The data shard pulsed again. A slow, sick rhythm—like a heartbeat not entirely human. Batman stood atop a crumbling tower of the under-vault, the relic secured, his mind a quiet battlefield.
The Lion was still buried beneath tons of rock. His psychic essence flickered faintly in the back of Batman's consciousness, a fading sun behind storm clouds. The shard whispered in his palm, the edges warm. Not from friction. From resonance.
Something was listening.
The air shifted. A frequency beyond hearing, yet felt deep within the marrow. Batman narrowed his eyes. The Warp's scent—ozone, ash, and madness—lingered far too long.
He activated a containment field, but the pulse had already gone out. A beacon, unintentionally triggered. His gauntlet flickered, readings spiking beyond any known psychic scale.
Far away, it began.
---
POV: Joker
The theater of insanity drifted like a parasite through the void—Joker's war barge, festooned with towers of meat and chrome, laughed in color where space should be silence.
Inside, music played. Twisted calliope notes wailed across the Warp, intercut with screams and the clatter of bones. Joker sat upon a throne fashioned from defiled relics and children's toys, a pipe organ behind him groaning as tortured psykers fueled its song.
The relic was gone. The Bat had stolen it. Typical. Predictable.
"Predictable," Joker hissed aloud, plucking an organ key made of rib bone. "But oh… the counterpoint, Batsy. The discordant harmony."
He stood, motley robe trailing behind him like smoke from a dying circus fire. Before him, the basin of green ichor—Lion's blood, thick and gleaming with suppressed glory—simmered with psychic tension.
Around it, psykers twitched. Gagged, drained, their souls tethered to the Warp's edge. He reached into the ichor—not touching, just hovering his hand—stirring the latent power.
"Time for the overture."
The Warp howled.
---
POV: Batman
He felt it. A rend in the fabric of reality—not near, not physical—but in the unseen lattice of the Immaterium. Joker was broadcasting.
Batman dropped to one knee, voice modulation off. He whispered, "Lion. Hold on."
He pressed two fingers to the shard. A surge of raw information hit him: fragments of laughter, a vision of cherubs screaming in silence, a whisper—"Act Two."
---
POV: Joker
"Konrad…" he cooed into the Warp, his words wrapped in layered frequencies, soaked in the blood of demigods.
The chamber darkened. Not shadow. Absence. As if light itself recoiled.
Something arrived.
Konrad Curze did not appear—he was felt first. Pressure. Like gravity learning cruelty. The psykers shrieked silently, their eyes gone white.
Joker grinned wider, stepping back as a shape formed above the basin. A silhouette. Taloned. Cloaked in night and pain.
"Konniiiieeee," Joker sang. "Welcome back to the stage."
Curze didn't speak. His gaze alone silenced the screams. It pressed like blades against Joker's skin, yet the clown only giggled.
"I have a treat," Joker whispered, reverent now. "Your brother. Alive. Drenched in honor and guilt. And our dear Batman? He thinks justice is enough. Shall we educate them?"
Konrad stepped forward, half-there, his voice like broken glass ground beneath bootheels.
"Where is the Lion?"
"In pain," Joker crooned. "Buried. Tired. But not broken. Yet."
Curze didn't blink. "You summoned me to kill a ghost?"
"No, no," Joker grinned, "I summoned you to unmake him. Publicly. Psychically. You'll break the myth. You'll tear down the curtain and show the galaxy how paper-thin his nobility truly is."
Konrad's form stabilized, flesh shimmering like oil across shadow.
"And the Bat?"
Joker leaned in close to the psychic pool, eyes manic. "Ah… he's the audience. He gets to watch."
---
POV: Batman
He staggered as the link snapped back into silence. Sweat beaded beneath his cowl. His heart hammered.
The air hung thick and cold, tasting of rust, ozone, and the taint of the Immaterium. What had once been the subterranean sanctuary beneath Mount Targon now lay in ruin. A Warp breach, torn open by a madman in motley and saturated by a god's blood, had reshaped the earth. The ancient fortress-monastery, once a bastion of ascension, now resembled a war-torn hive spire from a galaxy at the edge of reason.
Below the fractured dome of the ancient sanctuary, a vast, broken cityscape stretched into a perpetual twilight. Plasma fires flickered from shattered conduits. The air shimmered with the residue of psychic storms. Arcane wards etched into walls centuries ago pulsed dimly, struggling against the bleed of nightmare.
Batman moved like a shadow through the wreckage, a silhouette against the glow of a ruptured reactor core. His gauntlet's optics scanned the decaying command console, interfacing with corrupted Imperial cogitators and salvaged Runeterran arcana. Data flooded in—a symphony of error codes, heat maps, and energy spikes. Calculations whirred. A battle plan formed.
"The structural integrity of Sector Gamma is compromised beyond repair. Primary power conduits have failed. Bravo-Seven is the only stable corridor left, and it's degrading rapidly." His voice, low and metallic through the cowl, echoed softly. "We've lost contact with the nearest allied frequencies. Reinforcements are not coming."
He paused.
"Joker's last warp-spike signature triangulates to orbit. The broadcast is still active, Lion. This place is bait. He set this trap to draw out something darker."
Beside him stood Lion El'Jonson—the First Primarch, Lord of the First Legion. A figure of ancient might and grim resolve. His ceramite armor, though scorched and dented from recent battle, bore the proud iconography of the Dark Angels: the broken blade, the eternal wing. He did not move, nor speak. His eyes stared into something Batman could not see—a fissure in time, perhaps, or the echo of a brother's hatred across the Warp.
"Withdraw is tactically sound," Batman continued. "But Curze is coming. Joker summoned him using your blood. You know what that means."
The Lion finally turned his helm toward Batman. His voice was low and seismic, like tectonic plates grinding beneath mountains. "His shadow comes before him. I can feel it."
Batman parsed the implication instantly. The Night Haunter was not merely traveling—he was already here, in spirit if not in form. The Warp bent before him. Fear bloomed like rot in his wake.
"Then you know this is a suicide mission," Batman said, already knowing the answer.
"No," Lion growled. "It is prophecy."
There was no more to be said. Batman understood now. This was not strategy. This was penance.
He reached into his belt and began the preparations.
First came the perimeter. Dozens of nanite-laced webs sprayed from his gauntlet, threading themselves across collapsed pillars and broken spires. These weren't mere sensors—they tracked fluctuations in heat, pressure, and most critically, Warp resonance. He calibrated them using stolen fragments of Joker's psychic signature, twisting the clown's own madness into a counter-measure.
Next, traps. Not for killing—he had no illusions about slaying a Primarch—but for disorienting. High-frequency emitters were placed in alcoves and dead zones, tuned to induce vertigo in even post-human cerebrums. Adhesive gel charges were hidden in fallen ducts. Sonic pulses would trigger on command. Laser tripwires linked to strobe emitters—designed to interrupt even a Night Lord's superhuman reflexes.
He rewired ancient Runeterran glyph circuits and repurposed failing Imperial defense nodes. Power rerouted. Collapse zones mapped. He even used Joker's last broadcast frequency to install a psychic feedback bomb—if Joker tried to remotely hijack the Haunter again, the feedback might cripple both.
Lion said nothing throughout. But Batman could feel his presence, steady and solemn, like a storm bank gathering weight. A remnant of Joker's earlier attack still clung to him—the echoes of guilt from Caliban, the betrayal of Luther, the burning of home. It lingered beneath the surface of the Primarch's poise, but his will held firm.
Finally, Batman returned to their makeshift command post. The display on his gauntlet pulsed with life—a web of green, red, and flickering gold. Every corner of the ruin was now part of his battlefield.
He stood beside the Lion, eyes scanning the gloom.
"He will come through the fissure," Lion said, voice a distant drumbeat. "He always follows the scent of prophecy."
And then, the readings changed.
Temperature dropped sharply. Pressure sensors spiked. The air grew heavy, not with mass, but with meaning. Every nanite string vibrated.
Batman felt it before he saw it. Not fear—he was long past that—but a cold truth brushing his mind like a claw.
Konrad Curze had arrived.
The sensors screamed silently. One by one, lightless shadows peeled away from walls. The wind died. And somewhere in the city below, something laughed.
The Night had come.