly, “you’ll just keep calling me back. Haunting me. Waiting for me to break.”
The creature didn’t deny it. “You will break eventually. Everyone does. Sooner or later every mortal begs not to feel anymore.”
Jason dragged a shaking hand through his hair and laughed—helpless, furious, exhausted. “You picked the wrong guy if you think I’m just gonna roll over.”
The creature looked at him with something like affection. Something ancient and terrifying. “I chose you because you are the strongest. Because you last the longest before you fall. Not despite your resistance, but because of it. A soul like yours feeds eternities.”
Jason’s blood ran cold. And for the first time since stepping into the church, he realized— The creature didn’t want to save him. It wanted to consume him slowly. Piece by piece. Pain by pain. Until nothing was left but the shell that smiled peacefully in the sunlit kitchen.
Constantine stumbled out of the maze of shifting pews and bleeding scripture, bruised, cut, and breathing like he’d just swallowed fire. He could feel Jason somewhere ahead, like a pulse under the floorboards—fear, rage, refusal, pain. But something else too. Something hungry.
And Constantine knew he’d never reach him alone. He stood in the center of the nave and drew a crooked circle in chalk across the warped stone floor. The chalk hissed, reacting like acid. Good. It meant there was still time.
He lit three candles—black, red, white—and pressed his palm to the floor. His blood mixed with the chalk, and the circle ignited from within.
“Alright then,” he growled through gritted teeth. “Let’s get this over with.”
The flame flickered up into a twisting column of shadow and light, and a familiar shape stepped out of it—lean, sharp, dripping elegance and mockery.
Madame Xanadu.
She looked at Constantine with the kind of exhausted irritation reserved only for him. “John. If this is another debt you intend not to pay—”
“It’s Jason,” he interrupted, voice cracking more than he wanted. “He’s being hunted by something old. Something that builds towns out of souls and feeds on grief. I can’t beat it alone.”
Xanadu paused. That alone was telling. She almost never hesitated. “This place,” she murmured. “It shouldn’t exist.”
“No argument here.”
The tarot cards she always carried began to shake inside their pouch of their own accord. She gripped them tight, jaw set.
“Lead me.”
They moved fast. The cathedral seemed to shrink away from Xanadu’s presence, walls twitching like disturbed flesh. With every step, the circles of hell grew more frantic, more eager to stop them.
Whispers curled around them. Memories sharpened like claws. Room after room tried to drown them in visions—blood and graves and burning Robins.
Constantine gritted out Latin under his breath as a shield. Xanadu walked as if wrapped in starlight. Finally, the world stopped shifting. They had reached the heart of the church.
Jason stood at the altar, facing something wearing Bruce Wayne’s voice and shape but not his face. Not really. Its smile was too wide. Its eyes were hollow galaxies. Its shadow stretched and writhed like a beast.
Constantine’s breath caught. His cigarette slipped from his fingers without him noticing.
Xanadu froze where she stood. Her voice came out as a whisper, thinner than fear.
“John. You didn’t tell me what it was.”
“I don’t bloody know!” he snapped back, too loud, too honest.
The creature turned toward them—slow, like a king acknowledging insects. Its eyes brushed across the seer.
Xanadu staggered backward. Tarot cards burst from their pouch, scattering like frightened birds. She caught herself on a pew, face deathly pale.
“I can’t stay,” she said. “Even looking at it is an invitation. If I remain, it will use me as a doorway. Or a meal.”
“Then stay behind me,” Constantine barked. “I just need your—”
She grabbed his wrist, grip uncharacteristically desperate. “No. You don’t understand. That thing existed before prophecy. Before divination. Before fate had laws. There is nothing I can give you that will matter.” She pressed something into his palm—a charm glowing faintly blue—and backed away like she was escaping a tidal wave. “I’m sorry, John. Truly. You’re on your own.”
“Xanadu—”
She shook her head once. Not in refusal. In warning.
“If you are going to save that boy, do it quickly. And do not—under any circumstance—let it speak your true name.”
Before Constantine could grab her again, she broke the circle of space around her and vanished in a flare of stardust and fear. The church groaned like something waking up. Constantine swallowed hard, pocketed the charm, and straightened his coat.
“Brilliant. There goes the cavalry.”
He dragged his eyes up to Jason, who looked like he was being torn between staying and running. Between wanting the creature’s promise and wanting to burn it to ash. And John… John had seen that exact look in too many people.
“All right, kid,” he muttered, taking a step forward. “It’s just you and me now.”
Then he faced the creature.
Alone. On purpose. Because this time, for once in his cursed life, John Constantine wasn’t going to arrive too late.
Jason’s chest heaved as the creature’s voice shifted again, smooth and cruel. He had thought he’d seen every twisted trick it could manage. He had thought the Bruce face was a cruel manipulation, but now the image before him froze him in place like ice.
It wasn’t Bruce anymore.
It was Damian. His face, sharp and young, twisted into that familiar scowl that always cut deeper than any threat could. The creature had thought this would be more effective. That seeing Damian, alive in a way Jason had long ago buried in his heart, would break him, would make him submit, would make him forget everything he’d fought for.
Jason screamed. Not just in anger, but in pure, raw frustration. “Stop it!” His voice cracked like broken glass. “Leave me alone! Leave all of them alone! You don’t get to touch them!”
The creature tilted its head, still perfectly composed, still calm as a cathedral in a storm. Its hands remained folded, its shadow stretching impossibly long across the floor. Damian’s face didn’t falter.
“You are angry,” it said, voice soft, deceptively gentle. “You always were. But anger is a small thing. A cage. You want to stop me, Jason, but you cannot see what lies beneath.”
Jason shook his head, stepping back, fists clenched so tight his nails bit into his palms. “You’re sick. You’re insane. You can’t do this—these people didn’t ask for this!”
“They did not ask,” the creature agreed, tilting its head slightly. “But they were weak. They would have suffered. They would have waited for the world to destroy them. I saved them from that fate.”
Jason’s chest burned. “Saved? You call this saving? You’re feeding off them. You’re using them as props, illusions, prisoners in your sick games! They’re real people! I won’t let you touch them!”
The creature stepped closer, and the air grew heavier, thickening with the weight of its magic. The illusion around the town flickered like a candle struggling against the wind. Behind it, Jason could see glimpses of the townspeople—children walking the streets, women tending gardens, men laughing in the sun—all of them caught in a delicate, fragile bubble of false peace.
“If you interfere,” the creature said, Damian’s face now a mask of reason and authority, “if you reject me, the town will vanish. The lives I have constructed for them, the safety I have given them… it will all end. And yet, Jason, you cry out as if you have the right to claim morality over me.”
Jason’s hands shook. Rage warred with guilt, his chest tight as if he’d been trapped in a vice. “I don’t care what you think you’re doing for them! You’re lying! They deserve real lives, not puppets in your playground!”
The creature’s shadow coiled around him, smooth and slow, whispering in Damian’s voice. “I am taking care of them. In my way, they will never suffer. They will never die of hunger, of neglect, of fear. You see cruelty, Jason. I see protection. I see balance.”
Jason’s teeth ground together. “Balance? You’re killing them slowly by pretending they’re alive! I won’t let you.” His fists slammed together. “I won’t.”
The creature’s expression didn’t change. Damian’s scowl was perfect, unyielding. “Then understand this: every choice has its cost. Reject me, and the lives they know will collapse. They will wake to the world as it is. Painful. Mortal. Endangered. But I will not lie to you—I cannot lie about their safety. I am the only reason they exist as they do.”
Jason’s heart slammed against his ribs, every beat a collision of fear and fury. “Then I’ll take that cost! I’ll take it all! I don’t care about your twisted peace! I’ll fight for them, even if it kills me. Even if it destroys me!”
The creature’s eyes glimmered in Damian’s face, ancient patience behind youthful fury. “Ah, but you always were the stubborn one. The one who refuses to bend, who refuses to understand that sometimes, care comes dressed as horror. You will learn, Jason Todd, whether you like it or not, that salvation is rarely gentle.”
Jason’s chest heaved, sweat and tears slick on his temples. “I don’t care about your salvation. I care about theirs. And I’ll make sure they get it—even if I have to burn your illusions down myself.”
The creature stepped back, the shadowed cathedral stretching to fill the space between them. For a moment, it let Damian’s face linger, watching, studying, almost amused.
“You are defiant,” it said softly. “And so, you are strong. I would not take you lightly. But know this: what you call courage, what you call justice… it is the very fire that will forge them into ashes if you falter.”
Jason stood firm, shaking but unbowed. He had no illusions that the fight ahead would be easy. But one thing was certain—he would never let this creature dictate the lives of the innocent, no matter how cleverly it hid its cruelty behind faces he loved.
The cathedral held its breath. The creature smiled faintly, eyes still Damian’s, and Jason knew the next confrontation would decide not just his fate, but that of the entire town.
The cathedral shivered with the creature’s presence, its shadow stretching into every corner, every pew, every ghost of memory. Jason was already fighting on his own terms, defiant, furious, exhausted—but John Constantine had never been one to wait quietly.
“Oi!” he yelled, voice cracking through the twisted, vaulted space. “Yes, you, you colossal nightmare with the face of a dead kid and the attitude of a saint!”
The creature turned slowly, Damian’s mask morphing slightly, a smirk tugging at the corners of its lips. It tilted its head in mock curiosity.
“Ah,” it said, voice smooth and dripping with condescension, “the little mortal finally announces himself. Do you really believe your words matter here?”
John flicked his lighter, the flame guttering against the thick, unnatural shadows. He twirled it like he always did—half flair, half ritual, all arrogance. “Mate, words matter more than you think. And seeing as you’ve been playing puppeteer with my kid, I’d say I’m the bloody script editor.”
The creature laughed. It was a sound that rolled through the cathedral like distant thunder layered with dissonant chords. The laughter was cold, amused, infinitely patient. “You? A human. A spell-slinger with too many debts and too little luck. You cannot even reach him. How do you imagine stopping me?”
John leaned against a cracked column, one boot pressed lazily to the stone. He lit another cigarette, letting the smoke curl around his face like a protective veil. “Ah, you know me,” he said, voice low, dripping with sarcasm. “I don’t stop things. I meddle. I irritate. I annoy. And occasionally, I save the day, usually while looking like I’m about to die horribly. You might’ve noticed the pattern.”
The creature’s eyes—Damian’s face flickering, half-mask, half-shadow—narrowed slightly. “Arrogance will not aid you. Your flair is meaningless here. Every step you take is already anticipated.”
John flicked ash from his cigarette and smirked. “Yeah, but it’s fun, isn’t it? Watching you twitch while I figure things out. I like to make the big bad of the hour sweat a bit.”
The creature’s smirk deepened, more amused than threatened. “You think mockery will alter reality? That stubbornness will break the inevitable?”
John’s grin widened, teeth gleaming in the dim, flickering light. “Reality’s overrated, sweetheart. I bend it. I twist it. I cheat it when it’s a right bastard. And I’ve got Jason’s back. That’s the bit that matters.”
The creature’s shadow coiled, filling the cathedral like smoke pouring from a tomb. “And what if he chooses me? What if he stays? You cannot force the boy to defy me.”
“Oh, I’m not here to force him,” John said, rolling his eyes with exaggerated boredom. “I’m here to make sure that if he does, he knows exactly what he’s saying yes or no to. And believe me, love, there’s no chance in hell he’ll do it quietly.”
The creature chuckled, voice like silk over steel. “You amuse me, mortal. But even your wit cannot change what must be done.”
John’s lighter flared, small but brilliant against the oppressive darkness. He leaned back, one hand in his pocket, the other tapping the flame against the marble. “Mate, that’s where you’re wrong. I’ve got plenty of tricks, plenty of curses, and a reputation for getting under the skin of things that think they’re untouchable. And you, pal, are about as untouchable as last week’s newspaper.”
The creature regarded him for a long moment, Damian’s features flickering like static, almost amused, almost impatient, almost… curious.
“And yet,” it said finally, voice calm, “you have already arrived too late.”
“Maybe,” John said, taking a long drag of his cigarette. Smoke curled around his face like a halo of defiance. “Or maybe I’m just getting started. And trust me, you’re about to regret ever thinking you could intimidate John Constantine.”
The cathedral vibrated around them, ancient stone groaning under its own awareness. Shadows leapt and twisted, but John’s posture never wavered. Flair, arrogance, a smirk, and a cigarette—that was all he needed. That, and the stubborn, infuriating belief that somehow, he would get Jason back.
The creature laughed again, a deep, knowing sound, but this time John didn’t flinch. He never did. He had survived worse than this. He always survived.
And he always found a way to leave the monsters wishing they hadn’t underestimated him.
Constantine didn’t waste time once he had the thing’s attention. He flicked his wrist and sent a binding sigil straight at the creature’s chest. It burned gold in the air, symbols hissing like steam.
The creature didn’t move.
The sigil hit—and dissolved like sugar dropped into water.
John swore under his breath.
“Right. Not that one, then.”
He tried another, faster this time—an ancient exorcist’s command that should have ripped any possessing entity straight out of its shell. The sound hit the cathedral like a shockwave, rattling the pews, cracking a stain‑glass window with a thunderous pop.
The creature barely blinked.
John’s face tightened but he didn’t stop. He muttered a charm that forced eldritch beings into their truest form. The air crackled blue, magic humming so violently that Jason staggered back from the force of it.
For half a second the creature shuddered—its Damian mask glitching—then it settled again, even more solid, like Constantine had just made it stronger.
The creature smiled, Damian’s mouth twisting into something cold and amused.
“You cannot unmake me. Do you truly believe human spells can break what predates human language?”
John gritted his teeth, sweat starting to gather at his hairline. “You’d be surprised what humans can break, mate.”
He tried again.
A holy invocation.
A curse written in blood.
A severance ritual.
But every spell just sank into the creature without resistance, without pain, without effect.
It was like throwing punches at fog.
Jason shouted from across the altar, voice raw. “John—stop! That’s not going to work!”
John didn’t look at him, eyes locked on the monster. “I’d love to chat, kid, but I’m a bit busy trying to stop the apocalypse.”
“You’re wasting time!” Jason screamed. “He’s not powerful because of what he is—he’s powerful because of the people! He’s feeding off them. Their souls. Their grief. Their hope. He’s sucking on this town like a parasite!”
The word parasite echoed. John froze.
Not in fear—in recognition.
Every trap, every haunting, every ritual, every cult, every hungry god he’d ever faced—there was always something they couldn’t live without. The thing they fed on. The thing anchoring them to the world.
He turned his head slowly toward Jason.
A grin crept across his face—sharp, reckless, and dangerous.
“Ohhh,” he said, dragging out the words like velvet. “So that’s your weakness, you smug son of a—”
The creature’s face shifted subtly, amusement cooling into awareness.
“I do not have weaknesses, mortal.”
“Oh, you do,” Constantine said, pointing at it with his cigarette, like he’d just called checkmate. “You’re codependent.”
A spark of anger—tiny but real—flashed in the creature’s eyes. Not Damian’s eyes. Its.
“Yes,” John went on, pacing now, brain firing like a loaded gun. “You don’t just feed on them. You need them. If you stop the feast, you starve. So you keep them here, wrapped up in your perfect little fantasy. A town full of happy cattle.”
The creature’s voice dropped an octave. “You misunderstand mercy and call it cruelty.”
“No,” John snapped, “you’re misunderstanding consent and calling it love.”
Jason swallowed hard. The air around them tightened. The creature didn’t move, but the temperature shifted like a storm was approaching.
John tapped ash to the floor. “All this power? All this smoke‑and‑mirrors biblical terror? It’s not coming from you. It’s borrowed. Rented. You’re plugged into them like batteries.”
Jason added, “So if we cut you off—”
“You die,” Constantine finished.
The creature’s expression hardened—not rage yet, but something close enough to be promising. “You cannot. The town is bound to me. Sever one from the other and they will collapse. Their illusions will shatter. They will wake to pain they cannot bear.”
Jason’s voice cracked. “That doesn’t mean they don’t deserve to wake.”
John’s eyes glittered. He had a plan now—reckless, nearly suicidal, exactly the kind that tended to work.
He dropped the cigarette, crushed it under his boot, and marked the floor with blood again—not to bind the creature this time, but to draw a thread toward the town itself.
“You’ve got one hell of a power source, mate,” he said, smiling with all the confidence of a man who should absolutely not be confident. “So all I have to do is—”
He snapped his fingers.
“Pull the plug.”
The creature’s smile finally broke.
And underneath Damian’s face—there was fear.
The moment Constantine begins to unravel the first thread of the illusion, the entire air around them vibrates — like someone plucking a colossal harp string underneath the ground.
The creature feels it instantly.
Its head snaps toward John, smile shredding into something feral.
“Stop that.”
Constantine grins around the cigarette hanging from his lip, hands already moving in fast, sharp motions as he mutters Latin. Symbols burn through the ground like molten iron, spreading under houses, under streets, under the feet of every sleep‑walking resident.
“Oh, look at that,” John taunts. “You don’t like it when someone else plays god in your toy town.”
The creature lunges.
Jason fires.
Bullets slam into the monster’s chest — one after another after another — each shot punching through what looks like Damian’s body. There’s blood. There’s recoil. But there’s no damage, and Jason knows it, but he still pulls the trigger like he can break fate through sheer rage alone.
“Get the hell away from him!”
The creature turns its head slowly, lazily, the holes from the bullets closing like water reforming. And then it simply looks at Jason.
No gesture. No incantation. Just will.
Jason’s eyes go wide — and the world cracks around him.
He’s not in the town anymore. He’s back in that warehouse.
The smell of gasoline. The sharp burn of fear in his lungs. The sound of metal crowbar on bone.
And behind it all — that laugh. That laugh. That laugh.
The chalk‑white mask of a man wearing another human face as comedy. The Joker circles him like a shark, crowbar tapping against his hand as if keeping time to some twisted melody.
“Miss me, kiddo?”
Jason can’t breathe. His knees hit concrete that isn’t really there, but the pain is real. His ribs seize like they’re cracking all over again. His throat closes.
“Not real,” Jason whispers. But he hears his own voice as a boy — begging.
Please
Please stop
Please, Dad, I’m sorry—
The Joker grins wider. “You died crying for a man who didn’t even come.”
Jason’s stomach drops — the weight of old guilt, old shame, old fear. The Joker leans in, breath rancid and sweet, like rot inside candy.
“You think he cares now? You think that little family of yours is real? This is who you were meant to be. Mine. Broken. Angry. Alone.”
Back in the real world, Jason is screaming — wild and guttural, finger squeezing the trigger of a gun that’s now firing at nothing. Tears streak down his ash‑covered face as he thrashes blind to reality.
The creature wearing Damian’s face watches Jason collapse with something almost… tender.
“He sees the truth,” it murmurs. “He remembers what made him perfect.”
Constantine snarls, sweat dripping down his forehead as magic boils under his skin.
“You didn’t make him,” he growls through clenched teeth. “You just found a kid someone else left bleeding and called it destiny.”
The creature smiles — Damian’s small mouth stretched impossibly wide.
“You don’t understand, John Constantine. Pain isn’t a prison. It is a path. If they have nothing else, they will always return to me.”
John slams both palms onto the sigils he’s been forming and shouts a command word that shakes the earth.
And all throughout the town — every window, every mirror, every light flickers. The illusion begins to split. People look up mid‑dream. Mid‑make‑believe. The fog clears a fraction — and the creature howls. Roots of power rip out of the ground, desperate to rebind every mind.
“You break the fantasy and they will see what they lost!” it screeches, voice warping between ten different shapes. “They will remember the pain! Their grief will return! You call me a monster — yet you would give them back to despair!”
Constantine’s eyes flare, sigils glowing hot white in his irises. “They’ll grieve,” he says. “But grief’s still real. And real beats you every time.”
The creature launches for him. Jason is on the ground, shaking, trapped in memory, Joker’s smile inches from his face. And Constantine — alone, outmatched, and perfectly himself — doesn’t stop. He pushes harder. The curse begins to break.
Jason felt the cold grip of fear tighten around his chest, the Joker’s laughter drilling into his skull, the warehouse twisting into a nightmare he could not escape. Every memory of death, every moment of helplessness, every flash of pain was magnified and injected with the creature’s cruel satisfaction. But somewhere deep inside, beneath the rage, the fear, and the despair, a spark ignited.
“No.” Jason whispered to himself, voice trembling but growing louder with each heartbeat. “Not again. Not now. Not you.”
He forced his eyes open in the hallucination, refusing to look at the Joker. The world shook, the shadows twisting, warping, forming the shapes of every monster he had faced and every person he had lost. But Jason pushed forward, breathing deep, focusing on one thing he knew to be true: he was alive, he was real, and this wasn’t him.
The Joker’s face blurred. The warehouse cracked, splintering into shards of memory and light. Jason’s fists clenched, and with a scream that rattled his own bones, he ripped himself free. The illusion shattered around him like broken glass, leaving only the echo of laughter fading into nothingness. He collapsed onto the cold cathedral floor, chest heaving, eyes wild but clear.
“Jason!” Constantine’s voice cut across the room, low and urgent. His hands traced the last of the intricate symbols across the marble, fire and smoke curling along the edges. Every motion, every incantation, was tearing at the threads of the town’s enchantment. Windows flickered, shadows in the streets shivered, and for the first time, the residents stirred as if waking from a long dream.
The creature’s calm demeanor shifted, its shadow flickering violently as it stepped forward. Damian’s face contorted, stretching into a mask that was neither human nor entirely shadow. Its voice rolled through the cathedral like a thunderclap layered with poison.
“FOOLS!” it bellowed, words cracking the air. “You think you can unravel me? I am older than your gods, stronger than your courage, and your defiance means nothing!”
Constantine snarled, flames of magic licking at his fingertips. “Careful now, mate,” he said, voice dripping with fury and sarcasm. “You’ve got half a chance if you keep underestimating stubborn humans.”
The creature’s eyes glowed, a swirl of darkness and malice. It raised both hands, and the air thickened, curling around them like serpents.
“I CURSE YOU,” it roared. “I CURSE THE BOY WHO DARES DEFY ME, AND THE MAN WHO THINKS HE CAN PROTECT HIM!”
The cathedral shuddered violently, dust falling from the vaulted ceilings. The air itself seemed to twist, carrying the weight of some ancient, malevolent force. The curse unfurled like a black river, tendrils of energy winding toward Jason and Constantine, laced with sickness, fatigue, and the icy touch of despair.
Jason gritted his teeth, fighting the invisible chains wrapping around his body and mind. Each breath burned, each movement felt like dragging himself through quicksand. Yet even as the darkness clawed at him, he refused to kneel. “I don’t care what you throw at me!” he screamed, voice raw and ragged. “You don’t get to decide what I am! You don’t get to touch them! I won’t let you!”
Constantine’s hands moved faster, tracing sigils with precision honed by decades of fighting impossible odds. Smoke and fire spiraled outward, meeting the creature’s curse with a fury that rivaled the storm. “You think curses scare me? I’ve worn worse than your fancy words and walked out smiling. You want a war? You got one, pal!”
The creature’s roar shook the stone floor, its form flickering as if straining under the force of Constantine’s magic. “I WILL TEAR YOU APART!” it hissed. Shadows reached for Jason, twisting into the shapes of every fear he had ever known, every friend and foe, every moment of helplessness, trying to bend him to despair.
Jason’s eyes burned. He clenched his fists, focusing on the lives of the town, the people whose smiles were not his illusions to destroy. “No! You’re not protecting anyone! You’re just feeding! That’s what you are! A parasite! And I—” He roared with every ounce of strength he had left, “—I will stop you!”
The creature recoiled slightly, taken aback by the ferocity of a boy who refused to bend. Constantine took the opportunity, unleashing the last of his ritual into the ground, symbols igniting and twisting, connecting every thread of the town’s enchantment, severing it at the source.
The curse recoiled, shrieking like metal tearing, dissipating into the air as the walls of the illusion cracked and splintered. The town began to shimmer, flicker, and settle into reality as if breathing for the first time. People blinked awake, unsure but alive, and Jason felt the weight of the creature’s gaze on him.
The creature, for the first time, faltered. Its voice, still cold and composed, had an edge now—frustration, anger, disbelief. “You cannot undo what I have built! They owe me! They are mine to protect!”
Jason stood tall despite the exhaustion, fists still trembling, eyes blazing. “They’re alive because of us, not because of you. You don’t get to decide that for anyone!”
Constantine leaned back slightly, panting, his hands still glowing faintly with the residue of magic. “Well, mate,” he said with a grin, wild and chaotic, “looks like your diet just got cut off. Try feeding off someone else.”
The creature hissed, form flickering between Damian, Bruce, and something older and darker, realizing the parasite it had been could no longer latch on. Its voice softened into a low growl, almost contemplative. “This… is not over.”
Jason wiped sweat and blood from his face, chest heaving, and looked around at the slowly solidifying town. “Maybe not,” he muttered, voice hoarse. “But today… today we win.”
And for the first time since stepping into the cathedral, the creature felt something it had not in centuries: uncertainty.
Constantine’s voice rose over the cathedral like a hammer falling again and again, Latin echoing with the force of something older than scripture, sharper than prayer. The sigils carved into the floor ignited with violent white light, and the creature—still wearing Damian’s face, though flickering now with pieces of other forms—collapsed to its knees.
Its skin split like cracking porcelain, shadows leaking out in frantic curls. It clawed at the floor, fingers digging into stone as if trying to anchor itself to the world that was coming undone around it.
“Non ligabis eos! Non detinebis animas! Non amplius regabis!”
Constantine’s voice grew louder, stronger, fury feeding the magic. The town outside reacted in waves—lights dying and relighting, windows shattering then healing, illusions tearing like fragile paper until reality stood bare.
The creature screamed.
Not in a human way, but in the way something ancient and hungry shrieks when the food source is ripped away. Its body spasmed, shifting from Damian to Bruce to a woman Jason didn’t know, to a child crying, to a horned figure with too many eyes—then back again in a frantic cycle.
“STOP.” It choked the word out like it was drowning. “STOP THIS!”
Constantine didn’t. He didn’t even look up. His voice stayed steady, relentless, blazing with purpose.
Jason watched the creature writhe, the cathedral shaking with its pain. The shadows that once moved with grace now shook with panic, rage, desperation.
The creature dragged its gaze upward, toward Jason.
The Damian shape returned, flickering and half-transparent now, eyes glowing with a terrible, poisonous clarity. It spoke through gritted teeth, voice glitching between tones, like a hundred mouths forming the same accusation.
“LOOK AT WHAT YOU’VE DONE.”
Jason froze.
The creature coughed shadows, spine twisting as the spell peeled the enchantment from the town like skin from bone.
“You came here,” it said, voice choking but precise. “You broke what was perfect.”
It forced itself up on trembling arms, inching toward Jason.
“Those people… had lives without pain. Without grief. Without fear. And now…”
It laughed then—broken, collapsing into a hysterical, gasping sound that barely resembled laughter.
“…they will remember.”
The words hit Jason like a blade.
“Every death,” the creature whispered. “Every missing child. Every body buried in their gardens. Every neighbor who disappeared and they did not notice.”
Jason’s breath caught, blood running cold.
“They will wake from their dreams,” the creature hissed, “and drown in guilt. In grief. In horror.”
Its eyes—Damian’s eyes but wrong—locked onto Jason’s, pinning him in place.
“And that is because of you.”
Constantine kept chanting, louder now, sweat pouring down his face, magic ripping through the church like a hurricane. But the words, the accusation, were for Jason alone.
“You call me a parasite,” the creature said. Its body trembled as its hands shredded against the floor, clawing for him. “But you—you have killed them. Every single one. All that comes next will be written in their blood.”
Jason’s jaw clenched but his voice failed him. He could only stare as the creature inched closer, desperate, dying, but still speaking with deliberate venom.
“I gave them peace,” it whispered, voice soft now, intimate, almost tender. “You will give them suffering. The screams they make when they remember… will echo in your head. Every night. Every time you close your eyes.”
Jason staggered backward, breath fractured, mind spinning. The weight of the words hit harder than any punch. Harder than death. Harder than resurrection.
“I hope you live a very long time,” the creature murmured, cracking apart as Constantine’s spell reached its peak. Its face—Damian’s—softened into something like pity sharpened into cruelty. “So you never forget what you took from them.”
The final word left the creature’s mouth as a hiss and a prayer and a curse all at once:
“Murderer.”
The spell reached its climax.
Constantine shouted the last line, voice thunderous, and the sigils exploded in light. A shockwave blasted through the cathedral, through the town, through every illusion ever cast.
The creature screamed once more, body collapsing into ash and shadow—burning, twisting, and then shattering into nothing.
But the echo of its final accusation remained. And Jason stood in the silence that followed, hands shaking, gun still in his grip, heart pounding in a rhythm that felt nothing like victory.
The fallout was immediate and brutal, though subtle at first. When the creature finally collapsed into ash and shadow under Constantine’s relentless spellwork, the cathedral seemed to exhale, the walls groaning as if relieved but also mourning. The oppressive air of dread lifted, but it left behind scars—both physical and spiritual.
Outside, the town flickered between illusion and reality. Buildings once perfect, sunlit, comforting facades now showed their true age: cracked wood, peeling paint, crooked fences. Gardens lay untended, streets were dusty, and the townspeople blinked in confusion, unsure why the world felt so sharp and cold. The illusions the creature had fed on so carefully evaporated, leaving them with only fragments of memory. Some remembered glimpses of perfect lives; others only felt a strange, haunting absence.
Jason was the first to notice the emotional wreckage. Faces he’d thought innocent, untouched, were marked with fear, confusion, and grief. They were angry, scared, and many were physically unharmed yet emotionally shattered. For Jason, the realization hit like a crowbar to the chest: even though he and Constantine had won, victory carried a cost. The town’s people were free from the creature’s manipulation—but that freedom came with the weight of truth.
He staggered through the streets, hearing whispers and murmurs, some blaming him, some blaming the unseen forces that had kept their lives “perfect.” Jason’s guilt was immediate and heavy. The creature’s final words—“It’s your fault… their blood will be on your hands”—echoed relentlessly. Even knowing the truth of its parasitic nature, Jason felt the burden of responsibility as if he had dismantled the fragile safety net the creature had imposed.
Constantine was quieter in the aftermath, more measured. He didn’t need to tell Jason he understood—he always understood. His eyes scanned the town, reading the threads of magic that had been torn apart, noting areas where some latent energies still clung like stubborn residue. He muttered a few cleansing words, flicking sigils to stabilize the town just enough for the residents not to completely spiral. But he didn’t lie to Jason: magic could repair only the physical, the visible, not the weight of lost illusions or the psychic imprint of horror.
The cathedral, once a center of the creature’s influence, was scarred. Marble cracked, pews splintered, candles burnt out but their wax frozen mid-drip. Sunlight streamed through the stained-glass windows, casting fractured patterns on the floor like warning signs in color. For Jason, it was a reminder: battles like these didn’t leave the world unchanged. They only left the pieces that survived more jagged than before.
Jason and Constantine stood together in silence for a long moment. The creature was gone, yet its presence lingered in subtle ways—the faint whispers in the wind, the ghostly memory of voices in the cathedral, the uncanny sense that they were never really alone. Jason’s hands were bloodied, his jacket torn, his face streaked with sweat and ash. His mind was still racing with the hallucinatory visions the creature had forced him through: Joker’s laughter, the domestic life it promised, Damian’s twisted mask.
“You did good,” Constantine said finally, voice low, eyes scanning the streets. “But don’t expect anyone to thank you for it. People don’t like being ripped out of a dream. They like easy lives—even if those lives are built on lies and blood.”
Jason clenched his fists. “Easy life, huh? Yeah, well… I don’t think I’d call what we did easy. Or good. Or fair.”
“Good, fair, easy… none of that matters,” Constantine said, flicking his cigarette to the cracked stone floor. “What matters is that the thing’s gone. For now. And if anyone’s gonna clean up the mess without losing their mind, that’s gonna be us.”
There was more to come. The townspeople would need time, therapy, care, guidance. Some would turn bitter, some angry, and a few would embrace reality and rebuild. Jason knew that some would never forgive him—never forgive the destruction that followed their liberation. He would live with that, like he had lived with every death, every failure, every wound that never fully healed.
For Constantine, it was routine. Mess, chaos, lives in tatters—but survival, truth, and a narrow victory to cling to. For Jason, it was heavier, more personal. He had saved people, yes—but he had also seen what freedom meant for those who had only known comfort as a cage. And he had learned that sometimes, the cost of victory is something no one can carry lightly.
As the sun rose over the fractured town, the two of them walked out of the cathedral side by side. The streets were quiet, the shadows retreating, but both knew the creature had left its mark—not just on the town, but on them. And somewhere in the quiet, Jason felt it: a lingering question of whether freedom was worth the guilt it demanded.
Constantine lit a new cigarette, puffing thoughtfully. “We did it, kid. Creature’s toast. Town’s breathing. You’re still alive. That’s a win. Don’t overthink it.”
Jason shook his head, grim. “Yeah… I’ll remember them anyway. All of them.”
“Good,” Constantine said with a crooked grin. “Then you’ll survive this too. Same as always.”
They walked into the morning light, battered, weary, scarred—but alive. The creature was gone, but the fallout would last far longer than either of them could imagine. And deep down, Jason knew that sometimes survival itself was only the beginning.