From Tartarus to Gotham

Gotham was swallowed by a darkness that crept in like corrupted ink saturating delicate parchment, each droplet of shadow a reminder of both inevitable ruin and an unsettling desire for escape. The murky tendrils snaked relentlessly along the city's veins, slipping between buildings and threading under every door with a deliberate coldness that both repelled and fascinated. Structures trembled under its touch, twisting into monstrous caricatures of their former selves—a grotesque echo of ancient nightmares that seemed to taunt the heart with familiarity and dread all at once. Overhead, a furious red sky burned like a warning, even as the streets split open in agonized rifts, exposing pulsing fissures that felt as if they were the heartbeat of an insidious demon clawing its way from another realm. The air was thick with not only the sulfurous tang of fear, but a condemned certainty that each soul was caught in a web of doomed fate.

On these shattered streets, the desperate wails of fleeing citizens filled the air, voices edged with terror and reluctant defiance. They dove into grimy alleys and decaying subway tunnels, only to discover that every escape route had been tainted by the same twisting force, leaving them trapped between hope and despair. Long, unnatural shadows extended across the pavement, soon coalescing into hideous silhouettes that moved with an almost mournful, deliberate slowness, as if they too felt the crushing weight of their own existence. These abominations—manifestations of suppressed collective torment—had emerged as living nightmares, their ragged movements accompanied only by the harsh scrape of clawed limbs slicing through the chaos of sirens and screams, while Gotham tore at itself in a slow death of agony and conflict.

High above the devastation, at the fragmented pinnacle of the skyline, a solitary figure stood—a flickering, conflicted beacon against the relentless tide. Wayne Tower, once a proud monument, now sagged into a misshapen spire beneath a wrathful, implacable sky. Percy, a face marred by youth and scar, burned with an eerie green intensity, his very eyes flashing with both defiance and profound inner torment. From him exuded a darkness as thick and sticky as tar, a bitter substance that surged outward until it merged with the encroaching shadows threatening to overrun the horizon. This living gloom cascaded over the tower, flooding the desolate streets, consuming with an appetite that was as much a part of him as it was an external calamity. His expression wavered violently between raw agony and a savage malice he could neither fully embrace nor wholly resist—a split second in which the weight of his own power felt like both gift and curse.

A scream tore from him—a raw, conflicted sound that carried the tremor of a mind torn between ancient horrors and the overwhelming presence of an unfolding apocalypse. As his hand clawed at his hair, he was struck not by physical pain but by the chilling realization of something writhing beneath his skin—an entity both internal and foreign, patient yet ravenous. With each contortion of his face, his muscles betrayed him, twisting into grim expressions that felt like a losing battle between the remnants of his true self and the merciless force that demanded dominion.

The darkness pressed deeper, invading every fiber of his being until all that remained was a relentless pressure that drowned out all but its own malignant song. It commandeered his voice, warping words into incantations that celebrated the carnage erupting from his outstretched hands. Slowly, as the corrupt essence seeped into the very crevices of his soul, it drained the warmth and color from his skin, leaving behind a spectral pallor. Gray frost edged over him, while his veins spread like sinister, winding maps over a face no longer wholly his own. In that moment, he ceased to be simply a man—he had become a doomed vessel, each movement a harrowing struggle between instinct and the puppet strings of the Pain Eater that gripped him with unyielding finality.

Below, as if caught in the same cruel fate, a woman's desperate steps faltered and she fell; her piercing scream was abruptly stifled as the street itself split open, swallowing her amid exploding bursts of seething red and billowing steam. Percy watched, transfixed and wracked with inner conflict—a part of him recoiled in horror while another part, darkly entranced, felt an inexplicable pull. He tried to reason that the turmoil within was nothing more than sheer terror, yet a voice—both intimately his and monstrously alien—whispered of triumph amid the devastation. In a tongue that mingled the ancient etchings of his father's past with the sterile dread of this new world, it proclaimed mastery and control. Percy battled to silence the alluring call, his eyes closing against the seductive promise of absolute power even as he knew it came at the cost of his very soul.