Back at one of his safehouses, Jason peeled the domino mask from his face and headed straight for the shower.

Too much had happened that night.

Seeing Bruce again had dug up memories he’d buried underneath the rage—memories he’d never allowed himself to examine because of the bitterness he carried toward Bruce.

Bruce had deserved the beating; Jason didn’t question that. His anger was justified. And yet… something about the encounter felt off.

He couldn’t place it. Whatever it was had followed him, lingering in the back of his mind ever since.

He stripped out of his gear and stepped into the bathroom, turning on the shower. Water continuously poured down over him in multiple lines of heavy stream droplets, soaking his skin as he stood beneath it.

The mission had gone exactly as planned. Joker was dead. He should’ve felt victorious—should’ve felt that rush of satisfaction he’d imagined for the longest time. Instead, the act felt hollow, the exhilaration muted in a way that unsettled him.

Exhaustion settled deep into his bones. Seeking some kind of relief, he filled the bathtub and eased himself into the water, leaning back with his face tilted upward as he closed his eyes, trying to let everything go.

Time blurred.

Then the space around him slowly faded.

Jason half opened his eyes only to be faced with pitch darkness.

He jolted from the shock of the sudden change to a surrounding unfamiliar to him, only to find himself trapped—pressed into a tight, suffocating enclosure. Panic sank into him as he struck the surface above, the dull thud echoing back. Wood. Or metal. Too close.

“Let me out!” he shouted, pounding harder. 

“Can anyone hear me?!”

His breathing turned ragged as panic clawed its way up his chest, an old, buried terror ripping free. 

The fear of waking up buried in a grave was something that hunted him deep down, now it had suddenly been realized—leaving him without the faintest idea as to how he ended up there when he had been laying in his tub just a while ago.

His breaths came short and uneven, each one scraping at his lungs. Through the haze of panic, fragments of Ra’s teachings surfaced—discipline, control, survival. 

Jason squeezed his eyes shut and forced himself to focus, drawing in slow, deliberate breaths, then releasing them in steady intervals. In. Out. Again. Again.

The terror loosened its grip, just enough.

With a roar of effort, he drove his fist into the surface above him. With another blow, it gave way. His hand punched through, and sand poured in around his arm in a sudden rush, cold and heavy, confirming the nightmare—he was buried.

He struck again. And again. Each blow tore away more resistance, his knuckles splitting as exhaustion weighed upon him, but he didn’t stop. His unyielding will to live dragged him forward inch by inch as he clawed and shoved his way upward while at a lose for oxygen, fighting the grave itself.

Then he broke free.

Jason collapsed onto damp, fog-shrouded grass, sucking in cold night air that burned his lungs. He pushed himself up just enough to take in his surroundings—a cemetery tucked deep within a forest, silent and lifeless beneath the dark sky. 

Headstones loomed around the place, the fog helping it portray a creepy vibe.

When he turned back, his blood ran cold.

A gravestone stood at the head of the disturbed earth, his name alone was carved into the stone. No dates or epoch inscribed underneath.

A chill crept through him as he dragged himself fully from the grave, the fog curling around his legs. He couldn’t tell if this was a dream, another blackout, or if he somehow drowned in the tub and had ended with him buried. If it were to be the latter, then how was he alive?

“I see… you made it out.”

The voice rasped from behind him—hoarse, unpleasant, and unmistakably wrong.

Jason froze.

“In the grave is where you belong,” the voice continued, echoing through the trees. “In the world of the dead. Not playing the vengeful vigilante.”

He knew that voice.

It belonged to the bandage-wrapped stranger in the black leather jacket—the one who had kidnapped him and Nightwing. The one who had dragged Jason’s attention toward the missing hours, the lost stretches of time where he couldn’t remember what he’d done… or who he’d been.

“Why don’t you show yourself?!” Jason shouted, squaring his shoulders, forcing steel into his spine as he prepared to face whatever waited in the dark.

“Because dead men tell no tales.”

The reply made Jason arch a brow despite the hard line of his expression. It didn’t answer his summon—not that anything about this made sense anymore.

“Where am I?” he demanded. “How did I get here?”

Laughter answered him.

It came in layers—multiple voices bleeding into one another, echoing through the trees. Distant and close at the same time. 

It crawled into his ears, raising goosebumps along his skin.

The bravado he’d forced into place began to crack as instinctive fear gnawed its way in.

“Look at you,” the hoarse, subtly inhuman voice drawled, dragging out its words. “Even without the League’s influence… you’ve abandoned Bruce’s teachings entirely, so far gone that the words of your father failed to reach you. You’ve become a true killer.”

A pause.

“A serial murderer.” The accusation hung in the air.

“One more life taken,” the voice continued, laced with cruel amusement, “all in a desperate attempt to fill the void carved into your soul by the Lazarus Pit.”

It sounded pleased. Mocking. Like a predator watching a fledgling.

“He deserved to die,” Jason shot back, forcing the fear down, locking his spine straight.

“Perhaps,” the figure replied. “But what of the others you’ve killed along the way? What of the Bertinellis? What of the people you crushed beneath your boots just to move the right pieces into place?”

A sharp, hoarse laugh sliced through the fog.

Jason opened his mouth to argue—then stopped.

The figure emerged from the darkness.

Clad in a black leather jacket and combat pants, it moved toward him with slow, uneven steps. Every inch of exposed skin—head, neck, hands—was wrapped in thick, stained bandages. Its gait was wrong, like something unused to occupying a body, as though it were a spirit forcing itself into a body it didn’t quite understand.

Only its lips were visible.

They were smeared with blackened blood.

Jason froze.

The air grew foul as it approached, carrying a putrid, rotting stench that turned his stomach. Fear seized him fully now, rooting him to the fog-slick grass as the thing closed the distance between them.

“Do not justify… actions already taken,” it said.

Though Jason could see the figure advancing, its voice didn’t seem to come from its mouth alone. It rode the cold wind instead, whispering straight into his ears, into his skull.

“Do not pretend you are special,” it continued, its tone slithering. “Struggling to bridle your impulses. Give in… indulge them. Paint Gotham in the blood of anyone foolish enough to stand in your way.”

Jason shuddered, ever nerve screaming at him to back away as the thing drew closer.

“That white streak in your hair,” it murmured, almost reverent, “you might have been kissed by Lady Death, but never forget… you are just a deadman walking.”

Jason’s pupils constricted.

The ground around him ruptured.

Hands burst through the soil in every direction—rotting, grasping fingers clawing upward as if the earth itself were trying to drag him back down.

“See?” the voice pressed on, smooth and cruel. “Like the dead man you are, you have nothing left to lose. Your actions do not need something as boring as a justification, so why not make criminals tremble… why not make the city itself quake at the sound of your name?”

As it spoke, corpses heaved themselves free from their graves, bodies lurching toward him in a grotesque tide.

Hands seized his throat.

Jason gasped as fingers locked tight around his neck, cutting off his air as they tried pushing him back into the grave.

Panic took hold of him—but he forced himself to fight through it, digging deep, refusing to let fear hollow him out.

“Wake up, Jason.”

He slapped himself hard, hands scrambling at his own throat as if to tear the grip away—but his strength was failing, his vision blurring.

“Wake… up!”

The words tore out of him with audible desperation. With what little strength he had left, he clenched his fist, ripped his right arm free, and drove it into his own face.

Pain exploded—

—and the world shattered.

He opened his eyes to find himself submerged in the tub.

Soap burned his eyes as water filled his lungs.

Jason shot upright with a violent gasp, breaking the surface of the tub water as he sucked in air like it was the first breath he’d ever taken. His chest heaved, filling his lungs with air as he nearly drowned where he sat.

Coughing, shaking, he dragged himself out of the tub and onto the bathroom floor. After a moment, he reached for a towel, drying off with unsteady hands. He pulled on a pair of underwear and rubbed at his hair, the echo of that voice still clung to his bones.

Jason’s gaze drifted to the mirror, catching on the white streak cutting through his hair. His hands stilled mid-motion, the towel frozen against his head as his eyes went distant, unfocused.

“Kissed by Lady Death, huh?” he murmured, unsure whether the phrase was meant to be metaphor, warning, or curse.

He resumed drying his hair, though the weight of the experience clung to him. He’d heard people talk about battling their inner demons—addiction, guilt, intrusive thoughts.

What he was dealing with was far more literal.

Jason hung the towel back on its hook and tugged the mirror open, revealing the hidden cabinet behind it. He reached in and pulled out a fresh toothbrush, still sealed in plastic. His fingers shook as he tried to open it, a faint tremor betraying him despite his effort to stay composed.

The fear hadn’t left him. Whatever that thing was—whatever had been stalking the edges of his mind—his body still remembered it.

He exhaled slowly, steadied his hands, and squeezed toothpaste onto the bristles.

With a sharp shake of his head, he shut the cabinet and looked back at the mirror—

—and froze.

The white streak was gone.

“Oh. It’s you again,” Jason muttered, lifting the toothbrush to his mouth as if this were an inconvenience rather than a cause to worry about his sanity. He began brushing.

“Damn,” his reflection said. “You don’t even flinch anymore. Kind of miss when you did. Is that weird?”

The voice carried a teasing edge, deliberate and prodding, trying to get under his skin.

Jason leaned forward to spit into the sink, then straightened, his eyes locking with the reflection that wasn’t quite following him anymore. If he had to guess, it was either an unwanted imaginary friend or an alternate personality—the same one that might’ve been steering his body during those missing hours.

“The only weird thing here is you,” Jason replied evenly, foam at the corner of his mouth, “and the fact that I’m having an actual conversation with my reflection.”

He stayed there, staring it down, toothbrush still in hand and waiting to find out why this version of him had decided to show up this time.

Ignoring Jason’s remark entirely, his reflection continued. “So—you finally put down the crazed clown. Congratulations on crossing that one off the list. I have to say… it was quite the performance.”

Jason arched a brow, the faintest twitch threatening the corner of his mouth.

“I mean,” the reflection went on, “the way you looked Bruce straight in the eye before putting three bullets into Joker? Bravo.”

It brought its hands together and began pacing within the mirror’s space, applauding slowly as it circled.

Jason stayed silent, watching as he let it talk.

What unsettled him wasn’t the reflection itself. No, what gnawed at him was the other presence. The demon wrapped in bandages. The thing that had stalked his subconscious, hunted him both physically and in his dreams.

That was the threat.

He took a slow breath, then finally spoke.

“I felt your influence during the fight with Bruce. You tried to take control—but this time, I didn’t black out. I didn’t lose consciousness.”

For a split second, the reflection looked surprised.

Then it smiled.

“See?” it said, lips curling into a knowing smirk. “See how strong we can be when you stop pushing me away and accept my influence?”

It gestured vaguely, as if pointing to the way Jason’s emotions had stayed unnaturally calm—how at certain times his speed and agility had sharpened beyond their usual edge.

Jason processed that in silence.

If this thing had answers—real answers—then ignoring it wasn’t an option. He had nothing to lose by pressing further. At worst, he’d confirm his own fears.

“What are you?” Jason asked.

“Me…?” The reflection lifted a finger, tapping it against its chin in exaggerated thought, dragging the moment out like it had been waiting for this exact question. 

The corners of it’s lips curled up into a smirk.

“I–I am Jason Todd.”

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep