The night after the gala, Jonathan couldn't sleep the knife Nina Blackthorn had left him sat on the desk like a constant whisper, its silver edge catching the lamplight.
He kept returning to the map sprawled across the table the circle of crimes, the heart at Gotham Square, the hidden meaning in the city's bones.
But one detail gnawed at him: why so many whispers about beneath? Fires in tunnels, meetings in grain vaults, symbols carved into cellar walls.
The circle wasn't only drawn above. It had to run below.
By dawn, he had his answer.
Ashford the journalist arrived at Jonathan's home, his eyes bloodshot, his satchel bulging with papers.
"I've found something," he rasped, tossing rolls of parchment
across the table.
"City blueprints old ones not the versions you'd find in
records today these were sealed away."
Jonathan unrolled them carefully they weren't blueprints so much as cartographer's sketches inked lines, notes in archaic hand, designs overlaid atop the city grid. His chest tightened as he saw them.
"There," Ashford whispered, jabbing a finger "Tunnels under Gotham Square they're not sewers, Wayne they predate the city itself."
Jonathan traced the inked corridors spiraling outward like veins from a heart.
The resemblance to his crime-map circle was undeniable. "A second Gotham," he breathed "Buried under the first."
Ashford nodded grimly "A map below, a city beneath the city and if the Owe are using it, that's where they'll finish their work."
By nightfall, Jonathan and Crane stood in the damp alleys near the South Docks. Scrap had led them there, jittery and pale.
"This is the entrance," Scrap whispered, pointing to a rusted grate behind a collapsed warehouse. "I seen 'em go in men in black coats rings on their fingers."
Jonathan gripped the lantern tightly, its small flame guttering against the wind he turned to Crane.
"You don't have to come."
Crane spat into the gutter "Hell, Wayne if i die down there, at least I'll finally be sober."
Together, they pried open the grate and descended.
The tunnels wallowed them whole the air was thick with mildew, damp stone dripping in slow rhythm.
Their lantern light revealed walls carved with symbols circles
within circles, lines intersecting like stars. Jonathan ran his fingers across the grooves the stone felt older than Gotham itself.
"See that?" Crane muttered, pointing at the floor scraps of cloth, ash, and bones littered the ground. "They've been using this place."
The deeper they went, the more oppressive the silence grew.
The tunnels twisted into chambers like ribs in a carcass, some filled with stagnant water, others with carved altars blackened by old fire.
At one chamber's heart, Jonathan stopped cold.
The walls were covered in drawings a crude map, scratched by countless hands over years.
Circles, spirals, arrows pointing inward and in the center Gotham Square, etched deeper than all the rest.
"The circle isn't lust above," Jonathan whispered "It's here below they've been tracing it from both sides."
Crane shivered.
"Feels like we're walking inside a throat, Wayne and the city's about to swallow us whole."
They pushed further, following the map etched on stone. At last, they came to a vast cavern, lit faintly by shafts of moonlight cutting through cracks above.
The floor was covered with rubble, but in the middle stood a massive slab of stone, carved with the Owe's symbol.
And there, kneeling before it, was a man.
Jonathan froze his lantern caught the glint of a black ring on the figure's hand.
The man turned slowly his face was scarred, his eyes pale as smoke.
"Welcome, wanderers," the figure said his voice echoed unnaturally, as if the tunnels themselves carried it. "You've found the map below but do you know what it means?"
Jonathan tightened his grip on his revolver. "You're one of them. The Owe."
The man smiled "one of many ,one of none,the circle is not ours to own, only to finish." He rose, spreading his arms as though greeting them into a cathedral.
"Gotham was built to bind its stones, its streets, its families
all placed in design. Every death, every fire, every scream feeds the circle. And when it closes, the city will not belong to men. It will belong to something older."
Crane swore under his breath.
"He's insane."
Jonathan's heart pounded.
"What are you binding?"
The figure's smile widened. "Ask your blood the Wayne name is written in the stones."
Before Jonathan could speak, a sudden clatter echoed through the chamber shadows moving at the edges. More figures
emerging from side tunnels, each wearing the same black ring, each holding knives that glimmered in the dim light.
Jonathan raised his revolver "Back," he growled.
The pale-eyed man laughed, low and cold. "You're already inside the circle, Officer Wayne. There is no back."
Then the figures surged forward.
The fight was chaos Lantern light swung wildly, shadows colliding with steel. Jonathan fired, the gunshots deafening in the stone chamber.
Crane swung his club, knocking one assailant into the wall. Scrap darted between legs, slashing with a stolen blade.
But they were outnumbered dozens of them, chanting as they attacked, their knives flashing in ritual arcs.
Jonathan grappled with one, slamming him against the carved slab.
His eyes caught on the symbol etched there not just a circle, but a spiral, twisting inward endlessly.
He felt dizzy, as though the very stone was pulling him in.
"Wayne!" Crane roared, dragging him back as another attacker lunged.
They fought their way toward an exit tunnel, Jonathan's lungs burning, his arms heavy. Behind them, the chanting grew louder, echoing like thunder.
At last, they burst into the open night, collapsing against the cobblestones near the docks. The grate slammed shut behind them.
For a moment, none of them spoke just gasping breaths, bloodied hands, the stink of the tunnels clinging to their clothes.
Then Jonathan whispered, voice hoarse.
"The city isn't just cursed it was made this way."
Crane spat blood onto the street "Then we're not just fighting men, Wayne we're fighting Gotham itself."
Jonathan stared back at the grate, the chanting still echoing faintly in his ears.
The map below was real and the circle was nearly complete